Paintings for Livada: Fairytale Romania

Posted on October 27, 2014 by lksukany

When I was on the missions trip with Grace Church serving the Livada Orphan Care ministry in Romania, the beauty of the country inspired me. I had the idea that when I got home to Arkansas I could paint these Romanian scenes and donate the paintings to Livada to raise money for orphan sponsorship.

Our group went to the restaurant called Restaurant Pestisorul de Aur.

When we arrived at the restaurant, there was this beautiful scenery. I posted one of these pictures on social media and one of my friends had commented that where I was looked like something out of a fairy tale. This was one of the first images that started the idea to paint scenes of Romania.

Image to Paint

Charcoal Sketch on Canvas

Painting Sketch (1st Coat)

Painting Sketch (2nd Coat)

Final Painting

Hanging Art with Kelsey

Posted on September 26, 2014 by lksukany

Kelsey texted me to come to Grace Church and bring some art to hang. M and Ein came along to help. We looked through each others work and started placing our work against the walls to see what would look good where. The wall was such a dark brown that only certain pieces worked in the space.

We shifted and looked, shifted and looked and so on until we were satisfied of what piece we wanted where.

We pulled out the hammer and nails and just eyeballed it. We didn’t use a tape measure or a level…basically a big “hanging art no no.” Why didn’t we call Ephraim!

All of the work went well together in the end!

Kelsey was a lot of fun to hang art with. She was just really relaxed and open to many different options. It made things very easy.

Thanks to M for driving, carrying art, taking pictures, and general advice. Thanks to Ein for sniffing everything and being cute.

Romania Paintings for Livada

Posted on August 26, 2014 by lksukany

When I was on the missions trip with Grace Church serving the Livada Orphan Care ministry in Romania, the beauty of the country inspired me.

During one of my morning quiet times with God, I felt like He gave me the idea to paint scenes from Romania to raise money for orphan child sponsorship. It would serve a double purpose to paint the scenes. On one hand, someone would purchase the painting for the suggested donation price or fundraiser auction. On the back end, when the said person looks at the painting, they are encouraged to pray for Livada and the orphans in Romania.

I was originally going to purchase a large canvas roll and stretchers and stretch my own canvas. Though time consuming, stretching canvas is much cheaper than purchasing pre-stretched canvas…unless there is some sort of deal.

On a random day of the week as I was driving home from work, I had a God moment and turned into Michaels. They did indeed have one of these “deals.” There was buy 3 canvas for the price of 1, so I got 15 canvas for the price of 5, which was around $50.

I mixed gesso with acrylic paint and covered each of the canvas. I like to add a color to the white gesso to create a light or mid-tone, so that when I paint I can add lights and darks.

After the canvases dried, I sketched (from photographs) each of the images using willow charcoal. Because I am working with so many images and mostly landscapes I had to have a way of organizing them. I created a list numbering and naming each piece with the canvas size. I put the names on the back of the canvas on the stretcher bar and also on the photograph source.

I mixed my color palette based on all photographs.

Art for an Anniversary

Posted on July 25, 2014 by lksukany

M and I have been going to the Mary’s Homegroup with Grace Church since 2011. Doug and Sue Mary work with Family Life and so their specialty is marriage studies. They have been great to M and I and have invested their time and prayers in the lives of the couples under their leadership. The Mary’s have been supportive of my art, even coming to my University of Arkansas at Little Rock Master of Arts exhibition in December 2012.

They have been supportive of my mission trip to Romania in June 2014.

I fact, they have us in their home every two weeks providing dinner and a space to spiritually grow.

Their 40th anniversary was this year on July 18th and I wanted to do something that would be special for them. I asked them to send me a picture of their wedding day.

I started working on a painting for them.

Once finished, M and I went to their house to deliver their anniversary painting.

Happy Anniversary Doug and Sue Mary! Thanks for all you do for your community.

