A Man A Woman

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A man. A woman.
Sharpie drawings
October 24, 2009

Something new. A blog called amanawoman. Take a look and tell me how you would answer the latest challenge there.

My To Do Lists inspired and illustrated with Art

Since middle of last month I have been doing something I've called "100 Todays." It's a project I'm doing in order to make the most of 100 consecutive days.

Each morning, sometimes the night before, I make a list of things I must do and things I would like to do that day. During the day, the more I do the more time I have remaining for pleasure items on the list. To keep track, I've been using my private blog (do all bloggers have a private blog, I wonder?). And to make it fun — and since I refer to the list all day — I have been finding Art I really dig to illustrate it.

There is some awesome talent, including painters, collagists, scanner photographer, paper-cutters, wildflower composer, and even an artist using hot glue! If you see something you like, click on it and it will take you to the featured artist's website.

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P.S. I'm currently at day 18.

Got an Hour? Want a Prize?

I just played Google and Virgin Amercia's Day in the Cloud Challenge, the world's first scavenger hunt that is played both on land and in the air, to be played today only.

PRIZES: 5 prize packages will be awarded, each consisting of: 1 netbook, 1TB Google Account storage for 1 year, 12 one-way tickets on Virgin America (which may be subject to booking limitations) plus 12 complimentary WiFi passes. Each prize has an approximate retail value of $5,000 USD.

Kind of a skimpy prize package for such big boys like Google and Virgin...but hey, I'd take any one of them.

My pathetic score was 5250 feet. (I spent too much time on the zip code question and still didn't get it.)

A Brand New Day

I watched Obama's acceptance speech last night -- twice -- and was uncharacterstically moved. I feel hopeful and encouraged today. After such a long, exclusive, aloof leadership, I feel hopeful with our new leader. May God bless him on his arduous journey.

Now let's get out there and continue to make a difference.

I don't mind the occasional anonymous commenter on my blog about my photos, but I have always been uneasy with it. Anonymous posting can lead to false courage and hard feelings.

Fall Arrived Early

A sampling of fall in Upstate New York
Scanned leaves

My daughter Audrey sweetly gathered, pressed, and shipped a box full of Autumn leaves to me. I paced myself, going through them, one by one. The whole box smelled like the first day of school, Halloween costumes, and frosty mornings.

I love West Texas, but I miss a nippy, leafy fall.

Thank you, Audrey. MWAH!

Technical Problems with Comments

Man -- three posts from me in one day. Sorry about that. I wanted to alert you to a possible Blogger problem.

I am not getting all comment notifications by email as I should be. I'm not sure how long this has been going on, but it seems to be just in the last few days. I noticed a whole bunch of comments I hadn't seen arrive in my email when I went back to comment on the This or That comments this morning. (Back to December 1st. It was joy to see new comments, but a bummer that I almost missed them entirely.) I got most, but -- horrors -- not all. Nor does it seem to be those by any one person or another. It's hit or miss. If it persists, I'll go to the bother of trying to figure out how to report it to Google/Blogger.

The other source of the problem could be my Yahoo email. Has anyone else had this problem of late? Your posts might be more popular than you had originally thought!

Colo{u}rful / Words

Click to see much larger for reading

So rather than a photo entry for this week's 2 Things Challenge, I decided to roll the two things into one and do a scan of my colorful recipe cards (including splatters) of favorite words. These represent more than words invoking wonderful food, but of names I like to recall, too. Some of these women only passed through my life, but on these cards they live on in my memory and my kitchen.

I suppose every one -- all over the world -- does this in some form or fashion. Do you have a stash of recipes, with names or written in another hand? These four represent only a few of my absolute favorite tried-and-true recipes, almost always gathered first hand from a friend.

In the case of "Jeanette's Chicken," looking at the card I actually remember making it the first time myself with Mom in my kitchen, writing it down on that card as we went. It was a recipe she couldn't tell me since she just knew by eye how much to put in. This one is also the oldest recipe -- it goes back to our days in the 70s in Lebanon when everything was made with simple ingredients from scratch. My brothers and I loved this dish, eaten without cutlery, but instead with fingers and fresh Lebanese pita bread. It also is a nice memory because it recalls a friend of my mom's, Jeanette, who taught a young mother ways to cope and thrive, living for the first time overseas.

And no, none of these are diet food. Except maybe the salsa, but only if you don't eat it with chips. Um. For non-Americans, that would be "crisps," I believe. Ha! That brings us full circle back to the multi-national inspiration of the colo{u}rful words part of this challenge. Aren't I clever?

Jorge # 2

Jorge, acrylics on vintage encyclopedia page, 5"X 8", 2007

This is the second portrait of three that I painted of Jorge one recent, relaxing evening. He has a face (to me) that is infinite in its variety of expression. I'm not daring to compare myself to great artists, but I do understand, say Andrew Wyeth's fascination with one face over a lifetime of painting.

