The Fool and I

This is another tarot sized image. I started with a photo of a road and one of the sky. After I put in the doorway, it got a little Oz-like, so I added the castle. I thought, "What's a fake tarot card without a Fool?" and I made him the guardian of the gate. At that point I was getting feelings of being trapped inside the picture so I added the pouty girl and her little dog to express those feelings.

Queen of the Night

Interest in vampires comes and goes and usually I am completely unaware of the cycles. I read a lot of Anne Rice in the 80's, boring my teenage boys with "discussions" of how she integrated world history into vampire legend, but then a particularly gory movie with Nicholas Cage and the seeming endlessness of it all made me lose interest. This year, I started watching "Moonlight" and learned about the manga/goth?? inspired ball jointed dolls which somehow I had totally missed.

So when I started working on this amazing blue night shot I got a couple of weeks ago from the back deck, I put in some architecture, a fashion shot and one of those bjd heads and suddenly she was the Queen of the Night. Since those are also one of my favorite tulips, I had to get those in there too. The atmosphere is from duplicating each layer, appying a stamp filter and changing the mode to multiply to get rid of the white.

Kate's White Soul

Kate finally found the collage that she made while I was in Davis visiting her. But only after she stopped looking for it. I know that's the best way to find something that's been stashed for safe-keeping, but usually I am too wrought up to stop looking. One of my favorite techniques for finding something is to start putting things away. My studio is often messy enough that that approach can last for at least half an hour; it calms me down and has such a nice side effect. And many times, I do find whatever was misplaced. Although, the quicker I find what's missing, the less cleaning I get done.

One of the reasons I enjoyed working on these collages as opposed to my usual Photoshop collaging is that we had to accept the images at the sizes we found them. It was a restraint that was quite liberating. When I am able to put the polymer clay, tools, trays, and paint away in December, I think I will probably do more of these. In the meantime, folder after folder of virtual images don't take nearly as much room to manipulate as folder after folder of paper images.

Kate's White Soul was minimally adjusted to offset the loss of contrast in scanning.

ATCs from Old Family Photos

I have accumulated many old family pictures - inherited, begged, borrowed, or stolen. I love making ATCs with them using whatever technique for backgrounds I have found on online Photoshop tutorials. The first one (yellow background) is my great grandmother and her sisters, I think. The aunties one is from a photo of my father's very special sisters. The "Wonder" image is my husband's sister, Carol (also very special). My brother and his son are in the next ATC, and the last one is me. That photo was one I had never seen until last year when a dear cousin sent it to me. I like it a lot and will probably use it until the emulsion wears off.

Full House

This was an insomnia inspired work. It doesn't really illuminate the friendships that I have with these two, other than to show that all of us are almost holiday babes. The queen of leaves is an almost Halloween babe, I am an almost Valentine babe, and the queen of shamrocks is an almost St. Patrick's Day babe. As reasons for enduring friendships go, being able to remember someone's birthday ranks right up there.

Each card was digitally put together ATC size before the whole was assembled. Being new to this idea of being on display, I find that I am thinking a bit more of who I am pleasing rather than if I am pleasing myself. And while I enjoy taking some new creation and showing it to a friend, I haven't ever been much concerned with anyone else's opinion of what I do. My husband says I love everything I do, and he's right. But this process seems more outer than inner, more revelaton than reflection. I know from looking at other people's blogs that this isn't true for everyone, and maybe the feeling pasts. For now, I'm excited at the prospects and awake almost every night at 4 am thinking of what I would like to write about next.

Collaging with Kate

The first image is the collage I made from the magazine and calendar pictures that Kate and I spent hours tearing out. We were both a little shy about starting to collage while Cheryl was there, but after she left we each did one. I don't have Kate's scanned but she used a lot of black and white images. When I got home, I scanned mine into Photoshop, cleaned up the edges I hadn't trimmed closely enough, did a few image adjustments, added the text I wanted but couldn't find in the magazines, and resized it into a tarot card size. While I'm not all that comfortable calling these soul collages, I do like personalizing them by completing the phrase "I am the one..." and this semi Fairy Tale collage (I admit it, I'm stuck) gave me a funny way to end the phrase.