THE ETSY TIMES: ETSY SELLER CHRISTINE SCHWARTZKOPF IS A PAINTER AND FRACTAL ARTIST

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

ETSY SELLER CHRISTINE SCHWARTZKOPF IS A PAINTER AND FRACTAL ARTIST

Christine Schwartzkopf was born in Ohio, loves Florida and now lives in Portland, Indiana. She has always been called Christi. Christi lives with her daughter, two grandchildren, eight Chihuahua’s, one cat, one lovebird and a couple of tanks of fish. She says she has had pretty much all kinds of pets over the years and she loves animals with a passion. Someday soon Christi is looking forward to moving back to Florida to soak up some rays and continue creating her beautiful art.

HIDDEN WONDER

As a child Christi watched her mother do all types of crafts and sewing and when Christi was quite young, her mother taught her to do lace tatting and doilies. Christi’s older sister is an artist who paints in oils, and when Christi was about 12 years old she painted her first oil painting with lessons from her sister. At school, Christi frequently got caught drawing in class when she should have been doing school work.

SUNRISE

As a young woman, Christi’s life was busy with work and family. Artistic endeavors shifted to the back burner as she raised her young family. In the mid- 80’s she took some lessons in acrylic painting and developed painting abstracts into a hobby.

EARTH AND SAND

In 1996 Christi made some changes in her life and creating art became her focus again. She did a lot of cartoon artwork for her children, and began painting again too. Ebay gave Christi an outlet to market her paintings and she also discovered the EBSQ community.

LONE TREE

Christi’s art has a very strong presence of nature. Florals, landscapes, creatures both wild and domestic and people are strongly represented in her paintings. She has also created a large body of strong and dynamic abstract works. Many of Christi’s pieces can be seen in her portfolio on EBSQ.

WILD FLOWERS
WINNER OF THE PATRON'S CHOICE AWARD, EBSQ Fractal Exhibit 2011

Through EBSQ connections Christi has sold more of her artwork and also learned how to work in other mediums. She tried watercolor and decided that was not the medium for her. Prism color pencils were another medium Christi learned to use, and she likes to work with these. A number of these pieces have been sold on Ebay and Etsy.

CAGED SPIRIT

In 2010, EBSQ initiated monthly fractal shows. Intrigued, Christi downloaded Apophysis, gave fractal creation a try and fell in love. She has been hooked on fractals ever since, sometimes staying up all night to finish one. She finds them absolutely amazing. Christi says she gets the itch to paint periodically and does, but for the most part she spends her working time creating and working with fractals.

PICK UP STICKS

Currently Christi is creating more fractals and getting up to speed in CS5 to improve post process work and editing of her fractal art. Coming up in the next six months and beyond, Christi will be marketing prints of her fractals and continuing to build her Zazzle shop.

FRAMED COLOR

Christi markets her artwork online at several sites. These include an Artists profile at EBSQ Self Representing Artists, sale of originals in shops on ETSY, Bonanza and Deviant Art, and print on demand products featuring her art on Imagekind and Zazzle. She is currently adding a new shop with originals and prints available for sale, on Artfire.