Where there's smoke...

Where there's smoke there is fire and my creative cells have certainly been on fire today!

I'm so excited! There's nothing like a creative burst to rejuvinate and energise my soul. I went to a mall this morning and hated every minute of it. Busy. Noisey. Artificial. I came home utterly knackered and all I'd done is walk. I knew what I needed to do to break out of the slump I found myself in and I dedicated my afternoon to some 'nest time.' As crazy as it sounds, my first ICE collage for the 2011 exchange came to me the other night as I drifted off to sleep.I've had the concept brewing for a few months now but I wasn't sure how I would express it. Then I saw it. One collage encompassing the whole idea, the colours, the images, the marks made by stitches and paint. I can't wait to get it out of my head and on to paper. I decided to start by photographing some of the beautiful nests I have around my home. I wanted to create new nest images to use in collages and you can see some of the results below...

And then came these ones...

I'm lovin' this one below. Lines crossing and interweaving barely recognisable as a nest yet earthy, dramatic and bold.

My theme for the 2011 collage exchange is "Fragile" and I was thinking about my theme and wondering how I could better express it. I was totally loving the images I created but knew I hadn't quite found 'the one'  and then it came to me.. 

With my 'fragile' series I'm revisting a familiar theme..based on a theory of mine that society is a nest.

A nest built from a foundation of love, hope, warmth and safety will raise children that can fly and prosper. The whole future of our children is dictated by the nest they live in and how far they will fly depends on each of us. What we do or don't do makes our society what it is. The nest is precious and the souls within it...fragile.

Fragile. ICE 2011 Series. Coming soon.

Old Bridge and Boats

I went for a walk yesterday across the Matapihi Bridge. It's still in use as a rail bridge and has pedestrian access. There's always something to see (last time we saw a shark swimming below!) and I've photographed it quite a few times now! If your interested in street grafitti you may like this previous posting. I applied some digital filters to one of my photos and I'm quite pleased with the results. The original is below.

I couldn't resist an erosion shot!

After our walk we went down the the old wharf and ate hot chips for lunch. My son couldn't resist tying one to some fishing line he found to see if he could catch one of the sprats hanging around the wharf's poles. I used the coloured pencil filter to get the image below.

Old fishing boats waiting to go out.

The photo below is inspired by the current Illustration Friday theme 'Detective' and also by Mick's regular contributions to the Illustration Friday themes.

The birthday girls' detective work was unable to spoil the surpise she got when the presents were finally opened!

Sparrow

I decided to play around with my bird photo below using photofiltre. I am looking forward to getting these printed and used in my collages! The top image is my favorite although I love how the bird seems to appear from the background in the middle one...the third one would make a wonderful lino print (although challenging!)

I've complete my 3 collage and half the 4th...will post a photo soon!

Cheers!

This has been manipulated from a photo very similar to this one posted on my TDP blog with a bit of history about this iconic bottle. I really like this image, it was one of those suprises you get when you randomly selection filters and effects without knowing what they will do..I'm getting it printed out and colour photocopied today because I would love to see this on paper. I have some nest images too so watch this space!

New toys to play with!

Well I have no idea why it took me so long but I finally downloaded some software for my computer. I guess my natural tendency towards being suspicious of any cool toys that are promoted as being free has been a little harder to shake than I thought! But thanks to a suggestion by Mick I ended up on trail of links is search of free software to download. I've ended up with a paint programme called dogwaffle and a photo editing programme called photofiltre. As you can see I played around with a photo of a bird in a tree that I took and posted a while ago now on my Tauranga Daily Photo blog (and it's also posted below) and I mucked around with one of the very few photos of myself I actually have! The editing programme is capable of a lot more than the basic functions I've used for these images (although I like these a lot!) and I am going to have a lot of fun playing around with it! Watch this space!

Digital Me.

Maybe my new profile pic??