What Happens To my Art Community When I Lose Access to Facebook?

This has been a difficult 36 hours. I woke up yesterday to find my account on Facebook was hacked; passwords, email address and phone number all changed! Just like that! I tried every tip found on the Facebook help page and nothing worked. I am not overly computer savvy, I am not overly Facebook savvy but why oh why is it so hard to recover your hacked account?

According to my friends, my personal page is just gone, removed from friends lists and contacts, no trace of any online presence from the last 12 years. The only thing left is my now inaccessible Art by Anne Forsythe page. I can deal with my lost memories and photo’s; I’ll be able to reconnect in some fashion with my friends and family but what upsets me the most of I can’t get into my art page. Unless I can resolve the hack, it will just go on, no new uploads, no new art. Very upsetting. I cant reach my followers to tell them what’s happened, again, very upsetting.

I’ve spent the last few hours trying to reach someone, a real live person at Facebook and to no great success. Due to covid restrictions, no person is manning the phones? Really Facebook? come on..No real person anywhere to help one of their users sort out this mess!!

In an effort to communicate with FB, I opened a new account, found a few different links in which to leave messages and following a note on a community help board, my new account was then disabled. I kid you not!

I am not a well known or a well established artist, but most of my sales came from regular postings on FB, so what will it look like now? I have no idea. I have Instagram, I still have access to that, after I quickly moving to secure that account at 530am yesterday.

I am at a loss. Is there another online forum similar to FB? Has this happened to anyone? Should I just build another profile and start again on FB? ugh..this is not how I wanted to spend my long weekend!! If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear from you. Normally this would be shared to my personal FB page and I’d move it over to my Art page..so can I please ask you to like, follow and share my blog? Leave me a comment if you have experienced this an how did you resolve it? I’d appreciate hearing from you. Until I decide what to do you can reach me here or on my Instagram. I will be disabling the FB link found on my website if it hasn’t been already.

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  Bloom 9″x12″ Acrylic on canvas $110

2 of my most recent Bloom pieces to keep me company while I navigate this FB mess. In the meantime, I’ll keep painting and posting here, Fb’s loss is my blogs gain!

🎨 on!!!

Anne

Mother’s Day

The Mother’s Day inspired “Mom’s Garden” series is ready to be wrapped up pretty and delivered to you so you can brighten up your Momma’s day!

All the pieces are uploaded to my available artworks gallery. I can arrange delivery for you within Canada or free delivery with the Ottawa/ CP area.

🎨on!

The Process

My previous blog post was a great video about the process of a castle, this wont be anywhere near as fancy or put together but showing the process of my then super secret commission I painted this winter. It was a gift for my nephew from his parents, recapturing a special memory of a father & son canoe trip. This is another glimpse into my creative process.

This was a first for me, my first painting with a human in it! For some, figure drawing or portrait painting comes easy, but it is not my favourite thing to do so I generally avoid it. What scares me about portraits is the symmetry of the face and body; faces in general are no my current strength. Nonetheless I did not hesitate, I said yes pretty quickly.

The scenery was spectacular so I had no reservations about capturing the mountains or the water. His easy, releaxed, taking-it-all-in pose is what I knew I had to capture. I was sketching within minutes of getting off the phone. I committed to sending off a few so they could see that I could capture what they were looking for. A few days later I sent them off for approval.

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I was happy that I had the canvas in stock and could begin right away. My intention was to grid the photos; gridding is a tool used by artists that places a 3×3 grid over the reference image to help balance scale and perspective. I am a huge fan of gridding, it allows me to accurately recreate the image in proportion as I learn to be more comfortable with perspective drawing/sketching. If you saw my previous blog post, I returned to the grid reference after every stage to keep it proportioned. This one, as it turned out, was very different.

My process generally looks like this: evaluate the image, pick a canvas, prime it, grid it and get to work drawing. With this piece I was combining 2 images of the landscape with his relaxed easy pose. When it was time to grid it, I didn’t.

It was the first time I could actually see the shapes on the canvas! So one Saturday night I sketched the whole thing on the canvas using my watercolour pencils. In one 45 minute session, the guts of the painting went down on the canvas! It was an amazing and unexpected experience.

The sketches can look wonky but I knew it was ok, a base of lines to work from.

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Last year my nephew purchased a mountain scene and at this point I decided to match the colour palette of the 2 pieces so they would be complimentary to each other.
So now it’s blocking in colours and shapes all the while keeping the shape of him steady. At this point I stepped back and redid the skyline where it meets the trees.

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Slowly but cautiously, the layers are unfolding. Skyline, clouds, mountain and water. I always work from top to bottom and from background to foreground, so it was more of that for many sessions. I had premixed most of my paints so I didn’t have to worry about remixing and not matching. FYI The underpainting of the hills is the same greens from his the final layer of his painting; adding to the cohesiveness of the 2 pieces. When the sky was in I did a little happy dance in my studio..it was exactly how I wanted to it to be.

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Trees, water and that pinky/red/purple lifejacket. I had fun with that one! The second photo is the ugly stage of the painting and alot of artists get stuck here. I have gotten stuck here a few time myself so I recognized the feeling. What kept me focused was the sky..it was great to me. We are in the final stages now.

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This was the sneak peak photo that I sent to my brother. I knew at this point it was about 80% done. From here on in it was slow, easy changes to the proportion of his body oh and I was totally in love with the hat!
I only worked on this commission during daylight hours, to ensure that my colours were true, so my weekends were for this piece! I looked forward to those weekends! Seeing it unfold in the afternoon light is part of my process and because of Covid, my weekends were free!
At this stage, I took a break from it for 2 weeks to recharge for the last push.

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Sometimes the sudden realization that I am done catches me off guard! I feel like I come to a screeching halt! All that was left now was a few tweaks and checks; a few last minute panic fixes; but I knew it was done.
In a check in with my brother, he asked if I loved it and my response was this: “I give it a high five every time I walk by it!” Every day until I wrapped it up, I would come at sit with it and I was overjoyed with how it turned out.

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I loved the challenge of this piece and I am very proud on how it turned out. It was wrapped with TLC and delivered on time and in time for his birthday.

I hope you enjoyed a little insight into my process and the evolution of this special piece.

🎨 on!!

Something Fun

Here is a little video my friend Choleena put together for me! She is the awesome artist webmaster who helped me redesign my website earlier this year. When I shared with her that I always take a lot of pictures of the process along the way, she suggested a little video..and here it is!

This was the favorite castle from an epic trip in July of 2016! This painting of Eileen Donan Castle was a lot of firsts for me as an artist and I absolutely love the way it turned out! It was a surprise Christmas gift for my Sister and travel companion and I managed to keep it a secret for 3 months! My sister and I loved this castle, and even though it was raining that day we managed to have a grand time exploring the castle with one of the onsite tour guides. We were even shown some hidden rooms and hallways away from the many tourists! Such a great day! They also had the best giftshop!

I hope you enjoy this video as much as I enjoyed making this piece of art! The awesome music is

Achaidh Cheide – Celtic by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100340
Artist: http://incompetech.com/

Choleena can be found at Choleena.com

Paint on!

Anne

More from The Garden Series

Looking for a unique Mother’s Day gift? I might be able to help!

The collection is called Mom’s Garden and they are mainly 8”x8” acrylic on canvas colourful garden scenes.

Mom’s Garden #2 8″x8″ Acrylic on Canvas$65

Check out the available artworks menu on my website for all the current pieces. I will be uploading more as they are completed so be sure to check in often.

Shipping within Canada can be arranged in time for Mother’s Day. Please don’t hesitate to contact me through the website or on Facebook.

I’ve also uploaded a few more pieces in Garden Series too! Prices and sizes are with each piece!

If you are looking for a custom piece from either collection please get in touch to discuss your options!

http://www.annescanvas.com

🎨 on!

Everything Old is New Again

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Early in my art life I created a couple of floral paintings: nothing elaborate, because I didn’t know how to be elaborate but using techniques I learned at a Paint with Janet class. To my surprise, they sold!! And ever since, at irregular intervals, the purchaser who happens to be my massage therapist, would suggest I paint more, that she receives lots of compliments, and she was sure they would sell. I thought I was done with that style. To say I was hesitant and resistant 😏 would be an understatement.

In January, I was wondering what was next; Christmas was over and I was looking for my next idea and Amy’s words rung in my ears. A few weeks before I had reworked a few repurposed highly textured canvas and I thought they’d make nice backgrounds. So I dug out my old brushes, and some colours that I haven’t used in many years and got to it.

