I don't expect this year to be perfect, but I hope it will be beautiful.

Imperfect Peonies Posters

One day, while taking picutes of Peonies, I bumped the bloom and the aging blossom just fell apart.  On the table lay dozens of petals with all their gradutions of color showing.  I thought making pictures of the petals might give me perspective on painting them. So as I zoomed to macro, I noticed somthing else about the petals.  No two of them were alike.  They were all kinds of sizes, and shaped from wide to narrow. Further their edges were so ragged and uneven, they didn't make pretty pictures. A question crossed my mind that made an impact on me. "How was such a beautiful bloom made of such unattractive, imperfect looking petals?" I had looked so closely at this, one of my favorite flowers, often. How had I never noticed the ragged edges of the petals. I had loved the fragrance, the softness, the absolute beauty of the flower, that I had looked right past the irregularness of the petals.  Then the symbolism hit me. This flower was very representative of the church, of God's people as he sees them.  As irregular, or flawed as any individual may be, God sees us as the sum of us all. In His eyes we are beautiful, and whole, and lovely. I wonder if when He created Peonies if He was thinking about that. I know when He sent His Son, He was thinking about looking past our sins to the perfect persons who would make up His Church. One family, in Him, not perfect individuals, but perfectly whole in his plan.

So, I recently took a peony picture, and blurred it slightly, allowing the software to be able to make a strong contrast between the bloom and the background. I then made a mirror image as though the bloom was being reflected in a glass table. Next, I  drew around every petal's edge with a lighter neutral color. Once I had defined the edges of the petals, I began to play with colors. First making the picture neutral, in near sepia tones, I saved the whole. I then began to flood fill the whole picture with one decorator color at a time. The end result was a set of complementary posters. I could have used the transparency tool, as I drew around the petals, and allowed a background color to shine through to add another layer of depth to the peony posters, and in fact can go back and still do this. The solid outlines, however, bring a matte, tailored feel to the posters, whereas the transparent cuts would bring a modern, light element making them a little more youth oriented, and vibrant.

God chooses unique inidividuals to unite for His purposes.

Outlining the edges of the petals selected the areas of shading and emphasized them. This element of blurring the details, and selectively choosing only defined areas to shade or add depth of color to, is the technique with which master artists use to paint a fine art landscape. I love word art for backgrounds. Here I have used only the name of the flower, repeated throughout the background instead of solid color. It adds interest, depth, definition, and reduces the overwhelming power of the deep blue, thus adding the softness that peonies have. These became part of my "PERFECT PEONIES SERIES." 

Strawberry Blossom Macro

Sometimes, the picture I thought I was getting, doesn't turn out exactly like I thought it would -a slightly blurrier edge, or the lighting isn't quite right.  But if I like the image, and the subject has form with distinctly contrasting elements, then it will probably make a very good graphic.  When the details are distinct in a picture, graphics software often tries to capture all the fine lines rather than the outlines and major lines in a picture.  If however the picture has a slight blur, the software tends to chose only the dramatic defining lines of a subject. I sometimes take a clear picture, and do a blurring treatment first, then procede with graphics changes.  Two of my recent floral subjects demonstrate the interest created between the lights and darks in the photos, that allow defining the edges of the subject and thereby, work well when those edges are cut away to allow a background to shine through. 

Today I will share from my "Strawberry Blossom Collection." On another day I will share from my "Perfect Peonies Collection."

The originals of these photos was of wild strawberry blossoms.  Even slightly blurred they are lovely just as photos. But the beauty of their simple form really becomes dramatic when turned into abstract colors of art.  These are beautiful printed, as well as on the screen where lots of light comes through. A single picture was manipulated to produce several versions of abstracts.