Portrait Photography - My neighbour Gill

My  neighbour Gill kindly agreed to sit for me  . . . . it was such a lovely day, the sun was shining, we cleared a bit of space in her living room  and chatted about this and that while I moved around her with the camera. I really enjoyed the session though she was quite upset by the pictures when she saw them . . . . . " I didn't know I looked like that" she said when she saw the wrinkles and lines. But this was exactly what I wanted to show . . . . that women are beautiful with and despite their lines and wrinkles. I'm so glad that I got the chance to take these pictures . . .  if you knew her you'd see that I've captured something of the essence of Gill. I am sorry that they upset her so.

One of the things I'm trying to do is take pictures spontaneously, use the camera, the lighting, the setup just as is, just as I find it. Not quite sure where I'm going with this but I shall, as always,  follow my nose and see where it leads me.

Ink blot Photoshop Brushes

Having cleared the advancing tide of fabric so that I could do the first part of my Mandala collaboration with Shana I took advantage of the space to get some ink out and do a couple of ink blots to make into Photoshop brushes. I've been wanting to do this for ages and oooh, what fun it was to splatter . . . . . I used watercolour paper for this first one but cartridge paper for the second.

 Watercolour paper again for the one above . . . .

and then with just a little ink left in the saucer I dragged a dry fan shaped brush along the paper. I wasn't going to keep this one, didn't really think it was going to give good results but so glad I did.

Once scanned in I desaturated the image and tweaked about with the levels, making a light, medium and dark version - being careful to save each version as well as the original! Pushing the dark end of the Levels takes all the midtones and most of the detail out of course but the heavier version can give some good brush results . . . . I've used all three levels of the same brush on the bottom half of the image above  . . . . all on seperate levels so I can move them about if I need and then using a soft fuzzy brush at about 30% opacity as an eraser to just blend the edges together. 

Here is the long streaky brush . . .  looks way better than I thought especially when layered with another colour

Straightforward inkblots . . . . .

but this is what they look like all together . . . I used  large dark ink brush at the top of the image layering it in black and turquoise. Gotta love the yellow though it's 'out of gamut' which is Photoshop speak for 'Holy Smokes you can't print that!!'

You can see where I've used the brushes in this piece below . . . .  I used the lasso selection tool to make the tall rectangular shapes and the splatter ink blots inside that.  A whole world of possibilities opens up does it not? My busy little mind is thinking of all the other paint/wet media techniques I used to use . . . . . .

In case you want to make some brushes for yourself here is my basic tutorial 
on how to get started and another on building textures with brushes 

In which I collaborate with Shana

Something new, something really quite exciting . . . . a collaboration with Shana Goetsch on her Art that Circles the Earth project which is all about creating  Mandalas . . .  here is her blog post about me  (gosh feels strange to be reading about myself ).

 We each start a piece then send it to each other,  add a bit to it then send it back. We do this twice before it's finished. I've been making virtual art for quite a while now, one reason being that with one room to work in and all the fabric for my vintage stuff ( Every Girl's Story ) in that one room there really isn't the space to get the paints out or the ink or the boxes of assemblage stuff. But this gives me an excuse to clear the table and get physical with some art. I've even splattered some ink around to make some new Photoshop brushes and boy, does that feel good!  I want to try them out first but hope to share those with you during the week some time. In the meantime I've done the  first part of my Mandala and it goes off in the post to Shana on monday . . .  I'm going to be sitting by the letterbox waiting for the postman till hers comes winging it's way to me.

Scribble Domain - Mid Century Designs

Oh yes, I have been busy, scribbling away, trying this, trying that. Dumping this and going with that. So, some new stuff . . . . . prints now listed in my Scribble Domain etsy shop.  A new abstract  ( above ), a very satisfying combination shape and line. It's not always as easy as it looks to get that balance just right.

Another print worked up from a scribble I did with a fineliner and a brush pen . . . . chopped up and reworked . . . . the one below is for a notebook cover.  Paper is cut, all ready and waiting for me to print out the covers. I'm at a bit of a low ebb, energy wise so I'll have to get to that later in the week.

And my curiosity being what it is I thought I'd just see how that design looked on a mug. Only stuck on with bluetack mind,  but I put it in the kitchen so I could look at it and was suprised to find that, despite being Modernist,  italso looks good with pretty vintage stuff

The dark blue vase behind it has obviously been an influence . . . .

Then something completely different. Believe me when I say this happened completely by accident, it just made itself. I was only fooling round with a couple of shapes (honest guv) and before I knew it I had 'The Rialto'. Not what I was planning to do but I was so taken with it I thought I'd see if I could do something else in that vein . . . . cut paper shapes have now been added to the scribbles 

The Temples . . . . .  hoping  these might evolve into a series.

The Rialto as a possible mug design . . . . 

and lastly fooling around with The Temples as a stamp. Another notebook cover perhaps? I have all these printed out and stuck on my wall so I can live with them for a while . . . . got to let the ideas percolate for a bit, see what else happens . . . . .

Through a glass darkly

The pictures I take are only ever a starting point, most end up as photoshop brushes and the  rather crappy lo-fi ones from the last time are no exception. Totally unexceptional to look at just as they were they offered all kinds of possibilities once turned into brushes  . . . like the one above.  A few ideas . . . .

And then that rather dreary one taken the day it rained. I did add a bit of noise to this one, not something I usually do because it tends to look so obvious.

And a kind of sepia thing . . .  I started with a dark brown background layer and chose a pale milky coffee colour for the stamp.

And then for good measure stick 'em all together and see what you get. Has possibilities I think don't you? Must get some more black card I'm thinking and try some more photos.

Lo-fi effects with a Digital Camera

Welcome to the very Lo-Fi- DIY- Whitney-Way of  messing up your photographs. Why would you want to mess up perfectly good photographs taken with your perfectly good digital camera? Because everybody is going with the Lomo-Holga- light- leaking- crappy-lens-oh-no-everything's-turned-yellow look, that's why. I can't quite commit to one of these cheap and nasty Eastern European or Chinese cameras and so I've been looking at various stuff online like how to use your SLR as a pinhole camera. Isn't that just the most exquisite joke?

Here are a couple of sites that will give you some idea of what these cameras can do - 

Lomography , ephotozine article, Flickr Holga Pool,The Holga Darkroom.

I also found came across Jojo's Photostore  which has lo-fi lenses for your SLR. I can only drool over the website and start saving my pennies for my bloved camera does not have a removable lens.

So, I start thinking . . . . . what if? What if I take a bit of dark card, cut a vignette kind of shape out of it and tape it over my camera lens ( being ever so careful not to scratch said lens ) ?  I also played around with the exposure . . .  picture above, overexposed, picture below on normal setting.

This one was taken on a really grey rainy day which worked rather well with the whole bleached out look.

And here are the two bits of card I was playing around with. The round hole started out as a pinhole but the camera just got confused and gave up so I gradually widened the hole and, um, got a bit impatient and ended up with a tear on one side. Was goingt to try that one again but I'd run out of dark card.

These are the pictures I got with the round ( ish )  hole . . . .

Quite fun I think, I especially like the blurring round one edge though I don't know what caused that.

Then a few days later I thought I'd try holding a glass up to the lens. Actually, I was just going to sleep when I thought of it and it was all I could do to stop myself leaping out of bed and running downstairs to try it.

My two different kinds of drinking glasses . . . . .

And this is what I got . . . . . . .

Kind of cool don't you think? I really, really enjoyed using the camera like this. Not sure where I'll go from here but it's made me think about taking pictures in a very different way