Monday, May 30, 2011

{self portrait-sp}

New series of self portraits.
 I call this the feminine
I did a series of sp a couple of years ago.

And now that I have time to work on personal art projects
one item I want to explore is an art journal based on self portraits 
It can be difficult to take and accept pictures of yourself
and even more so to post them on a blog.  So not all of the sp that
I take may make it on to the blog.  We'll see.
Anyway
I plan on using different themes to help. 
 Misty Mawn's sp inspired me a couple a years ago and she
again is my inspiration.  In her new book just out unfurling she discusses self portraits.
And I wonder who am I, what makes me tick, why do I like what I like, what
does my style tell about me, and on and on

Friday, May 27, 2011

{new banner}...

Maybe it’s because it's spring time
(although, I suspect there could be a half a dozen other reasons)
but I’m feeling so refreshed and renewed
and I feel it's expression in so many parts of my being and
my life surroundings.  So natural my blog would also
benefit from that new sense of being. 
Hope you all enjoy it to and it brings a smile to your face as well.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

{for the beauty of it all}...

Gerba Daisys are so beautiful.  I've been doing a fair amount of PSEing with
all the wonderful spring time beauties.  These all show a single gerba daisy
all using a couple of textures layers and then making filter adjustments.
This one using Polerized
This one is Poster Edge
 
Just using an additional whitish layer and soft light
adding a  mask
and Watercolor
It's so exciting to be at a point with PSE that I can try using some of the other adjustments
to achieve amazing results.  So glad I kept up with it in the beginning when it took hours even days to
get anything worthwhile

Sunday, May 22, 2011

{Erosion Bundle Step 2 or is it 3}...

I didn't mean to be gone so long from blogging.  But it's spring time and
even though I am stepping back from creating art to sell I am a very creative person
so I keep creating.  And the wonderful part of not creating for profit (if you can call it profit) is that the
pressure is gone.  I have been doing a lot of garden renovation.  More on that later.
For now it's about the Erosion Bundle.
 Because it's spring time there are so many flowers in bloom.  So one fine
spring morning last week I decided to try adding some of their color to my
Erosion Bundle.   These photos all show color added by "beating" the flowers
into the cloth.  Once I got past the "beating" part I took some of the purple
Iris flowers and with one petal at a time.  I covered the cloth and flower with a manila folder (wait till you see the manila folder it's gorgeous)
and hammer it.  The color took easily and the purple became this beautiful blue. 
I then took some leaves, as they are in abundance on the plants and did the same.  Some worked better
than others.  I was still having a hard time "beating" flowers but pushed on.
 The pansies we're still blooming, but wouldn't be for long with the hot weather
approaching fast.  So I took some of their flowers and transferred (I like that word better) there "faces" to the cloth.  This way even though the plants were gone apart of them would remain with me and
even continue on in whatever piece of art I create with the cloth.
They transferred perfectly.  The flowers all contained a lot of moisture so I
 allowed the cloth to dry.  I wanted the new "dye" to last.
I'm not sure how to best go about this (it might have to do with waiting, which I'm not so good at).  So doing what I know best.  I decided to
heat set the color before washing this time.  So I ironed it.  The heat from
the iron brought out the earthy smell from the transferred dye. So it had to be washed.
A lot of the color came out while I was rinsing it in the sink.  So I didn't rinse too long or use soap.
I will continue with the washing to see what happens.
But in the meantime, I wanted to try making something with the cloth.
One idea was to create these little flowers with strips of the fabric.
So I ripped off the edge and began wrapping.  The very edge of the cloth didn't have a lot
of color to it so the coloring is very subtle.  I love it.  This dying process is unique so the cloth
becomes unique in it's coloring also.  I don't believe I could get this with commercial fabric. 

I still have the other piece of cloth from the original buried piece to experiment with and most of this piece also.
I have yet to decided what to do with the remaining cloth.  Perhaps part of a journal, or a collage, maybe even as ribbon for hand sewing,  and of course more flowers ????