The Next Round

The next round of Spring blossoms has begun here at our bucolic manor.  The azalea is in bloom.  It's a little early, thanks to our mild winter this year.  You can still see the winter bronzing on the leaves.  But that doesn't detract from it's fabulous fuchsia blossoms.

I really felt like getting out my paints and spending the day capturing the essence of these beauties on canvas.  There's nothing like painting outside - plein air - with the warm sun and the fresh smell of the outdoors.

But, that wasn't in the cards.  Too many chores to do before the rain came.

So I will settle for painting with photoshop!  If I only had this years ago for my art classes.  When I was younger, my mother arranged for me to work with a local artist at her studio after school.  It was like a giant playroom to me.  I never knew what medium I would get to work with - oils, watercolors, clays - it could be anything.  She would work on her commissioned pieces or prepare for a show and I would make my own "masterpieces" of the still lifes she would set up for me.  My end results were - well, let's just say that they weren't gallery-ready.  No matter the results, though, it was great fun and I still take the time to sketch and paint now and again.

Even though photoshop can give me great results, I still do prefer actually painting.  I like that quiet time, the initial sketching, getting absorbed in the play of light and color.  So relaxing.

And my mother still thinks they are all masterpieces - you have to love that!

The Great Phoneography Compet(IT)ion

My DH and I went to the Great Millbrook Library Phone-ography Competition this evening to view our photos that we had submitted and see the other work on display.  It was a wonderful event and we had a terrific time.

The director of the event thanked all of the participants for the photos being shown and then introduced the judges for the phonography competition.

The 2 gentlemen were art teachers from 2 of the schools in the area.  They seemed to have fun judging the competition - and were surprised at the quality of photographs that our smartphones were able to produce.  The playing field was sort of leveled because of the restrictions on the cameras and the editing had to be done on the phone.  This made the "eye of the artist" really become the focus of the judging.

There was one point that one of the teachers made that I found sort of interesting.  He said that since people are using smartphones more as cameras - posting instagrams, flickr, pininterest and so on - they seem to be looking at things that they would have previously just ignored.  I think that's true.

One woman who had 2 photos entered is using instagrams as her "daily phone call" to her daughter.  They share what they see everyday instead of talking on the phone or IMing.  I guess it is a case of a picture being worth 1,000 words.

My DH and I had such a good time with this charity event.  At the end, all of the photographs were raffled off.  I got a beautiful picture of posies that had a ripple filter applied - very Monet like.  My DH got a chicken in a coop with Warhol-like coloring.  It made him laugh.

It was well worth the time to enter our photos.  And more worth our time to support a local library.

Just great fun!

Phonography

Today I took some simple photos with my smartphone and edited them like mad to turn them into works of art for the charity photo showing at the library.  This is a streetlight.

I never really took the time to play with the built-in filters on the phone's photo editing software before, but it really was a lot of fun!  This is the same streetlight.

And today was a good day to have some silly fun.  Here's the original picture from the phone.  I took it when I was waiting for a taxi at the train station - truck was getting it's mani/pedi at the shop for a few days.  I just looked up and saw the clouds and light, thought it was neat and snapped a picture.

I think the final images were pretty neat.

I had to play around with this one also - it was so much fun!

I liked the way this came out, but I thought it was really pixelated after applied the filter, so I decided to mess with the colors instead.

I like it.  Pink, alien daffodils.  Kind of neat!

Just a Little Fun

The lights on the cornice of this building are actually white, but because of the bit of mist in the air, they turned all golden colored.   It was a shot that had to be taken. 

But then when I got it home, I couldn't help myself - I went and had a little fun with photoshopping this building.  I had to clean the picture up a bit since it is a nighttime shot which makes it all grainy, but then I started clicking around in the filters.

I know me, though.  So I limited my filter play time to a mere 15 minutes.  One hour later...

Don't you think that the crosshatch filter brings out the detailing on the building?  And the noise reduction filter got rid of most of those little spots everywhere.  That dimmed the golden color of the lights, so a small Lab Color adjustment was just begging to be made.

I tell you it was necessary work!  There was no goofing off here - nope - just honest to goodness hard labor going on.

Maybe just a little fun!

What Thanksgiving Means to Me

We had a contest at the office.  It was simple enough to enter, just have your child create a work of art in the theme "What Thanksgiving Means to Me".  Naturally, I had to participate.  After all, it's all about participation!  Only one tiny problem - my child is not human.  She's a dog.

No matter.  If I could get her to create a work of art, they would let her enter.  This was going to be fun!

We got out the paper and food coloring and got to painting!

Yup.  My puppy's first painting.  You can see the intense concentration as she manipulates the colors.  She's really into this.  I think we may have a Picasso on our hands.

Or maybe it's just the roasted chicken that she is hunting for?  Naw, she's all about the art!

Here she is, with all of the other Pre-K artists.  So maybe she doesn't do lettering or shapes.  And she didn't do multi-media, just a simple watercolor.  But even though she didn't get a blue ribbon, I think she did a fantastic job!

It was a great experience for us all.  Our pup was really enthusiastic, not just for the chicken, but for the mental challenge.  She loves to figure things out.  We will definitely be trying this again.  

Most importantly, my Dear patient Honey and I had the best laugh!

Sheep in the City

I wanted to share with you this lovely sculpture which was sitting in the middle of Broadway when I got back into the city after the Sheep & Wool Festival.

It wasn't too out of the ordinary to have a sculpture pop up in the middle of the street.  They have had painted cows, people made out of nuts and bolts, strange shapes that I just can't even describe and other amazing works of art over the course of my years working in Manhattan just pop up overnight.  So I wasn't surprised to see this sitting there.

I did find the timing of it humorous.  Weekend Sheep & Wool Festival, then a sculpture of a sheep on Monday.  I had to laugh.

The sculpture is by Peter Woytuk.  His installation has pieces from 168th Street down to Columbus Circle.  His bronzes will be out in the streets on display until April 2012.

What fun!