Portrait Celebrates 50th Wedding Anniversary

T H E   G R O U D L E   H O U S E

 Home of Sandy and Glen Groudle

To celebrate the 50th wedding anniversary of Sandy and Glenn Groudle, David and Tim Groudle and their wives Heather and Sue, got together to commission a home portrait for their parents. The family knew that Sandy always wanted a painting of the family home. A home of many happy memories. 

So here is their gift to their loving parents and in-laws. To Sandy and Glen Groudle:

HAPPY 50TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY!

The Beauty of the Cleveland Metroparks

One of the things that impressed me upon moving to Cleveland many years ago was the richness and beauty of the Cleveland Metroparks. I forgot about this painting Norman did, until we adding some prints to sell for the Art Festivals we are participating in over this summer.

This is of the Rocky River near the Lorain Bridge. It always amazing me that such a serene place exists below the clutter of homes, highways, traffic and strip malls of Cleveland and its suburbs.

In Memory of Jean Lowry

I had received a call from Ernie Lowry. He wife had recently passed away and he wanted a portrait to be done in her memory.

He had a three by five photograph, that was taken of them many years ago, that he had treasured.

Although he had many photographs of her, this particular photo meant much more to him. 

Before he knew about Your Precious Portraits, he paid to have the section of the photograph of his wife enlarged as you see here and framed. But with older photos you can only enlarge so much before you loose detail.

The photo was cropped, retouched, enlarged to 8" X 10", matted and framed.  He paid $400 for the work done to create the 8" X 10" photo. Needless to say he was very disappointed. 

So from an image no larger than half the size of three by five photo, Norm went to work. 

For the same investment, Mr Lowry got a painting! 

For us we got to meet with a wonderful man who loves his wife and misses her dearly. We got to hear his story about the love his wife and the wonderful woman she was.

Thank you Ernie, for telling your story and giving us the opportunity to do this painting.

For a closer look of the painting click here.

Photo Diary of the Festival

This past week was a hot one! 

I took off a week from work to work all the harder to help Norman get ready for the Festival of the Arts at St. John's Medical Center. This was Friday morning the first day of the show. 

Our tents had to be up and ready by 9:30.

Norm is EXHAUSTED! 

We started Thursday afternoon and thought we would stroke out in the heat and be found in the goose poop by the pond.

Our tent is now complete and it is looking like rain. Here is the first peek inside.

Norm hinged 3 doors together and painted them with 3 shades of light green. The doors added more display space in our tent. 

I also displayed some prints of his photography in my grandmother's old wicker suitcase.

More matted prints of Norm's work are displayed in the opposite corner.  As the day progressed and the skies cleared I moved them out by the front.  

The plastic white lattice that we used for the sides of the tent worked well for hanging more paintings. 

It gave the tent a gazebo feeling.

So here is our tent and we are finally ready and waiting for our first customer.

This can't be our first customer?!?

The geese kept us company and searched for droppings of kettle corn from the passers by. 

But, thank God, our first customers started to arrive. 

My turn to guard the fort. 

I kept to the shade when the sun came out.  Unfortunately our tent was in the sun unlike the lucky ones that had shelter under the trees. 

Sun block was a must!

I think this was our youngest customer.  What a cutie!

 This is a shot of the many tents under the trees that lined the walking path on the St. John's Medical Campus.

At Sunday's close the artisans packed up and left the trails for our geese companions.

All in all, the festival turned out well. The sun came out and it cooled down enough that many people came out to visit.

We met many wonderful people.

I hope to be telling their stories through Norm's future illustrations. 

Creating our Banner for the Festival of the Arts

It suddenly dawned on me while in this frenzy of getting work printed, matted and framed for our show this weekend, that we had no identity for our little white tent in the sea of many white tents that wind around the walking trails on the St John's medical campus.

I had spotted a banner hanger a the local Pat Catan's and felt I could adapt it to my purpose. The next step would be designing the banner. Since we can print on canvas that solved my first problem.