In one afternoon I created these 2

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  The Garden Series #3 Sold

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  The Garden Series #4 Sold

And a new/ old series was born. I have since made 5 more. (One is enroute to its new owner so I can’t reveal it yet)!

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  The Garden Series #8 11″x14″ Acrylic on Canvas $125

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  The Garden Series #9 12″x12″ Acrylic on Canvas $130

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  The Garden series #7 12″x12″ Acrylic on Canvas $130

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  The Garden Series #6 Sold

I love painting landscapes but I learned over the last month that I also need to play and create joy-filled pieces and this series, with their pops of colour on rich backgrounds; really do fill me with joy as I create them.

My available artworks gallery has been updated with the 3 remaining pieces of this series. I will be making more, no worries there! I’ve got an idea for Mother’s Day so stay tuned!

Announcing …

I’m very excited to announce my newly redesigned website! Welcome to the new and improved annescanvas!

The redesigned site features a user friendly menu with a separate page for both my available artworks and my sold gallery, and also a new commission page, but I’ll talk about that on a later post.

I couldn’t have done it without the help of @choleenaditullio! Thank you! I am no longer embarrassed to refer to my website by name! 🙏

One of my pre pandemic goals was to get my website updated and even though it’s early 2021, better late than never!

Enjoy! And now, back to the studio! Paint on!

The evolution of this artist

I can’t remember what my first painting was. I think I should but I really don’t and knowing me I probably painted over it anyways! I tend to do that. I know what my first painting class painting was, I look at it everyday as it sits on a ledge where it has been since I brought it home.

I have alot of paintings in my home that will never make it to the gallery. They are crude and raw and beautiful in their awfulness 😊 They are the proof of my evolution.

As I sit in my living room surrounded by my own art it overwhelms me- ” these are all mine”. I am lucky enough to say that some have moved on to hang on other peoples walls, one in B.C, another in Edinburgh and one in Sarnia and many on walls in Ottawa and Carleton Place.

When I started painting, I remember being afraid to show people what I had created. I was almost embarrassed by their simplicity. They were rough, crude, dark, heavy and I took it much too seriously. I had a very short list of who got to see what.  I clearly remember talking to a good friend one day and admitting that I was afraid to throw out my unwanted canvas paper pieces because I was afraid what the garbage collectors would think. Seriously, WTF huh? Hahahaha!!! When I said it out loud, I realized how absurd it was and only then did I start to show some pieces. But from that day forward and with the help, support and encouragement of my posse I started to reveal what I was creating.  I opened my Instagram account for that very reason. It’s a hard thing to do some days, to lay out the creativity that is flowing out of you, out there for people to see. Some days, I can’t. I’m too caught up in what people will say, how they will judge the piece and by extension, me. It always passes.

As I evolve in my art and creativity, I am up and I am down. I expect perfection at every sit at the easel and I have to remind myself that it is what it is; a journey, an evolution and a peeling away of the layers of creative doubt and insecurity to reveal the world as I see it. I am grateful for my posse, my peeps, the ones who support me on this journey and encourage my evolution. Onwards,

That painty feeling! Not for sale, display image only

Jumping into the pond

Art show panel #1

Art show panel #2

Art show panel #3

Welcome to my blog!

This past weekend I took part in my first art show and sale, or as I call it “jumping into the pond”! It was a long road to get to this point but man of man I am glad that I did it! The show was local and very close to home. I told a fellow vendor that the idea of it being within blocks of my home appealed to me because if it as a disaster at least it wasn’t a long commute to get home and curl up like a ball and weep! No weeping required!

It was a 2-day show and I sold 2 pieces! I had hoped to sell 10 but very happy with my 2 sales. I never expected to ever show anyone my art let alone actually sell it, but a happy little texting accident last summer resulted in my first sale and the idea was born. I don’t paint any piece with the intention of selling, only to create a piece that speaks to me.

the Home of AnnesCanvas

Welcome to my blog and online gallery. All of my original one-of-a-kind paintings can be found in the Available Artworks Gallery. Dimensions and prices are with each piece so please do not hesitate to contact me for more information. Shipping can be arranged within Canada.

Cedar Moon Series