Archive for July, 2009

This is the original fabric for today’s experiment. I managed to clean out the computer, back up all the files (first time in 3 years) and sort/file the digitals. I put a folder together of interesting fabric to use for backgrounds. Hence, this first one.

This is the first playing around with lighting. Then I got fancy!

You know I love gradients, and when I applied this one, all I could think of was coral beds. It has sat this way for at least two years. So I pulled it up today to see what I could do with some shapes.

I started adding turtles, one at a time, picking up color from within the background, and trying to use “Rule of Thirds” for a pleasing composition.

Here’s the final – I’m pleased – I didn’t continue with manipulation because I pretty much had the effects I wanted. This would make a good print!

Yup, post 300! Over two years on the blog, as a record, first of all, of my Photoshop classes, and now as the creative journey. It’s really interesting looking back at some of the early work! I’ll have to track down a couple of links….At 500 posts I think I’ll do a BIG giveaway!

So I finally got to “unzip” pics of the finished quilt – well, almost – still have a top and bottom binding to put on. But I presented it and we took lots of photos of it on the bed. So here goes…

Needless to say, I am please and somewhat proud. I designed it from scratch, did massive amounts of free-motion quilting, and got it together so it looks really good on the bed! Now on to some new sewing adventures….

Also in progress – pics of the Sedona trip. Here’s a couple of Oak Creek – notice that wonderful tree and bark – and yes, the rocks really are that red!

There were so many amazing visual sights in Sedona! The Lou deSerio Gallery has amazing Southwest art, including photography workshops – and a 15-year-old son who has been doing photography (award-winning) since he was three. He trained with Ansel Adams, and his black and white are spectacular. These images are from his site.

There were some amazing “leather” sculptures in one of the galleries. The artist is Pat Fetters, and I wasn’t able to find any info on her on line. She molds the leather to glass or plexiglas vases – the texture and colors were fabulous. You had to see these to really appreciate how wonderful they were.

Then there was the Golden Lotus Gallery – oh, my…..Nick Honshin is the artist – in what he calls Asian Fusion. His paintings are a combination of Asian influence – you could meditate to his paintings and never want to return. As his website states: “His art is inspired and flows from the sacred meditational space of the transcendental archetypal symbols of Christianity, Zen, and Tibetan Buddhism as well as the shamanistic practices of the world’s perennial philosophies. This fusion of the traditional with the modern highlights the natural harmony of the beliefs, symbols, & practices of East & West. The work reflects the transformation of Perennial Philosophies and symbols into Modern Mythic images of the transcendent moment.”

You simply HAVE to visit his site.

Those of you familiar with sumi-e – a Japanese water-art of brush strokes – will love the work he has done – snakes done in ONE brush stroke. Absolutely amazing!!! Unfortunately, the links aren’t working – but check out his site.

Loads of eye candy – Enjoy!!

Sedona is truly one of the magical places on earth. We spent three days there, and we explored a lot of areas we hadn’t seen before, including walking along Oak Creek. One of our friends, Steve DeVol, is president of Keep Sedona Beautiful, and he put together the following slide show which demonstrates this amazing beauty.

This is just a sample of the beauty – watch the slide show for MUCH more!

One of the things we love to do is prowl galleries, looking for spectacular art. Well, we certainly were not disappointed! Christoper Owen Nelson – WOW! Etched and painted plexiglass. We were stunned with his work – we just stared and stared – and had heart palpitations!

Not content with his work, we headed to another gallery – Visions at the Hyatt Shops. So many beautiful things!! Ulla Darni makes some incredible glass chandeliers – called the newest Tiffany.

Some amazing kaleidoscopes outside the gallery – the “table” moves – and the table is full of plants – a truly unique inside pattern!
Here’s glass, paintings, ceramics.

Another artist we loved – Eyvind Earle. Seurat meets Japanese lacquer – really gorgeous, you need to see them up close.

More tomorrow – just too many beautiful things to see!

Images:
http://www.fastdynamitecms.com/cmsimages/sedona_arizona_cathedral_rock.jpg
http://www.southwestart.com/sept08/21_Under_31/solitude_christopher_owen_Nelson.jpg
http://www.happinessdocumentary.com/images/ulla-Image-.jpg

I wanted to work with the stained glass images I bought a while back in a Dover clip art book. I chose the one at the left, after figuring out I had to download it a a GIF and then to Grayscale, to RGB, and then to a jpg to get the size I wanted. Learned a lot right there! The primary marbling patterned used was the Italian vein, color adjusted for the different effects you will see. I used two other patterns from the papers we marbled:

Here’s the progression to the finished design.

More of my friend Yvonna’s clay artistry. I’m sending her comments I receive from you, so let’s encourage her to get her blog up and writing about her pieces!!

