Photo Art Friday - Texture

"Texture is the most enduring and ubiquitous underpinning of form... certainly a calming, meditative and appealing world for both the eye and mind." ~Lynda Lehmann

I love the texture that Bonnie's "Brown Rice Paper" gave to my photo art this week. It gave the look of a rough canvas, so I decided to run with it and make it look an old painting. I wanted it to look like one of those paintings you come across at an antique store...one of those old, paint-by-numbers paintings leaning up against a wall in the musty back room...forgotten, of little value, but imprinted with memories from someone who once loved it enough to hang it on their wall.

I took this image in October when the leaves were turning. In addition to Bonnie's brown rice paper texture (inverted, and then used at Linear Light/100%), I added several layers of old book flyleaf pages to give it some wear and tear. As always, I put it into Radlab throughout the process to tweak it.

Original image:

Iphoneography and the Painterly Effect

Iphoneography has become my new passion...it's hard not to become addicted once you start learning about all the apps that are available. And since my iphone is always with me, it seems I'm taking photos all day, every day. I used to sit and watch a little TV in the evenings to unwind, and now I sit and process my iphone photos while watching TV...I'm not very good at multitasking, so I think I'm probably missing key parts of my shows. But I don't mind because the iphone processing is so much fun!

I like to choose a photo and then just randomly start putting it through all of my favorite apps to see what effect it has on my image...I add more and more effects and save various results into my camera roll. Sometimes I'll work on one photo for more than an hour, letting my apps take me off in a wild direction. You never know what you might end up with!

I have several apps now that give a painterly effect to my images, and I get a little thrill at seeing this instant transformation just with one little push of the button. My two current favorite apps for the painterly effect are Icolorama and Glaze. Glaze is much more dramatic and I've found that you get the best results with an image that doesn't have fine details. I'm still learning this app, but as far as I can tell there isn't an opacity slider with this app...so what you see is what you get. Icolorama's painterly section has four different painterly options (under the Style section). It does have an opacity slider so that you can adjust the effect. I like the way the Icolorama painterly option effects trees...it thickens the limbs and makes them much more dramatic. I will often put an image in there simply to accentuate the trees in my image slightly so that they stand out more.

Here are some examples of some images I've put through either Icolorama or Glaze. I highly recommend these apps!

Haiku Your Photos

A burst of splendor
Ripe sun turns full orange mango
Light drips down sky's chin

I love writing haiku. I'm no expert at it, but I find it fun to create haikus to go with my photos. Combining a haiku with a photo can really accentuate the emotion or feeling in the image for the viewer. Basically, haiku is like a snapshot moment, except it's captured with words instead of with an image. Loosely explained, it's three lines long and typically describes something with the seasons or in nature. The senses (touch, smell, sight, sound etc.) are used to describe the moment and to evoke an emotion. It is also typically written in the present tense, as if you're witnessing it in that very moment. You want the reader to feel as if they're standing beside you witnessing it, too. Haikus don't rhyme, so never feel the pressure to make that happen. Also, they shouldn't be written in first person.

There are many opinions and ideas about what haiku is, which I discovered when Googling this subject. But for myself I keep it very simple and use the 5/7/5 format (which many dispute, but this is simply for fun so I don't worry about it). With the 5/7/5 idea, your first line is five syllables, your second line is seven syllables, and your final and third line is five syllables. The challenge is to capture a moment in nature (or feelings of a season) in just those three lines, while also counting your syllables. It's kind of like putting a puzzle together...and there's always a thrill when you find that "final puzzle piece"! It's amazing how you can say so much with so little if you come up with the right words.

I took this image above with my iphone a couple days ago - the sunset in our back yard was so beautiful and this haiku I wrote matches up really well with the photo. I did bring the image into PSE and put it through Radlab to tweak the mood of it a bit.

I want to spread my love of poetry, so I'll occasionally post about all things poetic this year...poetry doesn't appeal to everyone, but maybe I'll spark a love for poetry writing in at least one other person during 2013. That would make me happy. :)

Art and Fear

Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity. ~T.S. Eliot

One thing I want to focus more on this year is painting. I say this every year, but every year I truly mean it. Why is it so difficult for me? I can only guess that it's the fear of making bad art. As a perfectionist, it's a hard concept for me to swallow: that we must make ugly art in order to become better. This is true for anything...but with painting it's been more difficult for me to accept. With poetry I've been fearless..writing and writing for over seven years now without any hesitation or anxiety about what pours out. Even if it's bad, I work on it till I like it - it's very painless. So what's the difference between ink and paint?? Colors? Shapes instead of words? If I don't like it, I can paint over it and start over...I can't quite figure out my psyche on this one. All I know is that I continuously hold back when thinking about painting...even though my desire to do it is constant and incredibly strong. I'm determined to push through this wall of anxiety. Will it work this year? I really, really want it to.

