Murky waters and the right light lead to some fabulous digitally enhanced images!
Photos of the Sky!
Revisiting Foil
I am revisiting foil: real aluminum foil with the addition of a digital foil plus the usual fixing & fussing.
The time has come to sort through my old printing plates, now that the Blick Etching press has a new home in Anacortes. I sold the press, and have not been a member of the local Printmakers Guild, Corvidae Press, for many years now. I don’t plan to much printing, but I have kept a number of “permanent” plates that still amuse me. Yesterday I shuffled through a set of mat board & aluminum foil plates, which were used for a “low tech etching” technique.
I colored three of these plates, using various marker pens. Then I scanned these, for the record… After the scan, I digitally foiled the images, of course! Here are the two that I like best. Not my favorite works, but fun nonetheless.
Goodbye Blick Etching Press
Goodbye my lovely home studio printing press!
My 18″ Model 999 Blick press has been semi-retired for years now, dormant under a dust cover. It had become something of a spider habitat in the corner of my garage workshop space.
Today I SOLD it to an eager new printmaker in Anacortes, who was very excited to get it. She also purchased a small fortune in clean unused zinc plates, along with 10 large sheets of Rives BFK. I sold these at half the Blick Art Materials listed price, with no tax or shipping charges. Of course I am happy to get some cash in hand, and my price was a bargain for my “customer”.
I wish her much satisfaction and excellent results! Happy printing, LisaMarie!
Ghosts, Shadows and Echoes
Flora, fauna, and man made objects all leave their own ghosts: shadowy traces and remains that echo like ghosts of the original. I love these reminders of what has been. These images are derived from the ghosts, shadows, and echoes on a well-used outdoor table. The top of this table has magic for me.
I especially love the dark magic in the last foil below, and could not resist a little extra enhancement of some of the imagery and detail in this piece.
Low Tide Gems
Exquisite finds for digital enhancement can be found at low tide on the right beach! I took so many photos that it will be impossible to process them all, but this barnacle encrusted salt water washed remnant of an old corduroy road or railroad bed, now on tidal lands, is too good to resist. The iron stains and barnacles make my digital enhancement tools dance!
And sometimes I see animals and people in driftwood, as well as in clouds. So the beach today produced an illusory whale vertebrae and a rabbit sitting up at attention.
Nest Eggs is on the flip side of Table Dancer
Nest Eggs is complete on the flip side of Table Dancer now. “Nest Eggs” is the interim title for the second painting on the center section of my flip-top art table. I hope to come up with a better title for this new painting though!
I used a digitally transformed and enhanced photo of a real bird nest (with stone “eggs”) as my inspiration. The nest with eggs is recognizable enough with the title as the hint. Clearly some eggs escaped the nest however, and the shapes and shadows have little basis in any reality we know.
Art Table with Table Dancer: Progress!
I am finally making some further progress on my art table with table dancer and nest! This is my project to transform a damaged flip-top game table into a flip-top art table. The top of this table features a large inset square that you can lift out and flip over. My finished table will feature a choice of two different artworks. I suppose I will have to restrict myself to 2-dimensional work here; although there is actually space for some modest relief carefully placed. However we might find that to be pretty annoying when actually using the table!
So far I completed the painting on one side of the reversible square section that is set into the table top. Side I features the “Table Dancer” in deep blues and greens. I just painted the surrounding fixed border section that frames the inset images, using a subtle variation of muted light greens. There is a just a tiny hint of iridescence and metallic gold. The goal is for this border to look “right” with both paintings. The greens work with the Table Dancer side, but are very light and muted, to work with my plan for the second painting.
And now I have a running start on the painting for the other side. I expect the nest painting will be more abstract, and will feature lighter tones. The concept is loosely based on an a digitally transformed photo of a real bird nest with stone eggs. I am not ready to show any realistic photos of this side yet.
Here is a digitally transformed and enhanced version of a photo of my early draft, which is not much more than a background so far. I enjoy the digital fun, and this is quite lush and rather gorgeous. It is much too colorful for my table, and I would struggle to put that much saturated color on any painting! It is a bit reminiscent of Chinese Brush Painting perhaps?
Anyway I have made further progress on my art table with Table Dancer and Nest!
Foiled Birding with Fat Baby Bird
Lately I have been foiled in my attempts to display my Fat Baby Bird in a couple of locations, so I turned to digitally foiling my fat baby birds here. And as you can see, I have gone into a little “mass production”. I make and sell a limited number of cement casts of my limestone carving. The stone original is the unpainted bird shown above, which I display on a cement “honeycomb” base I designed. The painted birds are two of my limited edition casts. So far I have made my original carving plus eight cast cement birds, each painted differently. I plan to limit the edition to 25 or less.
Numbering the Edition
I want to keep track of the order of these casts, and where these baby birds go, but I may be confused already. I failed to note the order and the location of their new homes as I worked. The numbered list below is my best reconstruction of the sequence of my cast birds.
I hand chiseled my fat baby bird from a small block of limestone. You can see it in the first photo above. I cast the original, making a silicone mold with a plaster mother mold, and it is my very first stone carving. I plan to keep the original carved bird for myself!
The “Numbered Edition”:
- Fat Baby Bird #1 sits on an inverted flower pot, since I had not yet come up with a good default base. I donated #1 to the local animal shelter to adorn their dog walking trail.
- Fat Baby Bird #2 has my chosen base, for use when a bird does not find a unique home perch. It visited the Pettygrove ROW for a while, then moved to a home with a friend & neighbor.
- Baby Glitter Bird is out on the town: for now she nestles on a stump along the Spruce St. public trail near the Ft. Worden back gate.
- Dark Bird will stay home with me for now, as I am fond of the darker colors and his golden tears.
- Quiet Fat Baby Bird moved a few blocks away, to a sheltered garden on Olympic Ave, to be at home with someone who needs her.
- Iridescent Baby Bird perches a bit aslant on a rock, very much at home in the lovely garden of friends who live nearby.
- And Buff-breasted Baby Bird, the most quizzical of the lot somehow, is trying out perches in the garden of another friendly home almost next to me on 33rd St. B4 may settle on a spot soon, or maybe not!
- Just painted: Baby Bird with Bill, pun intended, will move to the home of another immediate neighbor! BBwB has a stacked log perch already and waiting…
- Not yet finished, Yellow-Breasted Baby Bird expects to have a new home soon, across the street in a rockery.
* * * time passes, 1/5/2021 Update: - Green Eyed Baby Bird: commissioned 12/2020 by Fran Post, as a gift for Nan Evans. Cast with two mixes: a “slip”mix slopped into the mold first, then fill with heavier drier mix, with a weighted mini-yogurt cup created void. First draft paint job above.
