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I slapped the macro lens on the Canon today and took a walk around the garden in the "balmy" 54F, sun shinny day. I even left the back door open for 10 minutes just to get some fresh air in the house.
Not much to see in the way of blossoms or blooms at this time of the year, nevertheless, always something to catch the eye of the lens like these spent Hydrangeas.
The soul
becomes dyed
with the color of its thoughts.
Marcus Aurelius
Sometimes there is nothing more satisfying than just playing with colors. A bit like in Kindergarten, where the content was irrelevant. You could just pick and play with ALL the crayons on the table, without considering the consquence. You knew your Mother would stick on the Fridge and love it.
I'm drawn to painting these oddly grungy girl portraits. It seems to be a rather persistent phase.
On the backside I am working and experimenting with techniques that I hope to teach in my new class but then I have to remember to not get too carried away and forget to take notes which make the projects replicable. It's not always easy, as there's not always a lot of order or reason as to how I concoct these images. Perhaps videos of what do they call it? ... streams of consciousness? might suffice?
(thanks to MariaAmanda Deviant Art for her stock image)
I'm posting over at Vision and Verb today. Have a lovely weekend everyone!
Yesterday it was 56F!!! Can you believe that? A day of fresh air not to be missed. DH and I trotted off to our northern beach park. The tide was out, plenty of sand to walk on. Gulls, shells, blue sky and best of all clean fresh air.
Of course beach means camera, camera means pictures and pictures mean more reasons to fiddle with them in Photoshop - right?
Yeah! Of course that's how it goes .....
...... ciao for now!
Still no word from the Apple Store on the welfare of my laptop. I'm beginning to wonder if they have it hostage to read the daft emails and peruse the artwork and photos at their leisure.
Is it time to post a snarky Customer Service alert on Facebook in the hopes of having some sort of action? As it seems that that is the most expedient way of getting any response from anyone these days.
It's one of the rare companies that does nothing to reward loyalty purchasing and heaven knows, we have given them enough money in the last few years, you would think they could be a little less haughty and a lot more accommodating.
Trouble is that I've had this "lappie" for 4 years and saved on anti-virus software, a machine that turns on and does what I want, when I want and aside from having iTunes rule my life, has been as reliable as dirt.
I've no doubt the hostage crisis will endure - in some form or another.
Winter has been here for some time but it really only seems real when the snow falls.
We have 5 inches of fluffy white stuff on the ground and the efforts to clear the garden paths and driveway have left me with the snuffles and a wretched cold. I can't complain for I usually only garner one cold a year at most and my firm belief in the power of veggies in my diet usually see me relatively "bug" free!
I'm still waiting for Apple to diagnose my laptop computer. They seem a lot quicker to lift your money for new products than to fix the old and I fear the (anticipated) replacement logic board for my 4 year old laptop will not be a wise choice. However it will be a strain on the purse strings to shell out for a new machine at this point.
Perhaps a fire sale is in order? Or perhaps more appropriately, a snow sale?
Sky Dreamer © Marie Otero 2012
I was going to have another ranty post about bad customer service and my 40 minute wait at the Genius Bar today to have my sick (read probably DEAD) laptop taken care of.
Or the crappy technical support and lack of responsiveness from the teachers/assistants in an Online Class I am taking.
In the end, when I sat down to my computer I decided that I couldn't be bothered with all that blah and hopped off to the go-to place for faces, started fiddling with an image which lead me to working on creating a set of PHOTOSHOP PAINTING ACTIONS that I will be offering students in the (slowly evolving) class that is currently on my drawing board.
I mostly make Photoshop Actions to suit myself and my own workflow and this is the first time I have worked on them so they might have a wider application to a variable audience. So far so good. And a nice break from writing html code.
Oh and someone asked me what paper I was using to print double sided work for the Sketchbook Project, its Jet Print Photo Matte. I think it's been discontinued but I bought several reams of it a year or two ago off Ebay and it's just the best.
Portrait Image credit http://charligal-stock.deviantart.com
So I have this dream ... inside my head ... a website that I can see and that I am 74.66% done with (yes, that precise, because the .66% is really THAT important!)
It's a website that I have had in my head for several years now but I am frustrated. Beyond belief. I am not fond of code. I can wrap my head around it and have basic html language skills. I'd love to hand over the task of designing the website to a cleverer person who is skilled in web design but I am loathe to, having being bitten by less than stellar offerings for lots of money in the past. So I WILL do this one myself. But OMG it sucks. One small tweak in one direction sends a flood of instructions to another page. Save the style and apply it to one page only. Change the CSS and have it appear madly where it's not wanted. I'm not sure if this is something you need to do with no wine or lots of it.
It would be OK if I wanted something just ah-hem and easy. But I don't. That's not the picture inside my head.
I'll be perservering.
Stay tuned. It's all part of the new big plan.
I'm finally turning my hand to getting my Sketchbook Project complete. I did a whole bunch of work in the book towards the end of last year and then decided that I didn't like how it worked, the feel of the paper etc and so in a fit of pique I just tore it all out and decided to start again.
This time I have used heavier paper that will take transfers, cut and paste, collage and double sided digital printing without the paper getting all ruckeley (is that even a word?) and horrid - you know what I mean, where the paper gets wrinkley and bubbley because you have used wet media. Anyway, I digress.
I've sorted the problem. I'm using some medium weight digital fineart paper that will tolerate some water (not rain showers) and is amenable to double sided printing.
I've set myself up a handy dandy template in Photoshop that has layers with guides,clipping masks for placing images and instructions for when I am not paying too much attention and will orient the paper correctly depending on which side I am printing.
Thanks to the use of adjustment layers (in Photoshop) I can balance colors on versing pages and get a good match of tones so that there is some continuity and visual appeal.
Not all the pages are digitally printed. Some have collage or transfers and others cut and paste, tip-in style.
It probably would have helped if I had decided on how many pages the book would have from the get-go, but hey, that would have been just a TAD TOO organised!
There will still be some "winging and wishing on a prayer"!
Since I've paid to have the book digitized you should be able to see it online (eventually!)!!!