I picked up a paintbrush a couple days ago...it felt good to just sit, draw some floral shapes, and fill them in with watercolors. I was pleased with the results...as always, my fears were grossly exaggerated and my art didn't look bad at all. Isn't it amazing how that usually works? Fear is an ugly beast.

I was motivated by Elsa Mora's lovely site - have you seen it? She's so incredibly talented and has stared a new site this year called Art Is A Way. It's filled with creative encouragement and inspiration (and her beautiful art work). She asked her readers to do something with the word "art" and then post it to her Flickr group or on Instagram with her hashtag #artisaway. I created my floral frame and then took a photo of it with my iphone. I added the word "art" with the Phonto app, and also aged the photo a little bit with the Distressedfx app.

Thanks for stopping by...today I'm wishing, for any of you who are hesitating creatively, to push past that fear and just start!

Show Up. Dream Big. Focus Small.

Bonnie at Pixel Dust Photo Art has resumed her weekly photo art prompt this week, and I'm so happy to be participating again. She asks that we create an image based on a focus word for 2013. As I talked about in my last post, my focus word this year is exactly that: "focus!". One of my biggest challenges as a chronic daydreamer is getting things done. It's a big source of frustration for me to have all these amazing creative and crafty ideas inside my head but not be able to actually follow through with them. My problem is that a big part of my joy creatively is simply THINKING about my ideas...I lay them out visually in my head, picture how glorious they'll look when they're finished, and feel a little leap of joy at each one. I can't tell you how much pleasure it gives me - too much, that's the problem! Instead of always daydreaming about creative ideas, I'm hoping to actually make some happen in 2013.

For this week's photo art, I chose this shot I took of my back yard on a foggy day. The original image is so symbolic of the state of my mind a lot of the time...dreamy and unfocused. There's a lot of beautiful ideas in there, but my brain fog makes them hard to manifest! I kept it simple with my image, adding a pinkish texture to give a little more color and then using the "dry brush" artistic effect at 25%. I then posterized it to make it sharp and detailed - focused! I also put it through Radlab to tweek it a bit.

Thank you for stopping by! Do you choose a yearly focus word? Does it help you? I sure hope mine will help me...I'll keep you posted.

Original photo:

Focus...and Happy New Year!

New Year Resolve

The time has come
To stop allowing the clutter
To clutter my mind
Like dirty snow,
Shove it off and find
Clear time, clear water.

Time for a change,
Let silence in like a cat
Who has sat at my door
Neither wild nor strange
Hoping for food from my store
And shivering on the mat.

Let silence in.
She will rarely speak or mew,
She will sleep on my bed
And all I have ever been
Either false or true
Will live again in my head.

For it is now or not
As old age silts the stream,
To shove away the clutter,
To untie every knot,
To take the time to dream,
To come back to still water.

— May Sarton, from Collected Poems, 1930-1993

I did not write the above poem. I happened upon it yesterday and knew I needed to include it in my first blog post of 2013. It's so beautifully expressed...I need to check this poet and her writings out further! Her poem speaks perfectly of what I want for the upcoming year, which is to FOCUS...to be less affected by the daily stressors and distractions that clutter my brain (and that take away the "silence of the mind" so needed for creativity). Focus is my word for 2013...it is something I continually struggle with. And unfortunately, the older I get, the more I seem to struggle with focus!

As for my blog this year, my intention is to simply have fun. I want to share my creative joy with this wonderful community of people I've met here. I'll post about things I love: photography, my passion for poetry (and perhaps sparking that passion in others), digital photo art, iphoneography, and some occasional dabbling with art and crafty things. No rhyme or reason - just whatever is feeding my creative spirit on any given day. I look forward to it! Wishing you all a very Happy 2013!

Note: My image above was taken with my iPhone, and processed completely on my phone with my camera apps. Apps used: Snapseed, Big Lens, Realbokeh, and Over.

Happy Holidays

Just stopping in to wish all those who celebrate a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year. Thank goodness for my iPhone these last few weeks, because those are where most of my photos have been taken. Here's a sampling of some of my favorites...I must confess I've become completely addicted to all of my camera apps. My "real" camera is starting to collect some dust from non-use.

Sending good thoughts to all of my blog friends who make me smile and inspire me all year long. Happy holidays! xoxo