Fun with Photo Editing

I’ve been having quite some fun with my new WACOM tablet.  It is making editing so much easier.  It’s like having my hands back on a brush. I knew the limitations of working with a mouse, yet I didn’t realize how much more control a tablet would actually give me.  Navigation within a document is so much easier. There’s some quirky things I’ve got to get use to.  It’ just a matter of rethinking how I do certain commands and setting up the tablet to  match the way I would use key commands.  It’ll take some time, but OH! the results I’ll get

Here I’ve used the tablet to do some photo editing. I couldn’t have done such a great job layering the textures or bringing out the details on the hair if I had to still rely on the mouse.  Now I wish I had bought a tablet sooner.

Whiskers

Well,as you can see, I don’t know cat anatomy that well.  I’m more of a dog person. The prompt for Illustration Friday, though, was “whiskers.”  That makes me think more of cats.  Anyway, I just got a new digital Wacom tablet and this is the second image that I’ve painted with it.  Needless to say, I’m as happy as a cat with a ball of yarn.

Angel

Just having fun with my new Wacom digital art tablet.

Squirt

Gals In the Garden

In The Garden

Summer gardening takes some attitude and grit to make things grow. I guess I don’t have this year. By this time in the season my raise beds should be over flowing with squash and cucumber vines. I generally have lush tomato plants that are covered with bright yellow buds and swelling fruit. The bees would be buzzing in and around the plants as I tended their care. But alas, not this year. I’m blaming the weather here in the Bay Area; too many cool, over-cast days. The truth, though, is my attitude for these activities have waned a bit.

My interest have been diverted to the interior of my home. Painters are currently finishing up transforming my dull beige and white walls into sunny yellows and dreamy blues. One room is being painted with a color that is so appropriate for an artist. It’s called Clean Canvas. Doesn’t that just make you want to go and start something new! So in away I guess I am still planting seeds. The kind will burst into new interiors that will feed my need to design a garden of a different sort.

SUSPEND for IF

If life is a circus, then we all stand suspended on a tight rope between our next act and the consequences it may produce.  In our hectic lives these days it seems we only have time to act and not ponder the consequences like we should.  If we could only slow down and take a moment to just think things through a bit more those consequences would so different.  We need more balance between action and thought.

REFRESH for IF

Hot, muggy summer days can be a real drain on one’s mood.  What better way to refresh than to jump into a pool of cool water.

Space for IF

There is this question that is asked to see if someone is an optimistic or a pessimistic. Is the cup half empty or half full?  I don’t like the question.  Maybe it’s because I waver between the two points of view.  Sometimes the world is good. Sometimes it’s not.  Time changes one’s outlook on life. In fact, at this time in my life, I know that the cup is never empty because it is always full of space. It is space that allows the flow from full to empty and back again.   Space that reassures me that there is room for that inevitable change that will come. All I have to do it look at the lives that came before me to know this. I can see the ebb and flow of it in all my  ancestors lives.  So I am neither a optimist or pessimist.  I am the space between the two.

Secret for Illustration Friday

Have you ever just started drawing and just went with whatever came up, like random shapes or squiggly lines? You let it develop it’s own life.  It might look like a Rorschach test for a while. Then it morphs into images that you recognize, but your don’t know what they’re doing together. Still you just let it flow.  You keep working at it, finding patterns and forms you want to develop.  The composition develops with focal area and subordinate elements.  Then, just about when you’re done, you get it.  You see the connection from what you’ve be making to what’s going on in your life.  It’s like you’ve been sitting going over and over a dream that you’ve had when all of a sudden the symbolism becomes clear.  You get it.

That’s didn’t happen with this piece.  It’s still a secret.  Why are there angels? I don’t know.  Where he is pulling her to? I don’t know.  Why is she holding back? What is she about to see?  You tell me.  I painted this piece a couple of years ago.  I’m still wondering about what’s going on with the two of them. Maybe, like dreams  that fade as morning wanes into the afternoon,  too much time has passed, and I’ll never know. Some secrets are never revealed.