Gazpacho!

Michele Host's cover story for the Piker Press this week just about drove me nuts.

The story is called "Gazpacho" and although somewhat on the slap-your-hands-over-your-eyes ook, nevertheless made me long for gazpacho, a dish which I have loved for well over thirty years and never make because my beloved husband hates tomatoes in any form other than spaghetti sauce.

(Or fried green tomatoes, which I, in a strange cosmic reciprocation, loathe.)

The cover image, which said husband chose out of these three, is a digital photo, stretched a little and super saturated with color in Photoshop.

This one was a macro -- close focus feature -- which I also Photoshopped, this time with "paint daubs" as a filter.

I chopped a tomato and some celery and a white onion for these shots, all the while promising myself that I would use the ingredients to make some real gazpacho for myself later.

The last picture I used the artistic filter "paint daubs" on, and then another filter "poster edges." This probably would have been my first choice for cover, but Bernie has a good eye.

P.S. The gazpacho I made this afternoon was HEAVENLY.

But that's another creative post.

Luggage

This was the cover image for Tyler Willson's story, "Castaways."

I wanted something vivid, but simple, and opted for a rough sketch in pastels, on black construction paper. As noted in previous posts, such sketches don't scan well, or even photograph well. What the eye sees doesn't correspond with the camera's lens.

I scanned the pic, then used Photoshop to super-saturate the colors. The I used "adjustments" to enhance the blacks. Luminous!

The red is for balance and deception. In Part Two of the story the following week, I left this image for Tyler as a treat:

Architecture

Mary Andes' excellent story, "The Music Tells It All" inspired me to look up pictures of Mission Buenaventura and try to reproduce it in Photoshop.

Currently a pastel sketch of this picture graces a canvas in the studio, soon to be the recipient of oil paint. I hope. That should be good for a few days' creation.

After Years

Chas Wallace's story, "Kinamoor and Darrelma" poked me to finish this oil painting.

Alex had stolen it from my art closet and given it a place in her office, but it was far from done. I stole it back and finished it, making a digital photograph for the cover art.

My memory is far more photographic than hers, so I can steal back this tiny oil (only 6" x 8") at will.

What? A Month?

It's really annoying to see that a month has gone by without a post. Truly it makes one feel like a filthy piker.

So we'll catch up, with as many days as I can remember and have on hand.

First up is the illustration for Jerry Seeger's Piker Press story "High Desert Blues."

The lines that inspired me were these:

"To the stars, the planets must seem like mad prophets and rock stars, untamed and reckless as they careen about the firmament, but the planets are also bound, their courses charted and known. When planets speak wistfully of freedom, do the stars even understand the word? "