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Focal point with color is just as easy. If you have all the same color scheme like blue, purple and green throw in the compliment of the cool color blue and purple with an orange or yellow. The compliment of a color is on the opposite side of the color wheel, it is easy to find. When two compliment colors are placed next to the other you will have a vibration of color at their line where they meet. Use these color and line tricks to get the most out of your tattoo. For instance to create a really dramatic black panther face tattoo use the lines as thick and thin descriptions of the flow of features on the cats' face. At the eyes, the most important feature for any creature, break up the pupil outline. Just leave a little gap of skin untattooed in the circle outline of the pupil. Then when you color usually there is strong black shading giving way to light greys. If you want to go all out also tattoo in a deep blue and light baby blue in the fur at the lighter areas of shading. This makes the cat look even darker and with a slick sheen from moonlight on the fur. Then when you get to the eyes don't stop at the yellow coloring...add just a couple of dots of orange or bright red to the pupil.

Even though the customer and the viewer may not be able to perceive the dots of color but subconsciously they will be moved to look at those dramatic eyes over and over. That kind of power in your art creates a better tattoo which will get you more customers!

Portraits Modern Printing vs Traditional Paint

The Benjamin Studios offeres "Original Fine Art Paintings, portraits, digitally hand painted in the classical tradition of formal portraiture." Their flyer is an impressive display of their very best work, and it does look nice. But is it art? Is it a real "Fine art painting"? No.

This company offers a service in which you send them your photo and they will send back in a few weeks a stretched canvas that could be framed for more money, with your photo digitally reproduced onto the canvas to replicate the look of an oil painting. Their fees are very low, for an 11x14 inch canvas framed they charge $168.00 for one subject, additional subjects are just $29.00 more. Also the more you buy of the same subject the lower the price.

For a great many people this will be a viable option. They want a portrait of their family or something they love but they feel that it will cost too much to go to a local artist and commission them. They want something more special than a photo but feel a real work of art is hard to find. A company like Benjamin Studios offers a decent reproduction for the price and for those that don't care about real art, this is a good option.

BUT, what you don't know is that these are NOT works of art. They are photos altered to replicate the look of art, but are NOT art. The digital portraits require a great photo, so you need to spend money on a photographer for a professional photo and then send that in to the company. These portraits, unlike real art, will NOT increase in value...in fact the longer the business operates the LOWER the value of your digital portrait.

These companies steal from the artists in your community. Those that are portrait painters in the traditional sense have a very specialized skill. Not every artist can do a portrait or well, and fewer can do it on demand with a schedule and fewer still can do both while running a profitable business. So those that do portrait painting for a living will be replaced by a digital reproduction process ONLY if the paying public does not understand the digital reproduction onto a canvas IS NOT a real painted portrait.

In todays' world there seems to be a wanton attack on the consumer by Big Biz. They do this to make money so everyone in the big company can feed their families. But these companies are no longer even trying to pretend that they create quality products. These days everything breaks down much quicker. From phones to computers you need to replace it after about a year! Before they would last for a decade or longer!

These digital portraits are no different. They take the money from the local community and divde up the people so no one knows about the other. These actions destroy the local neighborhoods and the people that live in them. These types of companies break down the common ground and local skills available by making the consumer think that they can't find what they want any place else.

To be specific, if someone wanted a portrait and had about $200 or more to spend then they could go hire an artist to do the work direct. This will give the artist money for living as well as give the commissioner of the art a real painted portrait in the artists' own distinctive style. The more the artist does the higher the value of their art. Effectively the commissioner will have control over the artist and their the career by recommending the work to others. The value of the commissioned portrait that the artist painted would go up as well.

The world of art is being lost to Big Biz. That is the last thing that we should allow to happen. Once the artists are gone, or working for a corperation then we as a society lose out on creativity, freedom, community, and the diversity. If everything that we see, do, think, buy, use is from a corperation then we are just marketed dummies that blindly buy what we are told that we want.

Artists are very important people in a society. I personally believe they are one of the MOST important people because EVERYTHING that we can see, touch, use, buy was first conceived by an artist. BUT I feel that the role of an artist is far greater to a society. We are the watchdogs, the sentinals of society, because we can see the world from a very different point of view; one that is based upon family values, honesty, and an interpretation of what we see through our emotions. Simply put, no one else can hear what you have to say about what you are thinking and be able to put in on paper for ALL to see what you thought. Also the artist is able to look at something, experience something and then SHOW all that view their art what the artist FELT.

The average consumer, someone that would buy a digital "painted" portrait would probably say that they couldn't FIND a good artist nearby. That is quite true. Artists are a hard sort of people to pin down. They are expressionistic and free living. They care about the environment and the people far more than their own bank accounts. Which of course makes them poor business people. The reason you can't find artists in your community is because you are not looking hard enough and they are not trying to be found as hard as these Big Biz companies.

Now a company like Benjamin Studios is not destroying our society...but they are not helping. Those in Big Biz take money and resources away from the artists' families so they can feed their own. That is NOT how to help a community stay together, it is how you divide it. So this company alone is not destroying our way of life...but it is trying to tell the uneducated consumer that art is art. They say that it doesn't matter who or WHAT made it look like art it is still art, cheap art.

To keep a balance to life try to find an artist near you. Ask local shops that have paintings on their walls how to contact the artist. Try the Yellow Pages and the like because you have to understand that the artists are proud of their work, want to show it off, need the money BUT don't have money to spend on advertising. So YOU have to do a little searching, (which will make your original piece of art all that more meaningful to you!) Most artists have websites but they are hard to find unless you are told specifically where to look. But the search itself will help you tie the community together. By asking local shop owners about your local artists, and by trying to find them, by looking at their work to see if their style is something that pleases you...YOU help the community just by talking about others in it.

And when you do find an artist, which really isn't all that hard...we DO exist everywhere, then you will probably be surprised about the warm welcome you receive. The honor that is bestowed upon you as a commissioning patron is quite deep and honest. You will have a revered place in their home, their life and you will see a direct response to your money. Supporting an artist by allowing them to do what they love, gives you a great sense of purpose, usefullness and helps the entire community.