Watercolor

I've been doing a million different things lately. I haven't done much paper crafting but will be returning to that soon.

My KNK Force was delivered, but I haven't even opened the box. I am so hacked off at this company. They force you to take a piece of equipment that you purchased in good faith even though it is not completed as promised...all the while working on newer machines. OH, they said I didn't have to take the machine but they would not refund my money. Maybe that is why they called it the Force.

On to happier subjects. I have painted a casual portrait of one of my Granddaughters and am working on one of the other Granddaughter.

Day 30_Temporary

Sadly, this is the last day of the Artful Adventures Stroll Challenge. It has been a fun, yet temporary, journey.

There are many options for the word Temporary in my hood.
There is road work going on with temporary road closures, lane changes, barriers, signs warning of said road work and on and on.
It is spring and there are birds nesting which will empty when their fledglings learn to fly.
Wildflowers blooming that will seed and disappear until next year.

Yesterday, there was fog, today it is gone.
Thus, I chose the ubiquitous subject...weather...because it can change faster than any of the above.
Spring in Texas is more often than not a harbinger of violent weather. It usually comes in fast and hard then it's gone.

I wasn't sure this tree was going to make it. That is rain diffusing the view and wind that is blowing the tree off its vertical center.

When the rain and wind cleared away it left behind this:

If it rains enough and fast enough and hard enough, the water runs down the hill, under the bridge in our drive and temporarily overflows the wash that goes across the front of our property.

But, it softens the ground and attracts birds of many kinds because of these:

Today, the sun is shining, the air cool and the water gone along with the Yellow Crowned Night Herons. The surviving crawdads have gone back into their holes.

Day 29_Geometric

Maybe this is cheating for today's theme, but I use this technique often to help choose color schemes that I am certain will match my images. How can it not? The colored squares make up the image.

Digital images are made up of pixels; small, square, one color.
When viewed normally, the pixels create a cohesive, whole image; you do not see a bunch of geometric squares.

However, you can take any digital image, including scans of images, and enlarge it in photo editing software until you can see the individual colored squares.

I enlarged this image to 3200% and chose just a small selection of pixels to demonstrate the geometric shape...square.

Day 28_View

Wow! There are so many views from which I could choose.

This is the pasture across the street that we see every morning on our walk.

These are some of own chickens in their yard.

I am beginning to see how I can break these apart and create something.

Day 27_Growth

Defined by a dictionary:
Seed: the small, hard part of a plant from which a new plant grows.
Growth: a stage in the process of growing.

I was cooking supper one evening and cut open a beautiful orange pepper. The seeds in this one were particulary large and interesting. Nothing like I had seen before. I grabbed my phone and took a picture.

Had the growth process of this pepper not been ended by harvesting, the seeds would produce a new plant that would grow and produce more lovely orange peppers.

BTW, the dish with the pepper in it was delish!

Day 26 _ Shadow

Other than the flower, the first thing I saw here was the shapes of the shadows from objects on my deck, and it is why I took the photo.

The same can be said about this image. It was the shadow of some shutters on a wall that first attracted my attention. I didn't see the fly at first, but didn't shoo it away because I liked the colors and the contrast of its very hard edged shadow in combination with the soft edges of the shutter shadow. I guess you could say this is the epitome of the saying, "Fly on a Wall".

Ok, now here is why I am taking this class.
This is a digital image created by applying layers of objects onto the background of a photo I took of some Giant Swallowtail butterflies. I was able to overlay the image with splotches and shadows of various things that were also created digitally. In addition, I created a digital brush from one of the butterflies to be used like a tradional stamp.

I want to be able to do something similar to this using traditional media. I think it is probable that I am being too myoptic in my vision.

Day 25_Light

Observing light, or more specifically, observing how different lighting conditions can impact an object, is one of my very favorite things to do.

I love backlighting. It can often turn the most mundane objects into something beautiful.

I also sometimes like to process my images in such a way as to exaggerate the existing light.

Day 24_Boundary

This is the boundary between the yard we maintain and our wildlife habitat or wildlife park as my Granddaughters call it. The entrance is just down from this sign.

Day 23 - Subtle

These little spiders are orbweavers of some sort and are abundant in warm weather. They build their webs in the evening from one structure across to another, including the trees on one side of our drive to those on the other side. Their webs are notoriously difficult to see, even in the daylight before they take them down, unless you actually see the spider. When we start our walk in the morning, it is either still dark or barely light. One of us usually carries a stick and bravely walks down the drive first while waving the stick so we don't walk into them. Like snakes, spiders don't bother me if I know what kind they are. But, walking into one of their webs makes my skin seem to crawl all day. Yuck!

I managed to get this image of one of the little dude's web because the sun was low in the sky, and the light reflected off its web.