I've been inspired by Carlyn Beccia's new book to pick up my digital paintbrushes again. I have been playing in Painter - trying to learn - and remember (!) how the various styles of brushes behave - and even making a few brushes of my own.
Here's a new art doll I created from bits and pieces crafted together in Photoshop and then painted with cloner brushes using Painter. I call her Bridget. I have always secretly wanted to have red hair :-)
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
~ W B Yeats
Another in the series A Year on Blackberry Mountain.
When I was growing up in northern Minnesota I spent every spare moment exploring the woods and fields around my home. There was always something new to discover - the first of the spring flowers, wild strawberries - tiny but so sweet, the song of the redwing blackbird in the marsh. Though I did not realize it at the time, nature has been my most important teacher and the lessons I have learned there have remained with me all my life.
A Year on Blackberry Mountain is a new series of images that seeks to recapture that feeling I had growing up in nature - that sense of wonder and discovery of the natural world. The characters are some of my favorite vintage photos collected from here and there and the settings are places I have visited in my ramblings with my camera or around the internet.
This piece is called More Than Words Can Tell. It is inspired by a line from Walt Whitman - "I swear to you, there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell". The two girls - the Brough sisters - are from the George Edward Anderson Collection at BYU - an old image that I have restored and colorized. The background is a photo I took on a walk near the Padilla Bay Interpretive Center, which was once the Breazeale family farm and orchard. I've processed the photo with Topaz Restyle and the Oil Paint Filter in Photoshop.
Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.
~ Mary Oliver
“If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind
I am heading home today after attending a fantastic workshop with Karen Burns all about painting with Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop. Karen creates such stunning work with her digital paintbrushes. In this workshop she generously shared her methods, tips and techniques and resources for creating beautiful paintings. While I know a bit about Photoshop, Corel Painter is a huge and powerful piece of software and learning the program can be a bit daunting for someone who just want to sit down and paint. Karen gave us a roadmap to get started painting quickly and we all loved the results we were able to acheive in just one weekend.
Besides demonstrating her painting techniques and sharing her secrets :-) Karen spent one-on-one time with each of us. She suggested brushes we might use to achieve the results we were looking for or techniques we might consider to impove the compostion of our paintings. At the end of the weekend we each went home with at least one finished painting - printed on fine art paper or canvas - that we can frame and hang on our wall at home.
I created FOUR paintings that I am thrilled with! I have never before attended a workshop where I have been this productive and so well pleased with my work. Kudos to Karen for being an outstanding teacher who conveys the knowledge of what she does so well and who inspires us to create paintings of our own. Thank you, Karen for a truly awesome weekend!
Where I live in Seattle we don't get much real winter weather. But I have been watching the snow and blustery weather going on in the rest of the country and remembering the winters I used to know growing up in northern Minnesota. And even though it was frequently cold and snowy, we practically lived outside in the winter. There was just so much to do and see.
I have been remembering days spent skating on the rink the firemen created every winter by flooding the parking lot by the town hall. This was where the boys learned to play hockey and the girls practiced their fancy spins and twirls. My favorite thing was to just skate round and round and enjoy the feeling of flying over the ice. Purely magic.
I love this time of the year. A whole new year stretches out before us with all kinds of possibilities.
Today I've been doing some digital art journaling. The Art Journal Caravan is getting ready to embark on it's final journey - kind of bittersweet. I know Tangie will have all kinds of creative ideas for our journals in the weeks to come. First up is picking a word that I want to focus on for the coming year. It is amazing how a single word can be a catalyst for motivating you toward the direction you want your life to take. The word I have chosen this year is bloom. To bloom ... to grow and flourish ... to thrive.
I am thrilled to be featured in the current edition of Art Journaling magazine. You could say I am over the moon :-)
Four digital journal pages that I created for the Art Journal Caravan are featured. I also wrote an article about how I create my journal pages - everything from that first spark of inspiration, to process of gathering images and finally arranging them on the page and adding my journaling.
I never know exactly where I am going when I sit down to create a new journal page. It is that creative journey that is the most important part of art journaling for me. I am convinced that our art journals are more than just pretty pages. I believe we can use our art journals to move our lives in the direction we want to go.
AND I feel so fortunate to be featured in an issue that also includes Teesha Moore. Teesha is the person that really got me excited about art journaling in the first place. I feel as if I've come full circle.
I've been playing in my digital art journal this week. I've been enjoying combining images I've purchased from some of my favorite digital designers along with some of my own vintage images. This page began with a wonderful new kit from Tangie Baxter called You Are Magnificent. I've added my own image from an 1869 edition of Godey Ladies Book which I digitally painted in Photoshop so it would coordinate with the kit. This is such a fun way for me to play with my old images. I always did enjoy coloring :-)
Would you like to play along? I have created a template with layers so you can create your own version of this 1869 girl that I've named Sweet Charlotte. I've also included a copy of my original scan of this image from Godey's. Take a look at the copy of that old page, and you'll see how Sweet Charlotte got her name. Just click on the image below to download everything.
I really would love to see your own version of Sweet Charlotte. Leave me a comment below so I can come and take a look.
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