Blue Ice

Blue ice or frozen pond or blue tree? I can't decide, but it does look like some kind of winter-scape. This is what happens when the tiniest bit of blue paint drips off of one surface and lands on another; a new technique is born! Sounds good, but what really happened is that I can't stand to waste paint so I grabbed the first piece of paper that was sitting on my counter and allowed the paint to dribble from a sheet of painted metal onto it. The paint ran in all directions and when I helped it along I decided that this piece of scrap paper was the highlight of the day! The metal turned out fair. Reminder: don't throw away scraps of paper! This one had a blue watercolor wash on it along with dry brushed gesso.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Some fun facts including a short video about St. Patrick's Day check out:

http://www.historychannel.com/exhibits/stpatricksday/

Lists of ideas for keeping a visual journal

http://www.busywomen.com.au/visual_journal.htm

A 2 Z Project.

My brain occasionally goes into over-drive! I needed another project like I need a root canal! But when Lynne Perrella's book, "al.pha.bet.i.ca" arrived I couldn't help myself! My work was already leaning in the direction of using alphabet letters and words on the pages in my journal, so why not do an in-depth exploration? After all I'm already working on a self-portrait journal along with a Paris one, plus my work-in-progress art journal and lest I forget, two RR type journals so why not fit in another project? Who needs to be sane?

"Decay" (collage above) doesn't seem to stand on its own as well as it plays off of the page to the left of it. Copyright rules being what they are I can't post that journal page.There are a lot of techniques and ideas on this journal page but I'll only comment on a few. The surface is a foreign text page with gesso over water color crayon. Newspaper words and text. Transparency of eyes. The main focus is fat chunky foam letters that were traced onto the center of the page. GPG, is a play on my initials and the town I live in which is often referred to simply as PG. The letters were traced with a pen and filled-in with oil pastels. I wasn't happy with the result so a layer of metallic wax was used to soften the harsh colors, but that wasn't pleasing either so I used a paper towel to scrap off the wax and to my delight some of the oil pastels scraped off of the paper allowing some of the foreign text to show through. Newspaper text was torn and glued over the hole in the "P."

Climbing out of the "precious mode."

I'm particularly fond of this print lift created from an image taken at a car museum on Cape Cod. I have a "copy" of it; the original now resides in France. One of the benefits of photo manipulated images is that there are endless possibilities for using them.

I'm at odds with myself! While I tend to use some of the same images over-and-over I'm attempting to climb out the "precious mode" phobia. Keeping ephemera in boxes tends to put limits on collages or other work that could benefit from releasing them into the light of day! A stash is a good thing to build up, but not horde! Originals, given away freely will create space for more!

Blogs of interest

Visual Chronicles
http://visualchronicles.typepad.com/

Zura's
http://blogging.spiritimagination.com/

Sonji - mostly fabric
http://sonjisays.blogspot.com/

Ginger - one of the first members of ExpressionVillage!
http://gingerfied.blogspot.com/

Penny - another member of EV who joined in the early days!
http://backvalleyseasons.blogspot.com/

Susan - another long-time member of EV!
http://aqg.bravejournal.com/index.php

Mum's Place

Mum's Place is a furniture store just off of the main street in Pacific Grove where I purchased a couch and a chair about 6 years ago.The cats immediately claimed the chair as theirs! Who is going to argue with two large furkids that leave behind a large amount of their gorgeous fur as a reminder that they have dibs on the chair? Anyone who sits in the chair ends up with their backside covered with cat hair.

I was driving past Mum's Place this afternoon on my way to the yarn shop is search of green fibers when out of the corner of my eye I saw deep strong shadows on the side of the building. Happily I had my digital with me! Of course I had to manipulate the image a little bit. Everyone driving down the street couldn't figure out why I was standing between parked cars taking photos of the tree; one car nearly rear-ended another one trying to figure it out. Their loss!

Self-portrait series

SP Study - Photoshop brushes created from photographs. An image of a birdhouse my father built about a decade ago was manipulated using numerous filters as a basis for the background.

Matthew

Matthew - 3 days old. I absolutely can't leave a photograph alone without manipulating it in some way! Even when I worked in black-and-white I'd spend hours in the darkroom playing with alternative processes!

I kind of like how his mouth runs right into his shoulder line; makes the photo more interesting to me. One of his hands always manages to snake its way into a sleeve.

Goodbye Jean

Goodbye Jean.
Last night I had one of those flashes when you "just know." Today I discovered that I was right in knowing that Jean had passed yesterday afternoon, 8 days after stopping dialysis treatment. (I wrote about this on my RockyPoint blog.) When I saw a Valentine image on Karen's site I knew that it was the perfect one to use. Of course, I had to make it into a virtual stamp and yes, the background is the same one I used on the Valentine Postcard below! It's from a technique I'm working on.
For copyright free images see:
http://karenswhimsy.com/public-domain-images/

2 of Hearts

2 of Hearts - postcard.
Embossed aluminum heart, virtual stamp transparency image of a Victorian couple, dymo label, rubber stamps and Neocolor II watersoluble wax pastel wash background.

ABC's

ABC's. Something I've been playing with using magazine pages and Golden's Titanium acrylic. A wash of Titanium over the magazine page followed by writing using a Q-tip or the tip of a paintbrush. Depending on the colors of the magazine page the effect will be different every time. On this piece once the Titanium wash was dry a wash of Yellow Ochre and Raw Umber was blotted off with a paper towel.

