Colorado Sky

If I painted a sky that looked like this, it would look fake.  Unretouched photo.  Northwest of Denver at 3pm.

Art Journal - Devon

I found this preprinted shopping list in a box of stuff in the garage. It is "Things to Get for the Whippet" and includes: cookies, bunny, treats at the bottom of the blank shopping list. I got this when I had Devon The Whippet. I wanted to capture just the colors and curves of Devon. The blue/green is for the winter coat he wore with a flower pattern.

Distracted from Morning Pages

I found myself distracted over this last month by little mundane things like trying to make a living.   And while I was still coming up with ideas for my creative projects, I wasn't putting them into action.  I was too busy spinning in place.  When I let this happen, sooner or later I feel the unbalance that this creates, an unbalance that I lived with for many years and am now consciously trying to drive out of my life.  Writing the Morning Pages, taking even a few minutes in the evening to work on a watercolor sketch, reading the artist's blogs that I have posted here... all these things serve as a counterbalance to the nitty gritty and free up my mind to be more productive and less hectic. So I fell back into bad habits for a few weeks, fuel was added to the fire by my internet problems, and I am climbing back onto the track that I want to be on.  One good thing is that I never put the watercolors away and I carry my morning pages journal and my camera everywhere I go.  I feel saner already.

Computer Editing Photos

fI like playing around with photos in PhotoShop.  Not all photos lend themselves to major changes because I am not a pro and haven't had any training.  My photos that I love the best are the ones that never see PhotoShop; those are the special ones.
This morning I just grabbed a photo from a file of 'leftovers' and started playing with it.  I liked the original, but it was pretty ordinary.

So I just started playing with it, changing the filter effects, making it into an abstract painting (that was ugly!) ..... I didn't have a plan or any idea where it was going.  After applying a cool filter, a mirror image, a sunspot and editing out some foliage I ended up with this.  I like the end result.  Lots of fun too.

I am ready to go back to pencil and paper...

really, I am.
So my internet connection is now slightly faster than dial-up in a thunderstorm, but still not where it is supposed to be.  But at least I can do things online for more than a few minutes at a time.
Work first, then play.  I will be back to try to get up to speed on everything and everybody over the weekend.
yay!