A Vision

As I was sitting at my table at work yesterday in the dull gray warehouse, I opened a box that had a large piece of crumpled white paper as a space holder. Poof! A vision was born.

I immediately grabbed the tape dispenser and put a piece of tape on the back of my big crumpled white paper and stuck as high on the wall next to me as I could.

The important thing here is that there are no windows on this wall. A wall that is probably twenty-five feet high maybe and one hundred feet long. Just dull gray concrete. The dry wall portions of this room that are behind me only go so high. The rest is darkness with all manner of cables and wires running to different places. As I look out in front of me I see industrial printing and sorting machines and to the  right shelves four sets deep of papers, boxes and all sorts of related items. At the very end are bay doors that are opened once in a while for a truck to load or unload. So there are no windows and not a lick of color anywhere.

So  I after I found my one piece of white paper I was on the hunt for more. I ended up with three pieces and had them all stuck on the wall. That is as far as my vision got at that point even though I knew it was going to represent a window scene. A desperate need to somehow be connected to the outdoors.

First my supervisor who sits behind me wanted to know what on earth was on the wall. Then slowly over time more people drifted over as there work or questions brought them by and they all wanted to know what on earth was that on the wall. I would have been thrilled if even one person had guessed giant spit balls! But no, not one person could come up with anything. That is until the plant manager walked right by and said, “it’s obviously clouds.” Yes!!! I was so excited. I gave him the two fingers from my eyes to his letting him know that we are on the same wave length. So there is another living, breathing human being with an imagination working there. I was afraid that I was completely surrounded by Zombies.

Over the course of the day there was much discussion of my clouds. Maybe certain people in the front office wouldn’t like them being there. Really? It’s a concrete wall! I’m sure not hurting it. Front office will say you should have been working. Hmmm lets see it took about five seconds to make and I’m not a doctor working on a patient. And they don’t know if I did it on my break, or during lunch or before I clocked in.

Then I scrounged more things to further my “view.”  I did this as I was going about my work. It’s a very laid back work place. I have to go pick up stuff out of boxes to bring back to my table. I have to take boxes to the huge recycling box. And isn’t recycling a huge deal nowadays? So I’m recycling as well as creating art. I found a cardboard lid that had green on the edges that could have been grass. A blue plastic bag that could have been a lake. And some strips of plastic that would have made rain. One person in particular said the plastic strips would be ugly. Ok then. Yee people of no vision.

So I came home and proceeded to make a small version of a similar scene that I will mount onto cardboard and hang by my table with Command tabs. So below is what I ended up with and then the next one is what I did with it in Photoshop. I might actually print that one, frame it and hang it by my table.

Fiddling With Fractals

I used J Wildfire and Photoshop to create these images.

 Fish Pond In Space

 The Edge Of A Star

Wednesday January 15, 2015

 I decided to try some paper cutting again using the book Kirigami by Jeffrey Rutzky. This was supposed to be an elephant. Oops! I may have been asleep when I tried it.

 So I made another attempt.

 Yeah!

Next I wanted to try my hand at changing it so I added a ball to the design and changed the elephant a little bit.

 Cool, it worked!

Momma Always Said, “Don’t Play With Your Dress.”

I probably didn’t listen then either.

 I see a clown fish in this photo-manipulation.

 

Why don’t they make Bubble Wrap that looks like this?

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Love this idea from Martha Stewart Living

From my grandson, with love.

I put the flames on upside down.

Carl Larsson – Swedish Artist – 1853-1919

I was surprised to discover that Carl Larsson had a sad, harsh life spent in poverty during his early years. One would never guess that by looking at his beautiful, serene paintings of his life after marriage.

He painted with oils without much public success before marriage. After marrying his wife Karin and switching to watercolors he found more fame as a painter. His eight children and family life in beautiful Sundborn in a little cottage by the river made for unending, lovely subject matter.

I found this reproduction print a few months ago and even though it has scratches on it as if it had been stuck to another piece of glass at one time I still love it. All of his work has a special softness to it.

This print is called Papa’s Room. I’m especially drawn to it because as a child I always wanted a big, bed with curtains in the middle of the room like a fort. A private little fort to hide away and read all day in secret. I love the bookshelves in the painting. I could certainly use bookshelves that go all the way around my room. As a matter of fact my granddaughter does have that in her room, custom built by her father and I think Carl Larsson himself would approve of the soft happy colors her room is painted in.

I read that Carl and his wife did not share a bedroom as most married people do. His wife slept with the children (most of the time, obviously not always) and Carl had a room to himself. I am a huge fan of that myself. Just think of all the snuggling with babies and toddlers. All of the goodnight stories and books. Plus he probably snored like most men do!

Other works of Carl Larsson that I like are:
In the Carpenter Shop
Brita in The Drawing Room
The Skier
The Verandah
Bridge In Grez
Flowers on the Windowsill
Breakfast under The Big Birch
and both paintings of his studio, left and right.

Here are two more sites about Carl Larsson that you might enjoy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Larsson?uselang=pt
http://www.carllarsson.se/enstart.aspx

You can also find a lot of his work, reprints on canvas and notecards and such on Ebay.

Greeting Cards

These are two of the cards that are in my Etsy Shop. The Hummingbird was made with a stamp and then colored in with color pencils and water color pencils. I drew the Peacock feather by hand and then used water color pencils to paint it. That one in particular was a lot of fun. I will be adding more soon.

A Perfectly Feathered Nest

Paint a leaf with colors of your choice.

Press the leaf onto the paper.

Gage it to see if you will have the right shape.

With more water manipulate the paint into the leaf shape on whatever parts did not transfer. You will get a softer more dreamy effect this way.

Add stems and little dots and specks of color like you normally find on leaves.