The challenge to me in this particular portrait was working with negative space, so to speak, by working around the black in the interior. This portrait doesn't favor Jorge much, but it does capture something of him that is not necessarily about a precise likeness.

Jorge? you say. Yes, Jorge. Love prevails.

7:22 a.m. ADDENDUM
Have you heard David's new song -- well, I think it's new. I just discovered it by checking his myspace this morning. I'm crazy about it! And who is that singing back up? You, Audrey? It's got an extra special treat for me because I get chills when I hear men sing falsetto. David, I love your music more and more and more...and your lyrics are, ahem, stellar.

"I'm Still a Planet"
Don't you take the light away from me
My eyes cannot adjust like yours so goddamned quickly
It seems for once the constellations didn't align for me
Cool it with a side of redundancy
You're not the only person to have ever loved me
Someday all your hate will come to pull you under me
It's best if you forget me,
'cause I'm sorry's don't do anything for me.

Small deer painting

4" X 5.5" Acrylic, copyright Debi Cates

Recently I've been doing some painting, and this weekend I did quite a lot of painting. I like the simplicity of this, the way it looks like it should be an illustration in a children's book.

Fresh (re)start

Acrylic on vintage encyclopedia page, Debi 2007

Just this morning I completed the loading of my new computer with all the stuff from the hard drive off my old computer. What a long-drawn-out job that turned out to be. It's nice to report this feeling of a fresh start. I'm glad to be back in action. Yay!

For Hala, healed

Pearl of the Orient

I don't know Hala, niece-in-law to Rima, but while catching up with blogs this morning, I was so struck by her beauty and could easily envision her healed. I immediately stopped commenting and went to Photoshop to take her up on sending a virtual card made out of her photo.

Here's to all positive news, warm healing light, and to a lifetime of treasures for you, Hala.

Must...work...not....play

Rima's Digital Art Workshop #3, "Sudden Urge"

OK, that's out of my system. Now must work.

What I did: various cut and paste, a little brush work, smearing, and added the scissors.

Digital Art Workshop # 3

Rima's Digital Art Workshop #3, "51 Percent Water"

When Rima posts these assignments, I promise to schedule some free time for them. Instead, I frequently do as I did tonight: I think I'll work for "just a little while" before bed and then end up staying up until midnight because I get an idea that I just have to see through to the end.

Rima, the bags under my eyes tomorrow are all yours. ;)

What I did:

• Used magic wand to select the woman from the original image, refining my selections by using the shift (+) or the alt (-) keys.
• Opened a new canvas and moved the selection (not the image, just the selection) to it.
• Used rectangle to select and copy the water from the original image.
• Pasted that into the new image, using paste into, and used free transform to size it like I wanted.
• Created a new layer for the words.
• Then flattened image.
  
• Selected the white space on the new image (now I'm in reverse of the woman and words)
• Copied some more water from the original image
• Pasted it into the new image so it now surrounds the woman and words, and again used free transform to stretch it to fit.
  
• Somewhere in there I tweaked the colors of the two waters in order to fade the woman water and saturate the sea water.
• I also think I changed the layer intensity on the words so that where they overlapped the woman they were more intense, but where they overlapped the white canvas (at that time), they were lighter.
• Oh yeah, I also googled the percentage of water in humans. Surprisingly, woman have less than men.
  

I'm loving paste into.

As per Rima's suggestion...

As per Rima's suggestion, I decided to try something other than the plain white background (see previous post). For the blackboard, I veered from my intent of using strictly elements from the original image, but I think it did improve the overall composition! It is now no longer "floating."

Stayed up late doing this...

"First Day of School Jitters," aka another stab at Rima's Digital Art Workshop Deux

Just before going to bed, I had another idea for Rima's Workshop that I wanted to try. Bad idea, because three hours later, and much too late to be up on a Sunday night, I finished the "idea." I was thinking of all the kids going back to school this month. In particular I was thinking of Rima's girls. My advice: short skirts and high heels are fine. Short skirts, high heels, and being clumsy like me is a bad combination.

What I did:
Lots of cutting and pasting, a bit of rotating, and a couple of erasing of edges. Just for a personal challenge, I kept the original dimensions of the cuts.

Rima's Digital Art Workshop Deux

Rima's Marazine blog Assignment #2 Frida Opens a Flower Shop

What I did:

I would select various parts of the image and while still selected, I would use "paste into" to paste various photographs of mine of flowers, a broken window, a clay head I made of Frida, a shot of the moon, etc. It is a different technique than regular paste and I would highly recommend your trying it some time. While in that mode you can "transform" that pasted item to rotate it, resize it, skew it, etc. which I did to scale things to my liking.

I changed the "Gift" shop to a "Flower" shop.

