Better Pics of Pics

Here are some better photos of the matting work I've done over the past few days.

These are the two photos of Madrid - the skyline of amazing architecture, and a single building in an office park just outside Madrid.

Close up of the office building:


Here are some up close photos of the small box framed photos I've done. My favorite is the red one.





And finally, here is one of the 5x5 photocollages I made with the fruit stand background (see post on Strawberries and Pomegranates). This is a promo just to see how they look matted and framed.

More Matting

Christmas is over and I have time to get back to doing art-related things. I've finally got my Canon Pixma printer working well - they seem to have fixed the software glitch that had all my docs printing out at 1/4 original size. The new interface software for printing photos renders the colors nicely, so I printed out a bunch of photos I took on my last trip to Europe in small size - roughly 1.5 x 3 in. I matted them and popped them into these cool shadow box type frames I got the other day at Cheap Pete's for $5 each. They'll make nice gifts.

Here are all of them


and a close up of one of the Eiffel Tower.



I also matted and framed these two architecture themed photos I took in Madrid on that same trip.

Matting Day

Thanks to a lesson from Kati, I was able to mat four of my black and white photos. These were flowers from a beautiful bouquet someone sent me when I had knee surgery back in September.

I used a white, slightly textured mat board (4 ply) and cut the openings with the 45 degree bevel cutter. The whole thing went really well, except for when the cutter dragged and marred the surface on the last mat I did. Kati came home right about then, and told me I should be cutting with the mat face down so that any boo boos like that are on the backside. Live and learn!

Mat Board - $16 for the whole sheet which would have done six 12x12 pieces.
Black frame - $15 at Cheap Pete's
Photos - $1.39 for all at Costco.

Total cost for this project: $78. If I'd had Cheap Pete's do them, it would have easily been $150-200.

I like my mat cutter very much!

Prints in Hand

I got my photos back from Costco today. The 5x7s came out great. I also got two 12x12s. The only issue with them was that I hadn't sized them as 12x12 before uploading them to the Costco Photo website, so they were cropped right at the center by the auto-cropping software. Still, they were only $2.99 each, so I can't really complain. I can always use paper for something art-wise. I think I will redo these at the 12x12 base size and resend for printing. Only by getting these proofs can you really tell what works.

Day 90. Namaste.

Art Project Plan

Here's a graphic summary of my current art project:

Starts with 40-50 photocollage images created on Photoshop CS4. (Have I mentioned how much I LOVE PSCS4???!!!) These images are combined in iMovie to make a 2-5 min video/slideshow accompanied by an appropriate music track. Uploaded onto You Tube.

Step 2 - pick the best 5 of these images and create high resolution 5x7s. Send these to the Costco photo link to be printed. Also order one of the images (the best of the set) as a 12x12.

Pick these up at Costco on Wednesday afternoon. Get some mat board for matting them.

Mat the smaller photos; take the 12x12 and make it into an encaustic diptych. One half of the diptych will be the photo with an encaustic overlayer treatment. The other panel will be placed right up against the first and will be an encaustic that mirrors the colors and textures of the first panel.

There are four themes in the works for this project:

Day 59 - Strawberries and Pomegranates - You Tube completed; prints ordered.

Day 56 - Cherries and Grapes - You Tube completed.

Day 55 - Pumpkins and Bananas - You Tube completed; prints ordered.

Day ?? - Salmon and ??? - Not started yet.

Pumpkins and Bananas, Day 55

Cherries & Grapes - Day 56 and Counting, Down

I really like how this turned out. This is another fruit stand sign I'm using as a background. I took photos of them along Highway 92, then cropped just this part for the sign background.


I used photoshop to add a transparent gradient in blue (think glazing with a transparent paint). Then, I added the grape graphic as a second layer, and in a third layer that I brought forward, I used a graphic paintbrush of a mechanical drawing to "stamp" the collaged image. I re-sized the brush so taht the dimension lines running horizontal lined up with the top and bottom of the grape cluster. See, now wasn't that easy?

Then, I did about 20 more of these variations, and made them into a You Tube video (slide show), accompanied by my brother in law's band Avant Gardeners. The accompanying cut, Walk It Down, is from their self-published CD Untilled (1996). Thanks Art!

PS - I did the Strawberries and Pomegranates as a You Tube too. Click here to see it.

Fruit Signage and Victorian Ladies

Pretty Kitty

Pomegranate Madness - Day 59 and Counting Down

Another Hot Sloppy Border Around Hector Bean

Hot Sloppy Borders

Cool Borders Using Sloppy

I downloaded a program that provides a script for borders on photos that make it look like you spent day-ze in the darkroom. Cool, huh!

Thought for the Week....

Make it Mondays Challenge

from www.gomakesomething.com. Here is my photoshop piece, following the topic of "angels."

Favorite Holiday Card Design

Holiday Card Design Night

I have been wanting to do a holiday card this year. Here are a couple of ideas that I worked on tonight. These are 6" x 6" individual pieces that I collaged together just for ease of viewing and comparison.

I did them on photoshop using xmas colors and icicle brushes I downloaded free from the internet.

As always, you can click on the image and it will display with a lot more detail in a new window.

Happy Saturday evening,

Laura

Mac is Back!

Thankful

This was a great weekend. Being four days long, it was really like two weekends. I got so much accomplished. Set up a new Mac laptop for my artwork, which was a huge and unidentified block I didn't realize was there. The relief of getting this computer is unbelieveable. I haven't touched the Dell in days....not missing it at all, and having lots of trouble prying myself off the Mac. Mac's really are dominant for artistic endeavors. I'm so happy to be back.

