Stealers of Sunlight

"The world’s materiality at dawn – and the soul’s frailty." ~Adam Zagajewski

For this week's Photo Art Friday, Bonnie challenged us to create an abstract piece of digital art by using two of her textures (one of them being her Dropped Petals texture), and also adding one or two additional elements into our image. This was a fun challenge and required some thinking...once again I enjoyed trying to create an image based on a poem I wrote last week. I started with a photo I took of a dandelion weed. I used Bonnie's "Dropped Petals" (Multiply/100%) and "Golden Bokeh" (Screen/68%) textures, and then I found an image of a flying crow in the Creative Commons area of Flickr. I incorporated the crow into my image, and also used the "cutout" artistic effect in PSE (Normal/68%) to make the image look much more abstract. I also brought out the detail of the dandelion by using a reverse layer mask and the poster edges effect (Normal/100%). I used a soft brush and a reverse layer mask to turn some of the "light shapes" a yellow color.

The crows in my poem, for me, are symbolic of the fears and anxieties we all feel as human beings...both of these things drain us. They're ruthless in their desire to steal away our joy, just like those shrewd crows. I try my hardest not to let them rob me of my sunlight!

CROWS

Daylight arrives
With its magic scissors
Cutting light shapes
That fall lackadaisical
Onto trees, souls,
And a lonely field
Strips of sunlight
Exposing wrenched roots
Illuminating the brown grass
Where every wild dandelion
Once grew

Join me here by my river
Come sit with me a spell
Where I daydream of summer
While the crows
Keenly whistle
Perhaps they're night's
soldiers? Stealers of sunlight
And hoarders of colors
Thank God they can't spy
My soulful confessions
My memory's holy cells.

© Sherri Brannon

Original photo: