Archive for the ‘digital art’ Category

As the new year starts, it’s always a time of reflection for me. I have two times like this during the year – one in January as I look ahead to the next calendar year, and one in August when I look at the coming school year. One of the newslists I get is from Education Week, and there was a link today on Steve Jobs and creativity. This was his commencement address to Stanford in 2005. Some very interesting things – never knowing when something you have done in the past (like his taking a calligraphy class that eventually led to the fonts for the Macintosh) will be the key to what you will do next in the future.

Do what’s in your heart, never feel regretful, because everything you experience builds who you are. A lot of what bothers me about teaching these days is that I have all these experiences from the past, and I would like to be able to have these skills utilized. It gets me angry, but then I realize that I am bringing all this to the students, and I never know when something from the past will be the key to reach a student.

Those words really resonated with me today, as I need to hold to that to get through the remaining years that I am teaching. If I can maintain the momentum from this past week, I will be able to draw on the digital marbling as a creative outlet for the spring. I think what’s really working for me with Photoshop is that I can see definite progress in a piece, whereas when I am quilting, the progress is always much slower.

Speaking of skills I have developed, a few years ago when I was looking for another job, I interviewed with Drive Time to set up their business partnership program with local schools. The first thing the CEO of the company asked me was, since my resume was so full and so diverse, just how much of it was true. Well, I guess, once again, I am determined to be a Renaissance woman – everything is true, continues to be true, and I guess I keep adding in other directions.

Suzan and I have done a couple of really amazing pieces over the last few days. This one is based on the original piece in yesterday’s blog – but you would never know it! Dean wants to call it “Tapestry Secret,” which I like.

A very busy morning – did lots of shredding of old IRS stuff, old business stuff – several bags for recycling. Did some cleaning (still have a very long way to go….) And I got a walk in – the weather is nice and breezy. We burned sage in several of the spots around the house – get the good energy flowing.

As I reflect back on 2007, it was a good art year. Not so much in terms of actual fiber created, but we were able to finally solve our marbling problems, I started on Photoshop, and I finally got into doing digital work from the marbled fabrics. We sold an art piece (Night Eyes, from some of our first framed attempts), had some good ebay custom orders, and felt like we had momentum with Marble T. Now it’s time to look at the coming year and what we would like to accomplish. Which I think will be our goals for this week – we definitely want to reactivate our Preferred list, so we get more hits on the website, as well as add more fiber work. I want to get a fiber portfolio completed, and I would like to enter a minimum of five different shows this year.

Lots to think about, and trying to balance the momentum with school with be interesting – as usual. I completed most of my art plans today – looked through standards, sketched out the semester projects, and developed the rules for art class – which I think are pretty good. One of the things that amazed me as I was working with the art standards is how much my kids were actually in the intermediate set of standards, between the various discussions and projects. I feel really good about that.

Math – that’s another thing to think about over the next few days. I’m avoiding it because teaching to the test really is morally and ethically against everything I believe that makes a good education for a child. Heard from Kathy in Vermont that the new principal is even thinking about doing away with their exploratory classes in favor of more academics. Who was it who said a society is judged by its art? The Bush years have not been good ones for civilization…..

I’m working on another piece off a freeform pattern – here it is in original, black and white lines, and then as the genesis of a Rainforest piece.

I have been putting off doing a portfolio, because I figure with the internet and all the available technology, I need to have a digital portfolio. Which I didn’t know how to do, so I figured Suzan would tackle that. But then I was thinking – it really isn’t anything more than a slideshow, so why couldn’t I do it as part of a DVD?

And voila’! Once I figured the program out – and started saving, since the program wanted to keep quitting on me – we now have a digital portfolio ready for burning. The only thing still missing are the sizes, which we can add later. And I’m realizing that I can very easily add the fiber piece to the portfolio – just set up another submenu. Sometimes I amaze even myself…..

So I was productive today – I didn’t let the continuing cold and cough get me down. We did loads of shredding as part of our New Year’s cleaning and getting ready to burn more sage as the year begins. I did a partial cleaning of my bathroom, and even found the old cough drops, which I am going to need. I forced myself to stay with the cleaning, rather than bagging and trying for a nap, since afternoon naps are keeping me awake at night. Who knows what I’ll accomplish tomorrow?

Before I forget – a really incredible graphic artist from Africa, now residing in the US – I want to use his work (some of it) to show the kids that art can be a movement for change, as a way of motivating them. Check out Chaz Maviyane-Davies.

We are headed to Phoenix for our first monthly artist date to create some new digital work. Suzan’s coming down from Sedona – not a great day for traveling – cold and windy on our end – will be worse coming down to Camp Verde and then Black Canyon City.

Last night I did some more work. I like the circles effect – I am interested now in adding additional shapes to pieces and see what happens with them. You can see the initial fabric in the background on this one.

I started applying some gradients and using masks more.

I am particularly fond of the copper gradient – seems to work really well on the marbled fabrics.

I don’t know what I did, but every now and then I get a really interesting effect with one final gradient…..

It has been a very nice, relaxing few days, even with being sick. Saw Charlie Wilson’s War, which was excellent, even though I dozed through some of it. A great historical “if only.” Today we saw National Treasure, Book of Secrets – lots of fun, though highly improbable. Been to Mt. Vernon, Mt. Rushmore – always fun to see a few of the places we have been.

Worked last night on a new piece, and again today. Both easily came with titles. The first – Lord of the Rings – the original is a great piece of Japanese silk, marbled in dark greens.

The second – Fossils – from a great stone pattern, marbled on linen. I am finding I like adding shapes to the pieces – need to see about developing my own library of shapes.

Now I’ve been working with Photoshop for the last two hours, playing around with the camouflage piece, trying to see what I come up with. I have hit a roadblock with two of the pieces, and I’ve started on the third. What I am discovering is the need to add another whole dimension to the work, like a shape of another image – and not quite sure how to do it. But what I started doing is each time I have something I like, I save that and then continue. So I have about 7 off the same image, some of which are very cool – just don’t know what else they need. I could easily see printing them out all the same size and calling it “Cosmic Soup.” So Suzan, I need help!

School work is done for today – including getting reports on how my kids all did on the benchmark tests last week. Don’t get me started on those – nothing like having to teach to the test….rather than for genuine understanding, as Howard Gardner would call it.

But I digress. It’s time to play. I think I have another potential. Remember the camouflage from the last entry? Here it is with some blurring.

Then I looked at playing around with some lighting and a gradient – I have come to really love gradients.

The piece, at this point, looks very much like a primeval forest, so I wanted to add a shape, and decided on bear paws, my spirit animal (I collect fetishes of bears). Then I played around with the embossing, trying to maintain the original camouflage idea. I like the final result.

We have finally gone and done it – after about three years of talking about doing digital art from the marbled fabric, we have entered our first show. The Los Angeles Center for Digital Art has a deadline of December 5, and yesterday Suzan sent out the entry. I think the three photos are exceptional. I will post them once judging is done and we know what happens. It is nice to see that shows are taking digital entries instead of slides – which is to be expected if it’s a digital show….duh…..But too often still for fiber shows especially you have to have slides, which means a roll of film and hoping you get a couple of good ones.

When we lived on San Andreas we would nail black fabric to the outside workshop wall and photograph outside, several pictures per piece and hope they worked. Digital is so much easier, and we can retake any time we want. I still have my old slide projector which I got for Christmas in 1974-ish, but Kodak no longer makes bulbs for them. With all the stuff I used to do for school, a slide projector gave me a lot of flexibility. No longer – in fact, most people don’t even remember those huge opaque projectors we would use to show pictures from books to kids. And the mimeo smell….and all the crosswords done on stencils and dittoes – goes waaayyyyy back to “ancient” days of teaching – the 70’s.

And I think about how hard it would be to teach without my Powerpoint and Promethean board…..I need to get Dean’s slides of Champlain graduation put onto disk…….

So I survived the day, thinking that I couldn’t wait to get home and do some more on the computer…..even though I brought papers home. So I have a deal with myself – I will work until dinner, then do my school work (marking lots of papers) and then come back to the computer. In the meantime,I played around with the previous one, trying to add and subtract gradient layers to see the differences that show as the layers interact with each other. Too much fun!




I never did get to the cloud brushes….

We spent yesterday setting up to marble (which always takes so long, with pretreating and actually setting up the liquid bath), but then today we got to play – marbled about 6 yards of fabrics, and once again everything went really well. It is so nice to be back in the large tray again – we actually feel like we are creating art again, not just little pieces to sell. Yet again today we were talking about how much of a void there was in our artistic lives when we couldn’t create large pieces of fabric. When you define your art this way for over 14 years, it really is distressing to lose the skills.

Especially nice is the fact that we are working with other fabrics. Tried some larger heavy-weight silk that worked wonderfully, as well as some faux suede pieces, and the velveteen also worked. I still need to treat the velveteen to soften it up, but overall extremely pleased. Still haven’t been able to do the chiffon again – those people who bought that two years ago certainly have one-of-a-kind pieces!

