Blue Jay

Okay, get ready for a few posts.

This one was the cover for Mark Lyon's beautifully written, "He Sure Do Want To Fly."

What a story! When I first read it as a submission, I was so moved I couldn't be sure of my opinion. I sent it to Cheryl, our Poetry Editor and Voice of Reason. She, too, was impressed, and I sent Mark an acceptance letter. In the mean time, Bernie took my printed-out copy with him to work to read, and after he read it, one of his co-workers snitched it from him, becoming so engrossed she hid the manuscript in a bin of parts so that she could read it while she worked!

Yeah, it was a good one.

Writing, and stuff

Then there was the short story, "Pecking Order, " which took days to scratch out.

And many evenings and afternoons cleaning up the continuity gaffe in the serial novel "Transitions."

Plus a number of days when I was riding the horse to keep him from colicking, and working on formatting Press articles and fiddling with OPGraphics (Other People's Graphics) to make them Pressworthy ... Time just gets away, and there's never enough of it, and why the hell have I never in my life been able to say, "I'm bored, I have nothing to do"?

There is a preliminary sketch on a canvas in the studio. I can FEEL the blueness of the sky that is going to appear there. This week is supposed to be one of clement temperatures, so I hope to get out there and obsess over color and shape. I'll take photos, for sure.

Playing Catch Up As Usual

It's just wrong how time gets away from me ... some say it's because I'm of an age approaching the speed of light, and others say it's because I'm a spacey, lazy old cow who would rather sit in the shade and sip wine with her husband rather than work.

Maybe it's both.

Nevertheless (don't I always say that?) I have been trying to keep busy. This image is from Lydia Manx's story "Dawn's Early Light".

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.