I also got an art work station set up in the corner of my room. This is big because in the winter it is too cold to be out in the garage studio, and I don't seem to have a nice space anywhere else that was at the right height to do my doodling and collaging.


Here is how it looks now - a place for everything and everything in its place. The table was my friend Susan's. She is moving far far away, but I will have this little piece of where she created to remember her by.

I think I hesitated to do any work in my bedroom since I moved in here three years ago, because I read somewhere when I moved that where you sleep should be your peaceful sanctuary. But, I feel so much more connected to my art when it is surrounding me in my sleep. The place I moved from had a huge bedroom and I never really left it which is an admission that makes me feel like a white trash mom on Wife Swap. I did my homework (while getting my MBA), my art, television watching and homework with my youngest, and I could see the pool from the window when she was out swimming.

This house is different - for one thing, that bedroom was upstairs, and a long way from the rest of the house. (I don't seem to like stairs...) This is a single level house and not terribly big. It's laid out in a square and its just a short hop and a skip out to the garage studio, or to the kitchen for a cup of tea from this new perch. And, with this setup, I don't bother the kids while they are in the family room watching TV and I don't have my art supplies scattered throughout the common area - a rule that if I expect others to follow, I must too.


I also have a new proposed hairdo, thanks to my youngest needing a wig to cover her pink hair when she volunteers on the explorer patrol. She made me try it on and I LOVE IT! Its official, I'm growing it out.

Biology Added to the Doodling Art

I've taken the doodling art done over the past several months and added some images from a vintage biology textbook to create some fascinating juxtapositions. Here is one example. The rest can be seen by clicking on the Picasa Web Albums link to the right.

The story with these images is as follows:

I doodle absent-mindedly. Sometimes in bed, sometimes while watching television. I don't think too much about the image I'm drawing. I use fat Lyra colored pencils. I usually do the basic shapes, guided as always by colors first, then geometrical shapes. After I do the initial layout image, I may go back and enhance the colors by layering over more colors, filling in and refining the image and background. Sometimes I will add decorative detail, like the spherical shapes in this image.



At any rate, what is magical is that I put all these doodles away after the last bit of refining, thinking they were finished. Then recently, I pulled out this old biology textbook I got at the thrift store about a year ago. Combing through there for images that matched the colors of my doodles, I found some fascinating additions. Each one has it's own story to tell. What do you think?

(Remember, you can see a lot more detail by clicking on the image itself, and you can see the whole collection of 30 pieces at my Picasa Web Albums site.)

Insani Tea

We are on the brink of a new administration. Out with the old.

I've been really waiting about 6 years for this day. I didn't really think Bush was too much of an idiot until early 2002, right after 9/11, when it became abundantly clear that he really didn't have a clue how to run this country.

This project, a series of six teabags and their wrappers, pays homage to the insanity we have been living with these past several years. Poor Obama - he has his work cut out for him.

This is Donald Rumsfeld. His image, as a faux postage stamp, is inside the spent tea bag.

On the teabag tag, the "daily meditation" reads: We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat. Cheney's will be the famous "Go f**k yourself" line he uttered to Sen. Patrick Leahy, during an angry exchange on the Senate floor about profiteering by Halliburton, June 25, 2004. There weren't as many famous stupid quotes for Cheney as the others. He is a quiet guy, or possibly he spent most of the past eight years dozing off.

On the envelope back are a series of the individual's most famous verbal gaffes, strung in a continuous line, with only the font altered for a little visual relief.

I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started. We do know of certain knowledge that he [Osama Bin Laden] is either in Afghanistan, or in some other country, or dead. I believe what I said yesterday. I don't know what I said, but I know what I think, and, well, I assume it's what I said. Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know. It is unknowable how long that conflict [the war in Iraq] will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months. I'm not into this detail stuff. I'm more concepty.

All the players...

Stamp Sheets - So Much Fun!

The faux stamp fun continues! Now I used Powerpoint to take the one stamp and replicate it into a sheet of stamps, just like you get at the post office, except these are free, and won't work to send any real mail.

There is something very satisfying about making your own stamps, and about seeing the pattern repeating on the sheet.

Yum! Tomorrow, I'll use some of these in an art piece, instead of the stamps from Ireland or Singapore.

Another New Fun Thing To Do With Photoshop

I followed instructions from the www.gomakesomething.com website for making my very own postage stamps. Here are two or three of my favorites.

See all 12 at my Picasa Web Albums site.

Coming Soon - Holiday Joy

These are different color versions of a graphic I did on spec for a major corporation's holiday card. They chose the red, with some swirlys added. I'll post that cleaned up version on Friday here. I'm available for your commissioned work! :)

Solar Rose

11-11-08

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Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween 2008! It is almost time to end daylight savings, vote for a new president and permission to eat a little bit of candy. My faves that we found in small size this year are 100 Grand and the old standby, Reese's P-buttercups. Yum!

We carved punkins on Sunday and then Weds night. They held up pretty well. The mooshy-ness added to the ouerve of the ones that started to go soft.

In order, from upper left to lower right, they are:

1. Laura's improvised negative space - no pattern used. Note the gaged ears!
2. Picasso inspired.
3. Claire's scary clown - I think this is the winner!
4. My friend LB's mad little punkin. This represents how I have felt all week.

Photoshop of Bottle Condensation

Condensation in a Glass Bottle

Pretty in Pink Eiffel Tower

Results of playing around with Photoshop. I did take the base photo while in Paris earlier this month.