Designing it to fit our logo and be seen was another. The hanger is not particularly wide so as you can see I designed one for a vertical look.

The banner measures 14" X 36"

I designed it so it can be viewed from both sides.

I pray this will do the trick. Meanwhile Norm is getting our work ready for the show. Our studio is only half completed. Folding doors for the tent to hang paintings on tower in my living room accompanied by a large folding table where I am matting prints.

Somehow this does not feel like vacation. All the same I am excited.

Summer Memories

There is a saying that summer is half over after the 4th. I always sigh when I hear that. I have so many fond memories of summer. Norman painted the above picture from a photo he snapped while we were up in Lakeside, Ohio capturing the quaintness of a long lazy small town summer. I asked him to do a painting of it so I can hold on to summer even in the cold Cleveland winters.

The old wicker chair reminds me of my grandmother, another warm memory in of itself. I can almost hear the sounds of summer from this painting: kids playing, birds chirping, lawnmowers with their distant hum. Oh how I love summer. Thanks Norman for capturing a bit of it for me.

To see Norman's original photo click here: original photo and take a tour through Norm's photo gallery.

Norman Drake's Newest Painting

I discovered Lakeside, Ohio two years ago when I went on a retreat for the Artists Way through and artist friend Wendy Fedan. I had a wonderful time! Although it is a woman's retreat Wendy allowed Norman to join and photograph the group. From some of his photos Norm did this painting of where some of our classes where held along Lake Erie. For me it is so nice to have a painting of a treasured time at Lakeside.

Getting Ready for the Festival of the Arts

Last week we started to make a list of what we needed to accomplish for setting up our booth for the up coming Festival of the Arts held by St. John Medical Center in Westlake, Ohio.  This is our first year to display our work there and I can say we are very excited.

We have our tent from last year, but the lattice siding bowed with the heat. Norm is reinforcing the siding  with metal conduit pipe. It seems to be working nicely.  The other thing we have been working on is adding extra display walls for inside our 10' x 10' tent.  We have painted and hinged three 30" doors to add extra hanging space.

Hopefully soon I will be able to add some pictures.

The other item of news is our purchase of a new Epson printer that prints on canvas up to 44" wide. We have to redesign our office space to make room for the new printer. This will enable us to print larger paintings for our clients and keep down the price by eliminating the need to send them out for printing. The printer has 10 colors which will be great for color reproduction.

Again when done I hopefully will be able to post pictures.

Another up and coming art festival we will be participating in is the Lakewood Art Festival in August.

Please mark your calendars for some summer fun and I hope to see you there!

Holiday Photo Becomes Portrait

Sometimes inspiration is found in looking at our photos from the past. 

Norman was rummaging through some of our photos from one of the many Christmas parties we had and found this picture of Jeanne. He thought it had potential for a painting.

And here it is...

What is nice about digital portraits is that you can play around with the layout.  I suggested a tighter crop for an alternative.

You never know what might make an interesting painting. In this case the pose was an interesting one. Norm used this one to try out some new brushes he designed. He wanted a soft look. 

Please add your comments and give us feedback on which layout you like. Your comments are welcome.

What Could be Better than Fixing a Photo?

So often we have have a really great photo of a loved one as in the case of Holly Lauch. She brought us a photo of her daughter Emily that had gotten ruined in a frame. Moisture had glued the image to the glass and the glass in the frame had broken. Holly thought all was lost. 

It was certainly a challenge. But here it is as a digital painting... warmer and more vibrant.  Plus Norm could even do more.

Holly was redecorating her bedroom where this portrait would be hung so we asked for some paint swatches. This helped Norm to add some greens in her bedroom walls to be added to the painting in the background as well as reflected color in her dress.  We could have the painting work with Holly's color scheme.

That is the nice thing about painting and illustrating on a digital screen.  It is not only Echo friendly, no oil paint or turpentine to dispose of, it is easier to color match and add color to a painting to coordinate to a particular color scheme.

Thanks for the challenge Holly! Wait for the story on her other daughter's portrait.