Day 109: Friday, July 8 - Virtual Paintout

A wonderful man, Bill Guffey, runs a monthly challenge which uses the Google Maps of the world.  It's called the Virtual Paintout.  Each month he chooses somewhere in the world - this month, July, it's the Isle of Jersey. You go to the Virtual Paintout, you click on the Google Map, you then cruise around Jersey, using the little yellow man feature on the Google Maps (he shows what that little spot on the map where you're hovering actually looks like.  You spend hours cruising around hoping to find something picturesque enough that you'd like to paint it.  I've done this every month, spending hours and hours and have never found anything that I wanted to paint. Grump, grump. I look at the paintings other people have done and wonder how in the world they found that!! on the google map.  I wish that Bill Guffey would post the location on the map that was used to paint from.  He says that we're supposed to put the link on our blogs/websites but I haven't found anyone who's done that yet.  I think it would be a fantasic learning situation: what you see and what you paint.

I finally found something I thought I could paint so I submitted it this month. It should be on the website by tomorrow or the next day.

Here's the link I used on the Google Map:

and here's what I painted from that link:

My friend Nancie Johnson also submitted a painting this month. Here's her link and then look what she did with it!!

There's another wonderful painter out there, Nancy Goldman, whose work I found because of her comment re my blog.  She has already painted two versions of her search of the Isle of Jersey for Bill Guffey's challenge.

Day 87: Thursday, June 2 - challenge painting

I finally, after spending almost 2 hours with the Google Map of the world, found something to paint in/of/about New Zealand for the Virtual Paintout monthly challenge. Took a long time. Looked for gardens, looked for golf courses, looked for interesting tourist sites - I've never had any luck before,  but today I came across a "possible" right away. I copied down the link.  Good thing because I never found anything else paintable!  So here's the link:

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=-40.979898,172.441406&spn=11.606664,18.676758&z=5&source=embed

 

and here's the painting of that link:

You submit the link and the painting to the nice man, Bill Guffey, who runs the website challenge. And as I said yesterday: If you paint for the challenge send me your link and your painting and I'll post them here as well.

And then at the Daily Paintworks Challenge they had a challenge of "paint what's outside your window".  Since I paint in my son's bedroom and since the view I have is of the canyon across the street and since I'm usually painting away late afternoon/sunset............this was my submission.

It actually looks more like the San Gabriels than the canyon, but artists have "artistic license" - or that's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

AND THEN:
Tonight, Thursday, I heard from Bill Guffey that the http://www.thingie/ that I copied was only for the map of New Zealand, not for the specific site that I had found. I told him "drats, rats and phooey" as we say around this household and asked him to delete my submission until next month when I would try again. And hopefully? By next month? I will have figured out how to copy the exact location of my Google Virtual Paintout Challenge Site. Drats, Rats and Phooey.

Day 80: Wednesday, May 11

Gorgeous day in Southern California.....way too nice to stay inside and paint! So I've been checking out all of the Challenge sites. 

The Virtual Paintout is the one that gets me (makes me irritated) the most. I spend hours cruising around the map of whatever area they have chosen this month's challenge is the French Riviera) and I see car after car after car, street after street after street.  Then I look at the paintings submitted for the challenge.  Today there's one that has pots of flowers on a window ledge and the painter says she found it on the map and that it's the window of a church..........yeah? where!

A painting friend AnnMarie Thomas submitted a fun painting to this challenge. She actually found people on the docks, walking:



And I believe her when she says she found this.  I was grumping around and she sent me two "shots" she'd found on her internet search so I guess it's possible but I have yet to find anything emminently paintable!  It's a great way to waste wonderful time though, cruising around an area on a google map.

Here's one of AnnMarie's suggestions:

Link: <http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&source=embed&ll=43.761798,7.484538&spn=0.001294,0.00235&z=19&layer=c&cbll=43.761879,7.484594&panoid=RE58PLKTMHzj1RKrgHm4Cw&cbp=12,170.55,,2,4.84>

The challenge is for all of May so there's time for me to get myself up and painting!!

Day 20, Tuesday, January 25 - Painting Challenges

I'm always looking for painting challenges and through Horst Hittenberger, Karin Jurick and several other artists, I've come across some fun and/or interesting and/or challenging sites. Take a look and do what you will?  Let me know if you decide to try any of them.

Lela Stankovic's  http://paintanddrawtogether.blogspot.com/

Lee Brown's http://adaynotwasted.com/2011/01/january-2011-adnw-painting-challenge/

Barb Benick's  http://studioatelier.blogspot.com/

http://painting.about.com/od/submissiongallery/tp/painting-projects.htm

http://paintingchallenge.wordpress.com/

recommended by Karin Jurick  http://www.rookiepainter.blogspot.com/

and one of the more interesting ones

http://virtualpaintout.blogspot.com/

where you paint from the google maps of the world

http://behindthescenes-ppasp.blogspot.com/2011/01/behind-scenes-january-challengechoose.html

and one that looked wonderful but doesn't exist any more...

http://followingthemasters.blogspot.com/