L is for Lovely Luminous Light

This image began as a photograph of winter dry bushes reflected in a puddle.

I loved the hot color of the bushes and the bright cool  blue patches created by the sun shining on the water.


It was strong in its original form but  I wanted to see what I could do with it in Photoshop.

With just two tweaks, the image was transformed from photo to painting and I am thrilled with the  light, airy and luminous feel of this piece.

For me, image editing is a wonderful way to be creative and calm at the same time.

K is for Kids

Today's project is a drawing I started in class with my kids this afternoon. This is K day.

I have the most wonderful students, but I feel a special bond with my older kid painting and drawing class. These young women (9-12) come to my class to make art , and their wonderful parents bring them and take them home from the Art Center where our classes are held in a wonderfully equipped art studio.

 I always look forward to this class because the kids are up for anything, and have great ideas and opinions of their own. And they work independently once the assignment is given.

Anyway, I'd planned flowers in pastel today, but I found myself telling them about the work that I am doing with word drawings. They all wanted to try. So, I worked along with them and drew this word picture on the subject of K, using fine sharpie on Bristol paper.

The kids' work (focused on their name, or their brother or Thanksgiving) is still in progress. ,

This new method has yielded unexpected opportunities to be creative. The drawing on the black background is my original drawing inverted. The results, up close, look like a tatted spider web.

The image above is a section that I cropped from my drawing once I had it in Photoshop. The drawing is the original black on white, but I added some strong whites and greys just for fun. I am now working on a color piece and I think it will be beautiful - or maybe, L for lovely.

Check back tomorrow and see what appears.

Playing Games

I am still fascinated by drawing lines to create shapes. I love the way I can build layer upon layer of color while defining some shapes and creating new ones at the same time. I never know what to expect ... but each drawing in this series has felt like a meditation - just doing it and waiting for the final work to reveal itself.

This one is based on a tic tac toe board (really) - and was actually drawn in blues and greens, marker pens and inktense pencil on watercolor paper.

However, the photo image that allows me to bring it into my computer and this blog simply fails to capture the delicate lines and colors. So, I started to play with it to see it I could make it work. Who knew that a reverse tweak in Photoshop could result in such vibrant colors, making this a really a mixed media work.

Art Every Day: O is for Observation (and maybe Obsession)

Day 15

Today's picture is a digital image, a photograph of the sky viewed from the top of the hill in the park on the mushroom expedition. What grabbed my attention was the group of stripes in the middle of the clouds.

I have always been highly visual. I learn best by watching, I notice tiny details all around me, and most of all, I am aware of color. The advent of a digital camera in my life offered incredible opportunities for observation and focus. I especially enjoy the ability to see things from a macro perspective (see my flower pictures on this blog.) The process of viewing the world through the digital lens has clearly increased my powers of observation.

Then I started to paint from my photographs. My early efforts were most successful when I painted the lights and the darks that I saw. I spent hours searching my Picasa files finding images that would work to allow me to use the new skills I was developing. Seascapes, sunsets, images with strong contrast worked the best.

This new way of seeing, and my quest for images to paint became apparent in the photos I took. And my photos were definitely better. But there was more change coming. Soon, when I looked at an object or a scene, I began to think about how I could paint it. I observed carefully, running questions through my mind. Where were the lights? What were the colors in the shadows? What shapes, what lines did I see? I had the odd experience of walking into familiar places and seeing them in new ways - with an eye toward recreating them on my page.

Which brings me back to today's image. The sky over the park was huge - but the light was only in the sky, the earth was dark. I wanted to highlight the stripes of clouds I find so beautiful. I used my digital tools to open the foreground, illuminate the sky and make the colors as vibrant here as they are in my imagination.