Paper Opera

Posted on July 17, 2014 by lksukany

The creation of Paper Opera

Once I came up with the name Paper Opera – which took a couple of years to define what the art, music, and writing that M and I were doing – I went ahead and purchased the domain name through Reg123. This was August 2012. I knew what I wanted the Paper Opera website to offer (full art gallery, audio and video space for the Damsels in Distress with purchasing options, ebook capabilities, a full shop, and a news or blog update area). After researching my options, the general pricing to build something this significant was about $5,000. With no money in my art account I decided to use the free options and connect them all through one location.

The online components of Paper Opera

ART: The art gallery I built in Wix in February 2014, and used the L.K. Sukany artist name. Although M will create an occasional painting, he doesn’t really work too much in the fine art medium. I wanted something professional, like an online portfolio. It took me applying for a job I really wanted to actually build the online portfolio. After not getting the job, I reworked it, and am still finding pieces I have not photographed to add. I am still not 100% satisfied with the artist site, and am open for suggestions.

Music: For the Damsels in Distress site we went with Bandcamp in May 2014 because it was the easiest to understand and least complicated for others to use – anyone with internet access can use it. Because the free bandcamp doesn’t have video capabilities, we created a Paper Opera Youtube channel in May 2014 for videos.

Stories: With the ebook/self publishing, Lulu was the most recommended and we opened an account in March 2014. We have many projects in the works on this front, so all I can say is “coming soon” for this feature.

Shop: The Paper Opera shop is on Etsy and was started March 2014.

Paper Opera: All of these are linked from the artist website in Wix as well as the Paper Opera site in WordPress. We transferred the domain from Reg123 to WordPress in February 2014 because there was a better free interface.

The Logo

I wanted to design a logo for Paper Opera that had whimsical qualities and that would express the themes of art, music, and writing. I also wanted a design that would look good on the web (website banner) and in print (for business cards).

I knew I wanted to have an instrument in the logo from the beginning. I played with the tambourine or drum using the “O” for “Opera” and working in the name “Paper Opera” somehow. It turned into a cello and paintbrush. But the only thing I could see the cello as was a woman’s body and then she was playing herself, and it just kind of got weird.

So I transitioned from the cello to the accordion. There is something so whimsical and quirky about the accordion. I started playing with the accordion buttons as maybe a paint palette.

I designed this amalgamated object (accordion, paper, and a watercolor tray).

It just didn’t work in portraying the playfulness I really wanted in the logo. It also seemed really stiff – the design did.

I thought about how whimsical my damsels drawings are and thought about using that approach.

I took The “Dancer” and created this type of layered image with a circle to define the space and the accordion as a embellishment.

It just felt too forced, too clean, and I didn’t really want to use “The Dancer” for the paper opera logo. But I really liked the format of a figure in a circle and the logo words in the circle. I thought about the Dreamworks logo of the boy sitting on the moon and fishing. I really liked how the image evokes the idea of using imagination and has an element of being carefree.

I wanted something similar to that idea. I thought about it for a while and made this sketch during a sermon at Grace Church. The boy playing the accordion and sitting in the circle as if it were a swing, and a girl dancing while simultaneously writing or drawing with a feather behind the circle. It just seemed too busy for a logo.

I liked the bones, and decided this was something I could work with. I drew M sitting on a bar stool playing the accordion.

Once I had my drawing, I took a photo of it, and opened in Photoshop. I put a lot of texture effects, changed the figure a bit, and added the circle and key words – art, music, stories – within the logo. I admit, typography is not one of my strengths, but I like the look of cursive quite a bit, so that’s what I used for my text.

M and I have been doing Paper Opera the whole time we have known each other – over 8 years. It has been less defined and more abstract at times – sometimes floating around in our heads and our hearts – other times in a simple melody. Paper Opera is the online version of our art, music, and stories that we can share with you!

Paper Opera

Art, music, and stories.

Tag Archives: #Grace Church

Paintings for Livada: Fairytale Romania

Hanging Art with Kelsey

Romania Paintings for Livada

Art for an Anniversary

Paper Opera