And last but not least....something that is NOT painted furniture

[dejablu503.livejournal.com]

One semester when I had taken all of the "turn your brain to mush" classes I could handle, I took an art class. I had this cool art instructor who taught us how to make a form of painting he developed himself called a Mobius Flow. There is no beginning and no end, there is no dominate color. In other words, it is a picture that is equally dark and light (in the case of my picture, equally black and white). But you can use other colors too, so long as one half is dark and one is light. To make the pic you take a photo that has clear shadows on one half and put a piece of tracing paper over it. People pics work best because the contours of the face create the shadows. Instead of outlining the features, you outline the shadows and fill them in with the dark color. Then you take the tracing paper proof you have made and transfer the shapes onto a solid color canvas, (or whatever you want to put it on) that you have prepainted in the light color. After you transfer the shapes there ( I used dressing making carbon paper to transfer them), you fill them in with the dark color you have chosen. The picture develops because the shadows you have colored in make you see lines that are not there, not because you highlighted the features with lines. In fact, the trick is to create absolutely no lines, only shapes.... and the light areas have to equal the dark shapes in volume. Once you get the hang of it, it is addicting to make these, and they make great low cost gifts. People love getting one of themselves. Better yet, you don't have to be a great sketching artist to do a picture like this.



If you look at it closely, you can see her glasses and her eyes even though no lines create them. The picture is equally dark and light, neither color dominates the picture. This is a must have feature for this art form.