2 Blooms of Shamrock and A Pinch of Grass

After taking pictures of my pressed blooms of Shamrocks, which my young neighbor Savanah helped me press, I used Gimp to work filters on the picts.

This one was a version made using photocopy,

and the weave filters:

I can see napkins printed from the weave

and a card  printed with the bottom one.

This is a colorize/invert, and cartoonize version:

Click on the picts to view them enlarged.

Always, C

Red Lilies on a Sunny Morning

Posterizing a perfectly beautiful picture, can add interest, segregate the colors and make the image draw a second glance.  But this also gives an opportunity to use a matt white card stock for the picture, over which a vellum or acrylic with print does very well.
Parts of this picture retain the look of a photo,while others look drawn or painted. The blurring of the background significantly adds to the impact of the blooms. C 

A calendar for June

A Calendar to print with  my permission.

Sometimes, Black n White n Red are so clean looking. Just thinking of Lady Bugs and Bikes in the summer, makes me smile :)

Pressed Flowers

I wish I could stand to stay squated on the ground long enough to press hundreds of flowers, because they can make the most beautiful gifts and cards.
I have found that medium to dark colors of azaleas, small blooms, press well and keep their color.  My mother's Spiderwort presses extremely well and keeps that marvelous blue color.  Violets didn't do as well as I expected, but miriads of wild flowers with tiny blooms, and ferocious availability, do extremely well.  I am using a small press I have owned for years with the same blotting paper it always had in it.  It is important to not over lap blooms or leaves and stems.  They will meld together, then break when trying to lift them from the paper.  It is equally as important to put a piece of blotting paper underneath and on top of each layer, and divide the layers with cardboard. The tiniest things will add to a design. I press the layers by screwing down the nuts on the bolts to slightly tight on the flowers at first. Next day, I tighten them a little more. Overtightening the bolts will cause the flowers to stick to the paper so much that they can't be removed without tearing. Pull the paper away from the flowers, rather than the flowers away from the paper to avoid damage.  Flowers are usually dry in 3 days.
Remove them to paper or styrofoam plates to dry just a day more, then store them between layers of tissue in a box.  For longest life, they should not be exposed to sun or bright light. Over time, they will fade in a frame but are worth taking the effort to enjoy them for a year or two.  Scanning them, often doesn't produce  true color, due to the lack of sufficient light. But with some adjustments to light, a digital camera will capture them to be used forever.  I did have to crop the picture, rotate it slightly, and adjust the contrast and color levels to get it to a more natural color.  But the end result was something I can use over and over.
I didn't like the way clover blossoms dried, because they browned too much, but I love how the leaves and blooms that were just beginning to open dried.

Note: dogwood blossoms dry very well for textural crafting. They don't press well usually, but will dry to a beautiful smaller curly version of themselves in the oven for about an hour on 200.  Spread them on a cookie sheet. And leave them in the center of the oven until they can be lifted without bending.  They should not be soft, but papery sounding. It is a great idea to place flowers in the oven after you finish cooking, and have turned the oven off. You can leave them all night, but don't forget and heat your oven for biscuits in the morning with flowers still in the oven. lol  I love the way white dogwoods look over the pink.  I will show a project I can use them on at a later date.

Art Survives

This morning as I awakened to my husband's favorite TV chanel, I became aware that the subject they were discussing was basing its facts on art, ancient art.  My husband can't sleep if the TV isn't running.  The outside noises which I love, the train passing, owls calling, cars going by, sirens, dogs barking...OK - I take it back. It wakes me up too. But he can sleep through the loudest of TV shows.  It has taken me 40 years to get to a point where I can sleep through most of the night without some loud commercial waking me. Or an old western with guns blazing.  I used to turn it off. But it always awakend my spouse. The quiet awakened my husband; still does. I have gotten past the annoyance of the noise dragging my mind from deep sleep, and have learned to lie still if possible. Sometimes, when my mind is quite sure there is no emergency that requires I drag my body up to take care of it, I can go back to sleep. Unless I see daylight. Then I make myself get up. Of course, the older I get, the more the bathroom is calling, and I have to go tend to it. However, I hate sleeping in the day. Mostly, because I hate being awake in the night. Alas, if I want to see my husband, I have to deal with the night.