We want to marble more often now that things are working again. It is SO GOOD to be creating fabric again! We even are revisiting marketing and revving up the business end because we are turning out really great fabric. The disadvantage is that our bodies have changed enough that we can no longer go for six hours straight, not including clean-up. There was a time four years ago when we could do 60 fat quarters in a day. Can’t do that any more, and we also discovered we don’t like turning out fabric that way – we would just as soon do a smaller amount and have a chance to play on each of the pieces.

We are still looking for a particular fabric that we used for so many of our art pieces – we used a poly-satin that kind of worked, but not to the detail we would like. I found an old piece that we’ll use in checking around fabric stores. All the really great pieces are from bridal fabrics, so we just have to shop around for those.

This piece that I’ve scanned shows the incredible detail you can get on the poly fabrics.

Then I started playing with some of the new tools from the Photoshop lessons. This next is with the Shadows and Highlights adjustment. I particularly like the neon effect on the orange.

This next is playing around with the eye dropper tool and the white space. Each gives a different feel, which is why I have wanted to learn Photoshop for so long. I want to be able to take a really great piece of fabric and use it to create lots of other images, so the particular piece doesn’t have a short shelf life till someone buys it.

And finally – the joy of playing with filters in Photoshop! Take a look at what happens with the emboss filter with the same piece! Reminds me of maps of the Continental Shelf.

All in all, a great way to spend a day off from school (Rodeo days here in the Old Pueblo)!

So I played some more today to try to come up with something that does more with linking and gradients. I must confess gradients are still a puzzlement – I keep getting weird colors. I am pleased, however, with the sky gradient in this piece. And I am having trouble with getting the grass brushes to be the greens I want instead of a series of mottled colors.

With this piece – Ocotillo – an abstract look at the almost dead-looking cactus that doesn’t bloom until rainy season – seems to be a cross with autumn. Oh well, it’s my vision! I linked the veins with the flowers – mostly. I had each flower (mostly) on a separate layer – except for the one falling, which got connected with one of the others. I do have a better sense of how this stuff works. I am enjoying just creating little pieces to work with the tools.

Reminder to me: LABEL LAYERS!!! Here goes –

I had fun last night playing again with the brushes and trying to create different layers and link them – still need to work on that – need to reread the linking stuff. I’m getting better at adding the layers each time I try something new.

I am drawn to geometric shapes – I think in the analysis it’s because they “always look like something,” so I can’t really mess them up. I do need to scan and play with one of my own sketches, to see what I can do with the brushes. But – here’s the new work:

I’m continuing to play around with more brushes as part of this week three lesson. For this portion we were to work on layers, and then move one of our objects. So here we go –

I would like to figure out how to make the shadows of the sun better, as well as crop the sun for the second one. But for a freehand, not too bad. I had watched Sewing With Nancy about landscape quilts, and part of what was included in that episode was tips on shading. So I wanted to do more with the window frame – but it needs to be larger – the scale seems all right for this, but not for more shading.

This just means I have to do more work…ahhh, too bad!

This is week 3 of my Photoshop class from myJanee.com. We are working with brushes, which is something I discovered a few months ago, when I needed to make a feather. We are to paint, using the brushes, and my background started me freaking about the “painting” having to “look like something.” Hmmmm….remnants of early grades art classes! So I decided I was just going to start learning about the various brushes – trying each set of brushes on a different layer with different colors, till I found something I liked.

Finally, after about 20 brushes, I discovered a small one that had some jaggedness to it – I was on blue as a color at this point, and as I was scribbling, I liked the horizontal effect of the brush, as opposed to the curve or vertical stroke. As I was working with this brush, I got the sense of the edge of water, and so I decided to continue with that.

I also am fascinated with the little grass brushes, so I started experimenting with them and started getting some nice depth. Then I wanted some sky, and I went with the star brush, the “dissolve” setting, a medium opacity, and a very pale yellow. Started looking like a sky, and I used the same brush with a blue to increase the sky. I was very happy with that effect.

The water – not as happy, but I still need to experiment. I am overall pleased with the piece, for just scribbling. We’ll see what happens with it in the rest of the lesson.

I am so hooked on abstract pieces from my Photoshop class. If you are at all interested in learning Photoshop, check out myJanee.com. She is wonderful!!

So this next piece is as a result of learning how to use the eye dropper to get the exact color replicated when I need it, rather than having to write down numbers. I had another row, but while it was pleasing, it was boring. I had to add some color, and I am amazed at just how different the same shade of red looks throughout the piece.

I know that one of the things I will do this week is read more about color from the links in our lesson. If I just didn’t have to do lesson plans, I could play all night!!