Sketches from my book

Lemons and passion flower, oil sketch on paper

After downloading a trial version of Microsoft Expression Web, I spent quite a bit of time this weekend messing around with it (not much sinking in though.) I'd love to be able to fix up my website, but that dream seems kind of distant. Hopefully, my sister can come to the rescue. I did a number of tutorials and, one thing always leads to another, ended up with a tutorial that seemed refreshingly simple after all the html/css stuff in Expression. This is a good one about Photoshop's ability to blend with layers. Time to rest my brain.

Photoshop Quagmire

Image from "Start with a Scan" by Janet Ashford and John Odam

Trying to figure out how to create this cool effect in Photoshop today has been a waste. My brain is severely challenged when it comes to figuring out a lot of technology, especially Photoshop. The effect has something to do with channels, but I've tried over and over and can't seem to get the same see-through multi-color look. The book I got from the library is due tomorrow, so I'm rushing to get what I can out of it. It's got a lot of good ideas and I've enjoyed looking at the images, but it seems short on detailed instructions of how to get some of the effects. I'm going to check out this address that lists 70 websites devoted to Photoshop tutorials and see if I can figure it out when I have some time.

"Confident Color" exercises help

Mixed media, acrylic on paper

I've been doing some color reference cards as suggested in Nita Leland's book "Confident Color." It's strangely satisfying. Normally I fly by the seat of my pants when painting and grab a tube here and a bottle there to mix things up and hopefully come up with something I like. Her process requires some thought and (dare I say it) rationality--something that's been lacking in my technique. It's even giving me some ideas about my whole approach to painting. In art school, we were never taught color theory in a disciplined way, believe it or not. Perhaps it was a symptom of the time but the guidance involved was "just do what feels right." Maybe that's why I'm having so much difficulty figuring out exactly what I'm doing. Right now, in the grand scheme of things, nothing feels right. I have so many ideas when I'm falling asleep or waking up, but they're gone by the time I sit down in front of the computer for my drawn out escapism into the blogs. One good thing about doing the color reference cards is that I have paint left over that I feel compelled to dab onto my myriad unfinished works. I'm way too frugal to let that expensive stuff dry out on my plate. Here's another abstract mixed media piece from my sketch book. Maybe I'll play with it in Photoshop to see if I can do something more to it.

Digital discoveries

Christy Hydeck is an artist I met on Facebook recently and I've been admiring her art ever since, especially her wonderfully dreamy landscape photographs. Imagine my surprise when, low and behold, I came across a magazine at the library called "Cloth, Paper, Scissors" and there was an article by Christy in it. I know I'm kind of sheltered down under in Florida, but apparently many artists are familiar with her and her work (I really need to get out more often!) She gave tips on how she gets that dream-like quality in her photographs and I've been cogitating about it ever since. In the process, I ran across another site with a wealth of tutorials on photo editing. A lot of the tutorials are for Photoshop but you can apply them to other editing software, like my favorite Paint Shop Pro, with a few tweaks. Here's my learning experiment for the day utilizing "vintaging" (is that a word?) and automated actions. I'm not sure why I picked this image but discovered after the fact that the owl was linked with the goddess Athena in ancient Greece who was associated with the arts and wisdom (might be a subconscious wish here). So much fun and so much to learn.

Life goes on without Photoshop

Grady attacking my camera strap

I've been playing around today with the software my sister gave me, Paint Shop Pro. Knowing how I was going through withdrawals since my new computer wouldn't run my ancient version of Photoshop, she said she'd mail me this program to try out. She had bought Photoshop CS3 last year to use in her web design business and didn't need Paint Shop any longer. I must say--I love this program!! In a lot of ways it reminds me of Photoshop, but it seems to have a lot of other features Photoshop lacks (or maybe they weren't there on my old version.) I'll still have to explore a lot, but I like the drop shadows idea (if I can figure out how to do it) and this curling edge thingy I put on this picture of Grady. Who says you have to go broke to get a good picture editing program?