Exciting Link

http://ericmaisel.blogspot.com/

I just bought Eric's book, "A Writer's Paris," a guided journey for the creative soul.
"Paris is a place of associations: It moves the mind, stirs the heart, and resonates forever. More importantly, Paris is the place you go when you mean to put your creative life first."

No. 56

Virtual Stamp and No. 56 text on a R.R. ticket.

"I always entertain great hopes."
Robert Frost

Published!

As a subscriber of "Artitude zine" I've wanted to be published in it since receiving my first copy. My dream came true! Purely one of those serendipitous moments happened when I emailed some scans of virtual stamps to Suz and after a few emails everything fell into place. With only a few days to get something off to her I turned out an article about virtual stamps and today the Winter issue #19 arrived! I haven't been published in about a decade so this is definitely a good way to start the year!

www.artitudezine.com

Examples of the virtual stamps can be seen at www.picturetrail.com/gpierce

Leaf #2

Leaf #2.
Background is masking tape torn into a variety of shapes and lenths. A base coat of Prussian Blue acrylic was painted over the tape and blotted off with a paper towel. Next Lumiere Pearl Blue and Lumiere Pearl Turquoise were randomly painted on and blotted off. Once the paint was dry a black dye rubber stamp ink pad was swiped over the surface to highlight the texture of the tape. Krylon Workable Fixatif was sprayed on to set the ink and prevent any stickiness from the tape transfering and sticking to the opposite journal page.

Leaf

"Leaf" - what an original title!
Text pages were torn and glued onto cardstock then washed with 3 colors of acrylic paint, blue, green and yellow. Water thinned black acrylic was brushed over the dry paper and lifted off allowing some of the base colors to show. Gold wax was rubbed over the page to create texture and highlights. The "perfect" dried leaf was glued on and when pressed onto the page a piece of the leaf broke and a suprise bit of interest was born!

Link-of-the-month

http://www.gogratitude.com/masterkey/

Fragments

Fragment Series

Twisted paper, metal pieces on a crackled background. The distressed metal is from soda cans, my new favorite medium to use.

Links-of-the-week

http://www.kerismith.com/blog/ - check out her 100 journal ideas!
http://www.kerismith.com/100ideas.pdf


http://lazygalquilting.blogspot.com/ - from Egypt

http://www.knittingcurmudgeon.com/

Dreams

Picture It Digital Collage.
This is an example of what can be done with ordinary photographs: Palm frond, statue, park, peeling paint on a Mission wall and a Mission door. Text and stars were added.

Links-of-the-week

http://homepage.mac.com/catspaw/Menu6.html

http://www.encyclopediaofanordinarylife.com/

Asian Assemblage

This assemblage is for a techniques AB.

The skewers are wrapped with distressed metal and copper wire. The image (manipulated) purchased at the Antiques Mall is a toner copy heat transfer using my newest toy, a transfer tip. Background is a thick coat of titanium paint with Quinacridone Gold brushed through it and textured with a plastic card.

Martha's Vineyard

Metal is nearly impossible to scan or photograph, at least that has been my experience.

The backgrounds are gesso and water-soluble pastels. The Victorian images were inkjet printed on transparency film and adhered to metal. Dymo words say, "Martha's Vineyard." And two embossed metal embellishments complete this spread for a techniques AB.

Winter Sunset

I rarely use the rubber stamps I've collected, why I don't know, but this page for an AB seemed to be the perfect combination. I especially like the tree on the right edge of the page.

Oil pastels were randomly scribbled onto cardstock, Aleene's Tacky glue was coated over the entire page and a watered-down green grey acrylic was brushed over the glue. When the acrylic paint dries a nice crackle effect takes place.

Quote

Listen. Make a way for
yourself
inside yourself.
Stop looking
in the other way of looking.
Rumi

Friday Night

Another Posada image and another Citra-solv technique for the background.

Ah, finally Friday night!

Day of the Dead

Shall we Dance?

I have no idea why Day of the Dead images fascinate met. I was thrilled when I discovered that Jose Guadalupe Posada's images are in the public domain! A simple search on the internet will turn up a number of his more famous ones.

I made Photo Shop Elements brushes with a few of the images and played with them. The background on the bottom one, "Shall we Dance?" is a scanned National Geographic Citra-solv technique that can be found at: http://www.picturetrail.com/gpierce It's the 8th example in the Nevr-dull, Citra-solv album.

The official date for Day of The Dead in Mexico is Nov. 2, but it's sometimes celebrated on Oct. 31 coinciding with Halloween.

Link-of-The-Week

http://artellawordsandart.com/ZuraBethLedbetter.html

New Fun Journaling 4 week workshop starts Nov. 1. I am the moderator for this workshop.

Norton House, Martha's Vineyard

While on a tour of Martha's Vineyard in Sept. our guide pointed out the 9 million dollar Norton house and said, "If you use Norton Software products then you've helped to build this house." After having a weeklong battle with Norton last year when I was locked out of being able to update the AntiVirus software I had renewed and getting nowhere I thought that the house had the perfect makings for a creepy Haunted House!
I'm no longer a Norton Software user!