After I got all the components in (when to stop?), I flattened all the layers and then pasted another layer of the same image at 50% opacity, and did a guassian blur on it. This helped blend the image a little better.

Again, I flattened all the layers, and then using lighting effects, I put a soft light on it (this helped give it the dreamy evening look), and then lastly, put a film grain on it, and faded the effect down to 30%.

Summary:
This is one of the more complex things I've done, and I'm not entirely satisfied with the results (I see quite a few impatient boo-boos), but I did stretch my abilities. I had often thought I would like to try a digital collage using my own images only. As an opportunity to try new things, and to learn, it was a huge success and I appreciate Rima putting us to this challenge!

FifteenSixteen images I used (can you find them all in the Flower shop?):

Lilypad for Rima

Here is my version of Rima's workshop assignment number 1, "Lilypad."

The Photoshop steps I took were:
1. Opened the Lilypad image, selected all, and copy. Left that image opened.
2. Opened a new image, pasted the image as a new layer, reduced the layer opacity to 25%, just so I could barely see it.
3. Opened a new layer, then going to back and forth, using the original image as a pallet, I dipped my dipper into it for colors, and painted on top of the nearly transparent layer. One of the things I was pleased to discover during this assignment -- and I suspect Rima had hoped we would stretch ourselves to learn new things -- was the ability to change the paint brush option from Normal to Behind which worked great for me because I started with the center of the flower and built outward.
4. After "painting" in the detailed elements, it was time to figure out how to do the water. (I think I work backwards, don't you?) I used a really big brush, one that had feathered edges, and set the opacity to about 40 and kept re-painting around my details, allowing for there to be lighter and darker areas in the water. A happy accident in painting the water was I found that touching the edges of the painted details gave them some quasi-shadows.
5. Lastly, I merged all my layers, selected all, copied, then pasted into the same image. Then I set that latest layer's opacity to 50% and pointilized it. (I tried pointilizing the original "painting" first, but it was too harsh, much too Photoshop-Effecty.)

And then I called it done. Because as you probably know, once you get started playing in Photoshop it's hard to know when to quit!

If I had anything to share in my bag of "tricks," it would be changing the opacity setting on layers. This helped me:

• "Trace" my "painting" over the original image.
• Subdue the effects of artistic filters.

Three cheers for Rima for giving us this fun assignment! I learned something new in doing my "homework." I bet you did too.

Offbeets

"Offbeets" acrylics on encyclopedia page, July 10, 2007

The summer I was twelve years old, I received painting lessons from my grandmother every Saturday morning. The first lessons were about art principles, like things about perspective and vanishing points, and things like light sources and the range of colors in shadows and highlights.

I did lots of little practice lessons, and then, at the end of the summer and the end of my lessons, she arranged a simple still life of some tomatoes from my grandfather's vegetable garden for me to paint. She even gave me a real canvas on which to execute my pièce de résistance.

I was pleased with my results and I was proud that I had used most of the techniques she had so lovingly taught me. I decided to make my "Summer Tomatoes" as a gift to my mother, who had drove me to Grandma's every Saturday. And besides, what kid doesn't always give their best art work to their mom?

My mother was duly impressed. She oo'ed and ah'ed joyfully and proudly. She positively beamed as she said, "Debi, how beautiful! What lovely apples!"

I can't tell you how many times remembering that story has made me laugh. I love you, Mom.

Not blue Blueberries

69 cent acrylics on 1950s encyclopedia page

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but I've begun experimenting with painting. Even more than drawing, I want to paint. Like Katlynn, who says when she comes over, "I paint." Not "I want to paint," mind you, but rather the commanding and firm, "I paint."

So to play with painting without having to think too hard to draw, I did this experiment. I started with a random encyclopedia page. I began by painting over the image of the blueberries there in the bottom right corner. I enjoyed them so much, I moved over to the left and painted another batch. And then another above. I could have stayed up all night painting blueberries, but decided I liked leaving some of the encyclopedia showing. (My grandmother used to do the same thing -- staying up all night painting. The older I get, the more like her I find myself becoming. Just call me Polly.)

The blueberries actually turned out to be yaupon holly berries, which makes more sense since we have plenty of those growing around here, but no blueberries. I dig how it says "blueberry" on the page, but it's not blue. That's me and my weird taste.

I do like the way this turned out, on the encyclopedia page, something about its collage-y, post-modern, raw recycled-look that appeals to me. What do you guys think? I'm trying to figure out where to go next with this look.

Delight

I worked today on cleaning house and then on an upcoming BHS70s update. Neither of which provided much opportunity for a photo. So I went scouring through some old scans of mine.

With special thoughts of new friends Rima and Neda, here's a past creative effort of mine. It's an ATC done in magazine punches, white-out, and colored pencils. It was part of a series, Fruit Advice. This one reads "Delight in the methodical eating of a pomegranate."