Where would we be without Photoshop?

Digital art

I had to give up on the portrait today to save the little bit of sanity I had left. Went to the Y for a long overdue workout of step aerobics and yoga. The incessant rains have curtailed my exercise a lot, along with this art blogging stuff. I sometimes wonder why I'm doing this and the severity of my delusions. Maybe I should go to a therapist and figure out why I keep hitting my head against a brick wall. The art thing doesn't seem to be working out and my images aren't exactly satisfying to me. But what else to do? I messed around in Photoshop with a blah painting. It might be starting to look better. Sigh.

Spent most of the day working on rental agreements, stopping by the downtown rental about leaking plumbing and trying to figure out how much/what color paint to get and whether to clean or replace the carpeting in the rental in Winter Park. How I wish we could get out of this rental purgatory, but it certainly isn't the right time now. We called two local carpet companies that have been around for as long as I can remember and were shocked to find out they were out of business.

We don't eat out very often, but we were talking to a woman in the neighborhood and she was telling us about all the established restaurants that have gone under. I think things are a lot worse than anybody is letting on. God, I hope Obama is smart enough to get us out of this (if we're smart enough to elect him.) It's hard to believe how close the polls are after almost eight years of ruinous "leadership." What will it take for our country to wake up???

On a more positive note, maybe what we need to do is print up our own funny money. Why should Ben Bernanke have all the laughs? I ran across a cool site thanks to Martha Marshall's wonderful blog. Check out this great site and play around for a while. I also like Martha's idea of taking pictures of some of the arrangements in a furniture store and Photoshopping (I'm guessing) her small paintings into the scene to see what they look like in a large format. Pretty clever.

Photoshopped Collage

I messed around in Photoshop with a collage I did recently, but got side tracked as usual by the latest catastrophe. Let's see, what was it today? Oh, yeah. Stock market, scandals, investigations, plummeting stock prices and my propensity to always seem to be on the wrong side of whatever fiasco is going down. Buy high and sell low isn't a winning strategy, but that seems to be the one I'm stuck with. I'm not even going to think about it anymore. Any money I may have left is going to go into a CD at the bank. Oh, yeah, I forgot--the banks are failing. Well, soon I won't have anything to worry about. Yipee!!!

Moon Dreams

I haven't had much time to fool around with paintings. I've been writing letters to insurance companies for coverage denied for health problems and Citizens insurance for cancelled home insurance for payments not received (but checks sent and cashed). It seems like our lives are dictated by greedy insurance companies, greedy bankers, greedy politicians, well...everywhere you look the common denominator seems to be greed. Let's wave the flag for the American way! Maybe it should be updated in red, white and green (with dollar signs for stars.)

I worked on another Photoshop painting. This one has a collage background I did recently with Sean/Little Grey (but now I'm thinking he might look more like an Earl Gray). I must get back to that website with the Photoshop tutorials and do another lesson. This one is a recycle of layer masks, but it's still fun to do and I'm learning as I make mistakes (which is often.) I need to work some more on feathering his edges and blending him in. Maybe I might have time eventually to take out the Photoshop book and figure out how to do that.

Tomorrow will be extra busy with a trip back to the rental to work, finishing and mailing insurance letters, calling insurance companies, trip to Lowe's for paint and supplies, on and on.

My brother in Corpus Christi was very excited about buying a house and getting out of his rental apartment, which he had been in for 10 years. How time flies! I hope everything works out and I'm very happy for him and Debra.

Higgins visits Matisse

Today has been pretty good so far. I've learned something new about Photoshop from Sue O'Kieffe's wonderful site Sacred Circle Mandalas. Besides the beautiful mandalas and soothing music, she offers all kinds of interesting tidbits including Photoshop tutorials. I've bookmarked it because it's one of those sites you can go back to over and over and discover something new and exciting--and also relax and meditate on. Anyway, here's the result from her lesson on Photoshop's Layer Masks. I can't wait to try her next tutorial tomorrow.