Slow and steady...

I am making slow but steady steps forward with my detox mission! My head really is cluttered at the moment but I feel good about the progress.

So far I've blown the dust off my visual diary and started scribbling down my ideas for next years ICE exchange. I'm playing around with the concept of life lines, originally the idea was laughter lines. I don't mean the wrinkly sort...my ideas are more focused on paths represented by

 lines _________dots.......dashes _ _ _ 

and the paths are the places I've been, seen and loved. I am not well travelled having never left the North Island of my own country but there are definately places that have helped shape me as a person and as an artists. I have an emotional attachement to them. Here's a link to a series of Mick Mathers that's appealed to me for some time now. Not the same thing but appealing to me for similar reasons as 'life lines' is. This post is also very inspiring, thanks Robyn for your perfect timing in sharing this! I like the idea of taking a meditation memory walk and revisiting some special places. I then wonder if I should be looking forward and not back? In my head I can see pieces of maps, sewing pattern paper and navigation symbols such as the Southern Cross and compass points but I'm not sure how it all goes together yet and I havn't  reached that 'ah huh! moment. As you can see I am still confused and my vision is a little cloudy. It will come to me in it's own time and until then I will patiently wait. I'm good with that.

The other thing I have done is finish my 9 Grafitti pages.  The weather isn't photo friendly at the moment so no photos yet. The collages had been in the 98% finished stage for months and all that was left was the stitching. I can't believe a project that took months to get to only took me an hour to finish! Really! It feels good to see them done and I think I will turn them all into a visual diary to use next year.

Photos soon I promise!

Thank you for your kind comments, I have intentions to visit everyone a few blogs at a time so see you soon if I havn't already! 

Birdhouse

There's something quite charming about birdhouses and I guess it will no surprise to read that I love 'em almost as much as I love nests! Mick Mather has been making wonderful birdhouses, of the digital kind for quite a while now. Please check out the series, you won't be disappointed!

For Mick. Digitally altered photo of a birdhouse built by my son.

Lino carving, dots and cirlces!

I've had an unexpected break from both blogging and art. I got caught up with birthdays, kids and family visiting and haven't created a thing in nearly 10 days! Even though it was really good to see our family I'm definitely ready to get back to my circles and dots!
I did foresee a short break so before it all got busy I spent the day creating a new lino cut.The cut is in part a continuation of the ripple effect concept I started exploring in the 'chain reaction' series for the International Collage Exchange. The resulting lino cut is below.

This is my first version....my daughter asked if I was thinking of fingerprints! It was too 'busy' for me so I removed some of the lines and ended up with....

I  like this version better, I wanted to create a print that reflected a concept I was playing with- that ideas and thoughts are like seeds. We either plant them out and nurture them or we leave them in infertile soil.

The curved lines around the seed illustrate the 'ripple effect' that takes place when we make choices. Every idea, thought or action or inaction creates it's own ripple but it all starts in the middle, with the seed.

This is a 'hat' print. It's the done on a serviette using a wet lino block. (hat = happy accident technique.)

I couldn't leave the print alone...as you can see I turned nearly all the prints into ripped seeds for collage work. I guess I could have saved myself a lot of work if I'd thought of this first! I think most of my prints will end up being 'downsized' in this way. Sometimes I take the long way but better to have gone the long way than to have not made it at all:)

I promised some circle posts from other artists in my last posting and here they are! Mick Mathers and Robyn Gordon are 2 of the artists kind enough to share links to their 'circle' posts with me to repost here.

Mick is a talented digital artist and through his art I've learnt to appreciate the art of digital collage. His daily collages are often part of bigger series, related to each other in their subject likeness but always different in their appearance and techniques. I enjoy the diversity of Mick's work and his ability to make a digital work appear either earthy and mysterious or bold and structural like the image below.

This artwork is part of his series "Reinventing the Wheel." Please take the time to click on over to check out the series as well as the rest of his blog!

Robyn Gordon is an artist who fascinates me! Her carvings are wonderful, earthy, rustic and soulful. Little niches filled with treasure and soft rounded curves that are beautiful to look at...and I imagine even more so to touch! Robyn also has a knack for putting together posts that honour the work of others and the link she has shared is one of those. I recommend you make yourself a coffee and head on over to Africa for a while! Robyn's 'spots and dots' post can be seen here.

Thanks Mick and Robyn! If you have a link of your own you'd like to see here it's not too late. Just let me know in the comments section.

Next posting: Fabulous Mail! I've received my swap items from LaWendula and my collages from the ICE exchange.

Autumn Treescapes

I was really looking forward to 'recharging' my batteries with a walk around Yatton Park last week and after several days where things kept coming up I finally made it there last Friday. The top photo is my favorite, the way the light falls on the trees trunk and the way it seems to go up so far it could reach the sky...

I couldn't help having a play around with a few of the photoscape filters, the result below is the combination of about 3 of them.

Next post: Circles and Dots- Featuring Mick Mather's  'Reinventing the wheel' series and a revist of Robyn Gordan's (Art Propelled) Spots and Circles post and some rusty bottle caps. Watch this space:)

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!

Sunflowers, John and Mick!

While in Taranaki I spotted this Sunflower field near Surf Highway 45. I couldn't stop the first day we saw them so I made a mental note to go back. How could I resist a field of Sunflowers?

I was tempted to jump the fence to get a closer look and do some covert sunflower photography... but trespassing is not really a good idea so I made do with 10 different compositions of the one field. These are my top 3.

  

I like the way the hill provides a slight visual divide between the field and the sky in this image, the field and the sky otherwise occupying the same amount of the photo. On a different Taranaki trip I stopped to photograph a sunflower field in a different town, which some of you will remember. John sampled it on the 22nd Jan 2008. Here is a link to other samplings also. Please take a click on over that way:..

And what was on the other side of the road?....rain clouds! Believe it or not that cloud is covering the most amazing Mountain! We decided to go up on to the slopes of Mt Taranaki for a picnic, half way up the cloud turned to heavy rain and we had to retreat. Bummer!

The photo below is for Mick because it reminds me of his Trinity series. Thank you Mick for helping me to see wireless fence posts as a complete set of 3! It was taken about 6 weeks ago on our McLaren's Falls camping trip.

I have been a terrible blog visitor lately, I got a little drowned in durseal, baking for lunch boxes and other back-to-school-mum-stuff. I'm sure I am not alone! Things should get back to 'normal' soon....