ME AND MY FRIEND LISA GHERARDINI - COLLAGE OBSESSION

'What historical figure would you like to write to?' - that's the question on Collage Obsession this week.

So I decided to send a postcard to my friend Lisa Gherardini, who is at the moment on holiday in the south of England here.  I think she was hoping that the weather would be better than in her home country of Italy.

Lisa's been taking the opportunity while she's over here to have a little mid-life make-over, but I don't think she's quite got the hang of it yet.

Here's the reverse, with my message -

I always thought her name was MONA LISA, but apparently Mona means the equivalent of 'madam' or, I suppose in today's usage, 'Mrs'.  Good job I didn't address it to 'Mrs Mona Lisa Gherardini'


I was quite pleased with the result, so I'm linking it to both Collage Obsession, and to Manon Popje's blog for Paper Saturdays on Saturday.  Why not hop over to to them both and see some great work.

BLUE AND ORANGE MAKE 'BLORANGE' - A.P.R. CHALLENGE THIS WEEK

This week there's a colour challenge at the Artist's Play Room - to create an image using 'blorange', in other words blue and orange.  It's all explained on the A.P.R. blog.

This is my response to the challenge, a 'blorange' love affair:

   
This was a combination of digital and Pitt Artist's pen.  Sadly, the scan has not reproduced the bright colours well, but that's the way it goes some days.

I always enjoy the striking combination of these complementary colours, blue and orange, so it was no struggle to use them.  After all, they do belong together.  

What was more of a struggle was deciding what my image should be, and when the flash of inspiration came I wanted to combine digital with drawing.

Quite pleased with the result, and my little lovebirds -  Belinda and Bertram - can live happily ever after in their bright blorange birdland.

JUST DOODLING DIGITALLY AGAIN

Several weeks ago Kristin Dudish posted some sketches she had done on an app called "Scribbler", and I immediately lusted after it and downloaded it on to my I-Pad.  

It's great fun, and produces some great results.  Thank you Kristin, it's a great way to relax. 

This was my first attempt:

Just a few straight lines to form an abstract design, and two colours to scribble with - it's always best to start simple to find out what any program can do.

Never one to leave anything alone, I opened the sketch above in Photoshop and used a filter I've not experimented with before.

This is the result of using the Liquefy filter.  I like the change from straight lines to whirls and twirls.  Doing this kind of thing always gives me inspiration for ideas to draw in my sketchbook.

After a little practice this next fishy one pleased me.

The result is always unexpected.  It takes a little experimentation to find the right amount of scribble for a drawing before you decide to stop - otherwise it gets swamped in a mass of lines.

Taking the fishy scribble into Photoshop, I used the Poster Edges filter, which gave more definition to the sketch, and adds a touch of drama.

The next one is another very simple drawing:

I stopped the scribbling process before it covered too much of the original sketch, and was pleased with the effect.

I was interested to see what I could do with another filter on Photoshop.

This time I used the Emboss filter, and fiddled with it until I got an effect that pleased me.  WOW - this really has the wow factor, a real 3-D effect.

If you are new to Photoshop and haven't used the filters very much, this is a good way to experiment and find out what they can do.

I wondered what would happen with a drawing of a face:

The face is quite an early attempt with Scribbler, again limiting the amount of scribble, and using a fine scribble line and two colours.

Taking the scribble sketch into Photoshop I tried Glowing Edges on the original, which gave quite a dramatic effect.  I have to try this kind of sketch in my black-page sketchbook with coloured inks.

For the version above I opened the original sketch in Snapseed, another of my favourite apps, and grunged it about a bit and then grunge-framed it.  Quite different, but good.

The rather startled looking chap below was quite an early sketch in Scribbler, just the basic sketch before doing any scribbling.  I saved it in my photo album so that I could try different versions of it.

That was supposed to be a mouse he's holding in his hand, but it's not very convincing!

I tried three different Scribbler versions - all put together on the image below.

Not particularly struck with any of those, so I went back to Snapseed with the original.

When I had fiddled about with it a little, using my favourite grungy thing, I was quite taken with it.

I've decided to turn it into a card to give to Stephen, the tutor, on the last morning of the Tate course, with an appropriate comment - probably something about the difficult wire sculptures we did on Saturday.  Perhaps:

"STILL STRUGGLING WITH THE WIRE BENDING"

Great fun, very therapeutic and very fruitful for further sketching ideas.

HELP! I'VE GONE ALL WONKY!

If you saw my post of 17th September 'Now Look What They've Been and Gone and Done' about the move to decimal time, you may be interested (well, a little bit interested) in the info below - because it's ALREADY BEEN TRIED more than once!

This was the painting in my decimal time post, and I thought I had made an original joke.  I should have known better.

Dev was in hospital last week and bought a newspaper to help pass the time.  And in the Daily Mail for 8th October there was a question on the Question and Answer page:

     'Has anyone tried to implement a decimal time system?'

And guess what - for a start the ancient Egyptians and ancient Chinese used a form of decimal time.  And then in 1795, when the French Revolutionary regime introduced decimal weight, length, currency, etc (which the EU has generously ensured we have to comply with in our country) they also tried a decimal calendar.

In fact their attempt at decimal time was not too successful.  The day was divided into ten parts, and each part into ten more parts, etc, until the hundredth part of a minute was called a decimal second.

Now either they looked forward in time and copied my idea, or in a former life I was stupid enough to be one of the committee that was involved in introducing the idea.

Obviously new clocks and watches were needed, and  - to ease people into the idea - the dials showed both the 12 hour time and the 10 hour time, but the idea didn't catch on.

The French tried again in the 1890s with decimal time based on the 'Centiday', with the day divided into 100 parts, but by 1900 they decided that still wasn't going to work.

Only just over a hundred years ago.  So perhaps they could be thinking it's time to have another go - and this time the EU could enforce it.  So if you live in 'Europe' perhaps you should still remember the Boy Scouts motto of 'Be Prepared'.

FIDDLING WITH PHOTOSHOP

Daughter No 2 arrived with a pretty bunch of (silk) flowers she had just been given by her friend David Beckham Doyle - she told him she would pass them on to me, so thank you David.  The surprise flowers worried me a bit - am I sicker than I thought?  Here's a photo from above:

While the photo (from above) is not much, it gave me something to play with on Photoshop.   This one is using the Cut-Out filter: 

I really liked this - it looks like a flock of stylised birds - very stark against the black background.


And this was using the Find Edges filter - one of my favourites.

What does this suggest to you?  I love using Photoshop in this way because it provides inspiration for drawing and painting.


I'm off now to translate some of the ideas into a drawing or painting!