Now that I am past that little aside, let me get to what was on the TV. The host of the program was a world traveler, and he was telling the story of visiting anceint sites, and how they knew certain things about those sites. He explained that the surviving art on the walls, pottery, coffins, floors, etc. of these ancient places gave the documentation needed to understand life, in places where entire societies had worn away 'til little remained but the art. Great plains of sand which once covered the social hubs of ancient life, look lifeless and dull in color. Once the archeologists, remove the sand, the bleached ruins of buildings just look like a lot of sand colored stones, until enough sand is removed to find the jewels that time left behind. In ancient days, the keyboard and monitor of the artists and writers was literally their "wall paper." Only, there was no paper involved in most cases. Can you imagine writing your daily news by carving it with a chisel on the wall? No blaring noise to keep you awake there, huh?  Well think again. How many wives couldn't sleep cause hubby hadn't finished his story? See how we can see them in their everyday lives? Just knowing this activity of carving a record into walls was going on, we can have an image of what their lives were like.
The host of the show was tracing how crocodiles played a crucial role in the everyday lives of this race of people.  A certain kind of croc was depicted in the ancient texts, on walls and pottery, and even in the way they buried their dead. A certain mummy was artfully wrapped in reeds in such a way that the corpse resembled a crocodile. That would have taken a loving touch, and an imagination to rival an archetectural design. Who could have thought of such an idea, but an artist. Not to mention the head dressings and masks they wore that were shaped like crocodiles.
I have known from childhood that I saw things differently than other people. As a child, however, I was glad it made me unique. As an adult, it has been difficult to find respect. People put art into a category of "oh that's nice, but how is it going to help me?"  My aunt once said that if members of our family could just figure out how to make money on our talents, we would be millionaires. Not so, I have tried numerous forms of art: making and tayloring clothes, crafts, floral design, baking, photograghy and painting... Not a millionaire yet. Art had traditionally been less valued than things like food, clothes, home, car...etc. I get it. Art is not necessary in our lives for anything but asthetics.  It makes our home have color, our cars look classy, our clothes be pleasant to look at, our emotions to spark. Although it is in almost everything we own, "art" as a profession is a hard one to pursue.  Although, it is less so in the age of technology, the market is flooded with "artists" all wanting an outlet for their art. It isn't that artists lack the intelligence to be successful business men, but that there isn't enough time in two lifetimes to both make the art and make a business of it. And artists will follow their love, be who they are inside, and will make the art whether money is involved or not. It is constantly inside, clamouring to get out.
I worry a bit about carving our art into a technological pallet. I have recipes and pictures on 4x4 disks, and journals on 5x5" floppies that I will never see again.  I look at the piles of disks with pictures and design work on them, and I think there is no way I can transfer all that to thumb drives, or tiny scan disks. Of course, before I could get it done, a new way to store it will come along. In fact, now they want you to put it into an invisible mystical place in the cyber universe, where it is deemed to be safe. Someday it will all magically dissapear.
 When architects of the future look into our homes, they will just find a lot of silver disks and wonder what we ever saw in keeping those things around. They will ask if we used them somehow in a religious ritual.  Isn't it funny that every antiquity found has someone put a religious ritual significance on it.  Shoot, maybe it was just a game or news or ART.  Regardless, from ancient days 'til now, it is the art that survived.  When people are gone, what will tell the story of our lives?  If the Lord were to tarry 1000 years more, will archeologists find a buried vault and open it to find great works of art, or will they just find landfill sites where hulls of monitors, printers and CPU's survive?  Maybe we should fill our lives with Hard copies of it. Shouldn't we be carving into walls or something? Can someone invent a stone-cutting machine that's super fast? lol
I have to admit, I love doing it this way, recording whatever I can create and store on my computer. After all, it's for people in my world to see and enjoy, and for me to enjoy making. It will not make a significant difference in how someone views history. So for now, I am loving having a cyber-world trash can to cast my art into.
Wish my scanner worked, cause I have this great photo of an ancient Indian face carved into a stone wall in the Florida keys. I stumbled onto it in the woods and brambles, while hunting the Mangrove Cuckoo, of which I also have a picture. But alas, I have a hard copy, and you can't see it. So sad.
Have a great day!!