First, there’s sitting down on the floor with the box of big crayons and going through and picking a palette. So many reds! Then drawing on the great big sheets of paper, wondering if it can be filled, detail dots, scribble scribble fill. Capture to share! Too big for a scanner, snap. Snap snap snap snap. And then a game in photoshop, reassemble but not perfectly, but keeping the whole.
Doodle Collage
July 22nd, 2007Sea Walk Reflection
July 14th, 2007I’ve made a little progress organizing the source images from the Vancouver trip and purging some of the high res images that were out of focus or boring. I’m imagining that I’ll make a slide show/video to share. I’ve played with iMovie a bit but have never really completed a project. Maybe this time will be it!
This image is one i particularly liked, along with the horizontal version. The sea walk along the north side of the West End with the high rise apartments reflecting in Coal Harbor.
Cedar Waxwing
July 4th, 2007I finally had Roll2007.06 developed. And picked up. And read the CD to my computer. It’s a very birdy roll with gold finch, sparrow and Florida ospreys. The osprey photos are neat, and i note that had i had the telephoto to zoom in on the nest, i would never have caught the images in flight. There appears to be a great deal of grain in these photos. I don’t know if i could do better scanning in the images myself.



Photo management thoughts
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Still Life: Brockton Point Color
June 24th, 2007A still life i arranged, enjoying the saturated colors of the wet shells and seaweed under the grey morning sky. For scale, the broken bit of purple clam shell is half an inch wide on the edge parallel with the crab claw.
Wooden waves
June 24th, 2007I took many photos yesterday as i wandered Stanley Park. This image in full size is a little less sharp than i’d like, but the image stabilization feature on the new camera did an amazing job of allowing the image to be taken in the woods on a grey morning. I’ve another with a flash and i may see if i was consistent enough in my crouched shooting pose to merge the flash and natural light images. Someday. When there’s time….
Happy with Aerial Photos, for once
June 19th, 2007The shots of the Cascade range peaks i took from the plane please me for once. This isn’t a peak, though, but probably Birch Bay, south of Vancouver. I loved looking at the patterns of the mud flats as we came in for a landing.
In Progress, as well
June 4th, 2007I also did these tonal works a week or so ago. I think the paper i used was sold as palette paper, which i must have purchased before the birthday when Christine gave me the glass palette. Stretching the paper with masking tape at the corners helped keep the warping down and the dry pieces are satisfactory, especially as studies.
I want to keep layering color, but Christine became quite fond of the green piece as it is. I do like the tree, which has an underpainting of Golden’s light modeling paste, giving the bark texture a very tactile presence.
I really do love painting *textures* as much as saturated colors. The red has high gloss + tar gels that are slick, contrasting with the stained gesso.
Update from July 2005
June 4th, 2007In late July 2005, I painted the grisaille under painting for this work. I froze up though, knowing that i don’t have the skills to bring my vision to the canvas. A couple weeks ago I added some color, finally. I think i’ve overworked the stormy sky and the water — which is much more translucent in person — is too dark. I’ve a white pigment that is supposed to be more translucent (titanium is more translucent than zinc), but it’s still more opaque. Ah well.
The first coatings of hansa yellow made the torso look jaundiced; i warmed it up with a red, and probably wiped off more than i applied — but it works.
I really don’t know what to do with the flying buttresses and how to imply more clearly that they are part of the being with the torso. I suppose having the window go “behind” her hip doesn’t support that idea, does it.
Oh well, in another couple of years….
[And then there's the whole sad state of the dead photo album links and the sad state of some of the imported MovableType entries.]
See the Flickr Image
May 13th, 2007It’s a different sort of digital image, but it’s still fun to work with (except when one mis-copies digits in calculations).
In other news, i finished off the lingering roll of film yesterday (Roll2007.06, i think.) with some telephoto images of a goldfinch. I should remember to use shutter speed priority when using the telephoto.
I’m loading Roll2007.07 — Kodak HD4 24 400/27° — to have ready for the next bird opportunity that comes along.
[I don't know why the post-from-Flickr failed.]
May Day(-ish) Gardening
May 5th, 2007Since i was out of town on May Day, the little bit of gardening for the season happened today. A trip to Summerwinds Nursery while Christine was at Foothill’s gym resulted in a red azalea for the dining room sideboard table and a variety of herbs and a few veggies.
At home, i got the last of the potting soil and mixed with worm castings. That filled a new low bowl planter — this one plastic — and a medium pot. In the low bowl i planted the six beans (I hope they’re runner beans!), dill, and two varieties of basil. In the pot went a Poblano pepper (if i recall correctly) and some sage. I pulled up most of the ginger root from the square planter, and left only two small nubs that looked like they’d sprout. There was already English mint in that planter; i added pineapple mint. In the herb planter, where the tarragon and thyme looked a little peaked, i added a lemon balm and loosened the soil a bit. I added a nice thyme to the oregano planter; Greybeard’s taken to sleeping in that planter, too.