Today’s thoughts are on my first attempts at dyeing fabric. I hope to post the photos when they are dry and ironed.I used Ann Johnston’s Color by Accident to get me started (this is something I have wanted to do for the last three summers – finally!). Things I have learned:

* If hubby helps you, make sure you don’t get dye on him.

* Regardless of how neat you think you are, you really aren’t. I now have red stones in the back yard and colored hands.

* That paper towel you use to wipe up dye? It will still stain your hands….

* Don’t try doing this in your inside studio, unless it REALLY is a “wet” studio.

* Make sure you have an environmentally friendly place to dispose of watered dyes. Check ahead of time!

* Take notes – like why the blue and yellow made brown instead of green. Turns out when they’re dry, I got my green….

* Deep and narrow, not wide and shallow – containers…..

* July in Tucson not the most optimal time to dye outside – do it VERY early morning.

* Make sure when you use your funnel and go from a larger container to a smaller one that you pour SLOWLY….

All that said, I turned out some pretty cool stuff. My yardstick for judging is “Would I buy this commercially if I saw it in a store?” I think I would. So here goes….

This is my favorite – reminds me of a garden….

So there really is a hidden purpose to all this – I want to marble on these, much like Marjorie Beavis – she dyes first, then marbles. I am trying to get some marbled “salmon” for a new piece for next year’s Fish Follies Show. We’ll see how it goes next marbling session.

The work in progress this week is my friend Yvonna, who has rediscovered her artistic side – and wow! Her clay work is absolutely amazing!! I first saw some of her work when we were still teaching together. She brought a salad to our school potluck in this gorgeous bowl that she had made. I tend to find pottery somewhat boring, but this bowl was truly amazing! She has been taking pottery classes at Parks and Rec for the last couple of years and just now bought her own kiln.

She started focusing in on texture in the clay – lots of natural textures: pine cones, cactus spines, leaves…and now she’s using old laces. I am having severe pot envy…..

I know one other clay artist, my digital partner Suzan, and her bowls are perfect, wonderful glazing and shapes – a wonderful serenity to her work. Yvonna is at the other end of the spectrum – her work shouts “Look at me!” I’m trying to get her to start writing her blog – Talking Clay – but we’ll have to push her….she just doesn’t think her work is that good. Au contraire!

So here’s some eye candy for the day – enjoy her work!

I have spent the day so far at the computer, cleaning out old emails, answering emails, updating links – all the stuff you put off doing. However, there has been some amazing stuff I’ve discovered on the web this week – loads of eye candy! So sit back and enjoy!!

* This first is an amazing marbling video by a Turkish master. I was stunned by it – so different from anything I have seen, and so masterful in technique. I should live long enough to be able to do this!

* The Guild of American Papercutters – not a great website, but the gallery has some really amazing photos. I fell in love with papercuts when I watched a master in Shanghai create a lovely cutting of a girl, with just scissors and his own eye for detail.

* A wonderful artist – Harrison Howard from San Diego – vibrant paintings, some interesting Asian influences. His shell series are quite wonderful. I tend to really like vibrant colors (I think the school is “colorist?”), and these really do it for me.

* Clark Little surf photography – words will never do these images justice. The waves, the curls, the movement – you will drool at each image.

* Human Computation – another YouTube video. You know those made-up words we use for encoding to prove we’re really human? Luis Ahn explains how we are helping to digitize books each time we type them – really fascinating!

* The Scribbler – just downright fun to play with – your own scribbles, and you can upload them into an online gallery.

* Art Licensing Info – an interesting resource as we start doing more marketing. Free download e-book on getting started with Twitter.

* 3-D Street Art – more street painting – really great stuff, with how-to photos. Couldn’t figure out how to get a photo to post!

* China’s Olympics Light Creative Flame – interesting article.

* The Power of One – a fabulous video – we can all be instruments of change for the better. Check out additional videos.

For being out of commission for a good chunk of last week, I am pleased to say the momentum is continuing. The quilt is done and I hope to post pics soon. I’ve rescheduled our artist group for August, set up the Etsy store, and did some new marbling. The pic to the left is a traditional stone pattern that FINALLY looks like a piece of marble. We have tried for years to do this, and now with the new paints from Galen Berry, we are having success. This design is on a piece of black cotton, so all the colors are subdued. In good like it looks like an expensive piece of marble countertop. I’ve already tried experimenting with Photoshop, and this should make a good background piece for other work.

The Etsy store took time, but I am hoping it will begin to move a few things. I have started a list of new things to marble and put just in the Etsy store. I want to continue my Geode series, and I think this might be a good outlet for small pieces as gifts.

Nothing new on Cafe Press this week – I will be making new changes for next week – have some new designs to start with.

I am going to attempt to dye fabric this week, and then marble it and see what happens. I also want to marble some more paper for people who like collage. And – ta-da – after watching numerous videos of Turkish masters marbling, I have attempted with some success to create marbled flowers right in the tray. As I do more, I will post the results. There’s still a LOONNGGGG way to go to be good, but I want to practice them for some other commissioned work.

