2020 Already? Well, Hello, Hellebore!

This is the first flower of the plant Hellebore -- the first hellebore I have ever attempted to grow.

To take its portrait, I had to find a forked stick to lift the flower head, as hellebore, in its humility (or perversity, you decide) always looks at the ground so that ants and small birds can see it, but people can't.

We've talked about figuring out a way to plant hellebore in a six-foot high planter to better view the blooms, but most likely, we'll just lift those beautiful faces with our fingers to admire them.

The old Sony Cybershot I bought in 2007 is still the best camera I have for close up shots like this.

Spring Flowers

No time like the present to get back to blogging, right?

I grabbed bundles of alstromeria and stock and made a rustic bouquet with an accompaniment of dark hopseed foliage.

Ah, Spring!

An Experimental Autumn Bouquet

Cover Images Again

Reading Scott Archer Jones' essay in the Piker Press "Why We Write" I was inspired by his words about the characters inside his imagination wanting to speak, so that he had to find the right words to satisfy them. I went to the Library of Congress Flickr gallery and found snippets of people.

And then I got a book from my shelves, an ancient book called In the Heart of the Sierras, by J. M. Hutchings, a book so old it doesn't have a page with a copyright date in it. I photographed a page without illustrations, leached the color out of it in Photoshop, and added my snippets.

I like it.

And I love the internet. I did a search on "In the Heart of the Sierras" and found that the book was published in 1886 -- the title page was torn out of my copy.

Working with Public Domain Photos

This one was a 15-minute project. In fact it was more like a 10-minute project. I wanted to make an illustration to go with Pete Armetta's short fiction "Gypsy Hill" in the Piker Press.

I found a public domain pic of a park online, cropped it to pare it down to the elements and the dimensions I wanted, and used the clone tool to make certain elements disappear. Can't find them, can you? In Photoshop, jarring objects can become invisible!

From Image--> Adjustments--> Saturation, I saturated the colors a little, making them more vivid, then darkened the pic a little. With Filters, I used Artistic--> Paint Daubs. Voila!

 There was a time that I sneered at "flash fiction," but I find that Pete Armetta's short-shorts can inspire some arty effort in me. He's made me a believer in tiny snippets of writing.

This Watercolor Took Several Days

It's nice when you can finish a project in one day, but it doesn't always happen that way.

This one, the cover image of the Piker Press to accompany Ndaba Sibanda's story "The Escape Route in the Dark," began with the part with the man's head near the bottom.

Following through with admonitions to let everything dry, I skipped to the form of the woman, the skulls and skeletons, the cows' heads, the bees.

I let the work stew for a day, then added the colored brush strokes, all with the same brush you saw in the previous post. (I love it!)

In the next step, I taped the picture to my watercolor board on the tabletop easel, and wet the paper in the bottom right corner; the picture was taped up so that the colored pigment would flow to that corner. When that was dry enough to stop flowing, I brought the paper into the house to dry in the furnace's warmth.

Finally, I used my Pilot V7 pen to outline each brushstroke, with a Staedtler .1 pen for the really tiny bits in the smallest skeleton. From there we were Photoshop-bound to add in the black background.

Now the original resides in my scrapbook, protected by tracing paper. I'm thinking I'd like to add the black background in ink, and then frame it under glass. Time will tell. I was pleased with the result.

Tinkering with Watercolor

Nothing like a clean studio to make you want to do something in it.

I set out four sheets of watercolor paper on my watercolor boards for stretching, but then turned to dry paper to mess with the paints while the ones in process dry.

Yes, I know, those are just your basic kiddy watercolors from Target, but I like the colors and I don't have to worry about getting them all gunked up.

I did some geometric shapes on one dry sheet, and then had to let them dry before I can do anything more with the page. A book on watercolors I got at the library had one important point which I knew about but kind of evaded: you have to let them dry.

So I moved on and got really too ambitious, but what the hell, and I got this much done for the day. I'm enjoying it so much I know I'll get back to it soon, and I'll post my progress in the future.

The picture of the daylily is my reference picture. Really, really beyond my skill, but who cares?

One thing I know, the new brush I'm using is fantastic. It's called a "#7 Pro Arte Prolene Plus. I'm getting tiny lines and nice full swaths, and I'm convinced I never had a brush good enough before to make watercolors fun. (And it was inexpensive.)

A bit of creation every day. Feels good.