Goals for this week:

* maintain the blog
* get pics up for Brenda (weaver) and Yvonna (clay artist)
* check on December show
* update Cafe Press
* get started on Operculum store for CafePress

I hope everyone has a great art-filled week!

It has been a rough week. I haven’t even read other blogs since getting home from the hospital – with still no answers. It’s none of the big stuff, so I am very grateful for that. But…no trip to Colorado for the artist reception for Fabric of Legacies. I am bummed with not being able to do more traveling this summer. Right now I have to focus on getting my strength back for when school starts again in mid-August.

But I did get some time to work today on Photoshop. I chose another tutorial, this one working with colors and a filter with text to develop an interesting background. I got the basic idea, as you can see here.

This is okay – nothing great, but it was helpful in learning more about layers and gradients. In case you’re wondering, Marble-T Design is the name of our business.

With this one, I played around with the gradients and added the Italian vein marbled pattern. The overall effect is one of marble – I like how it came out.

This third one is so-so – nothing spectacular in the background, but I was very happy with the way the letters came out. I used the Italian vein pattern to fill the letters.I tried for YEARS to fill text and could never figure it out – finally!

I took the background from the third one and added the turtle – did a lot of blending and playing around – couldn’t tell ya how it did the last part of the turtle, but I do like it! This has potential for the Garden Fantasy series.

I’m still playing with blending and filters and gradients. This is one of my favorite photos. This is the original, taken at the butterfly exhibit at the Tucson Botanical gardens. It’s a beautiful flower, just as it is. I like using the photos just to learn more of the techniques in Photoshop.

This is with a basic lighting adjustment, trying to lighten the leaves in the background. I have started focusing more on backgrounds and cropping, trying different filters to make the background more interesting.

With this I tried a filter just for the background, trying to add more interest to the background leaves. I also tried a color balance to accentuate the orange and yellow of the petals. Keep in mind I can turn any of these layers on and over at any time for different effects.

This is with a couple of filters to the background. I am practicing with the lasso tool and was able to put the flower itself on a separate layer and then work with the layer effects.

More playing with filters and gradients, going for an “other-worldly” look.

This would make really great fabric!

Let me know what you think – anything in particular that you like in Photoshop?

This seems to be a good summer for movies. Last summer I think we only saw one or two – nothing seemed really exciting. This summer so far it’s been great. Saw Public Enemies today – Johnny Depp was great (I remember him getting his start in 21 Jump Street – THAT was a while ago!). Depp was definitely no Jack Sparrow in this one. This was more an interesting look (I thought) at Hoover and the beginning of the FBI than of Dillinger.

I loved Up – great story, some wonderful humor, and I love what’s happening in animation these days. The beginning was surprisingly sad and haunting, but the development of Carl throughout the movie was wonderful to see. “Squirrel!”

As someone who absolutely loves the Smithsonian (all of them), this was great! The use of computer-generated images was pretty flawless. I thought the bit with Archie Bunker’s chair was a nice send-up. A few “fast and loose” with history, but who cares? Previews of the new Amelia Earhart movie look very good.

I don’t normally go to these “guy buddy” flicks, but this one was hysterically funny! One thing after another – and then trying to piece it all together. I didn’t particularly care for Mike Tyson – somehow Wayne Newton might have been funnier, but hey, the whole premise is just too funny – and probably closer to some reality than we care to know! What happens in Vegas, baby…..

(image credits:
wearemoviegeeks.com/wp-content/
marbledmusings.com/2bp/_UI0QUQnKXKk/Sj-pU5aRVeI/AAAAAAAAAig/N3LyD2RYMME/s400/up-movie-1.jpg
thecinemapost.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/the-hangover.jpg
mannythemovieguy.com/images/night_at_the_museum_2_movie_review.jpg)

I am finally seeing the end of this quilt! You can go here to see the early photos and an explanation of the design. I got the first side border on, with help from hubby to hold all the bulk.

I hate hand-sewing, even though I enjoy hand-quilting. For each of the sections of this quilt, once they were machine-quilted, I sewed on the piece, and then hand-stitched the “hem” on the other side. This is the part that is taking forever! You can see what I mean here.

This is a shot of the back. There is a huge amount of quilting in each of these sections. From this, the two side panels will be added, and the quilt will be done. Then I’ll have a pic of the front.

The borders have been easier to do. They can be adjusted, depending on the bed size. I broke up the main fabric, with the checkerboard strip, and it ties together the major colors in the quilt. I am doing the binding as I go, for two reasons. One – there’s a lot of quilt, and doing it in sections is easier. Two, I am machine stitching the binding on completely – I can’t handle that many yards of hand-stitching!

Stay tuned for final pics!