Evolution of a Canvas

I was so happy to find a way to rescue the canvas I ruined that I couldn't put it down. Because it is not my project to give away I didn't photograph each step, but I can give you a wrap up of the finishing process.

In this view the design has been colored and blended, and a layer of glaze has been added to give warmth and a unifying tone to the whole image.


And then because I am an absolute failure at working pale, I sponged some deeper richer colors around the edges to add depth.



I still want to add some flat back pearls as "blossoms" along the vine, but with the addition of lettering she is essentially finished. (The lettering is the only addition - she looks lighter because I photographed her in different light. And oh yeah... I fixed her crooked upper lip. I think...)


So of course, rather than moving on the the next UFO (UnFinished Object) I had to start another canvas. I HAD to -- this is an image and an invocation that I have been wrestling with for some time and it is more than time to let it out.


I am all for World Peace, but these days I will settle for a truer faith and a little inner peace.

Photo of the Week - More Layers Play

I have been wanting to try this technique since I saw a similar example in a magazine a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, I don't have an *ideal* photo to try it out on, but this one is almost good enough. Don't I just wish that I had unlimited access to my subject for more photos...



If I had known how easy it was, I would have tried it out sooner. In fact, I think my new problem is not going to be so much "what do I do now..." but knowing when to stop!

And yes, her eyes really are that blue.

Trying something new

Time for another challenge! A few of my friends and I are going to tackle our backlogs of unfinished projects -- just one a month. Today is the first of the month, so I present here my first UFO. I began this one last month and set it aside in disgust when I found out that I had bitten off more than I could chew. Just about the time I was afraid that I had lost all urge to create... the incredible Sherry Goshon shared her techniques for a wall canvas using watercolor pencils and I HAD to try it.

While I do own a small set of watercolor pencils, I never played with them much until now, so the learning curve proved a little steep -- I made a total mess of my first attempt at using these techniques. sigh... I was too embarrassed to take a photo to show how badly I had mangled the canvas, but now I kind of wish I had because I think I may have rescued it.


It took a layer of gesso, a partial layer of texture medium, and yet a little more gesso to almost cover the original problems, but I'm pretty excited about the way she looks at the moment.

At the very least, I think I have finally learned to keep a very light hand with delicate techniques. My personal preferences run to the rule that "more is better", so this has been a challenge!

It's So Much Easier This Way!

Last week, a friend and I were discussing the drudgery of "bucking hay" -- gathering and storing bales of hay in the barn for winter when we were kids. In those days, the 2-rope bales we handled weighed about 70 pounds and had to be handled one by one at least 3 times before they got to the hay loft.

First we picked them up from where they were dropped by the baler out in the field and threw them up onto the hay wagon, where they were caught and stacked by someone else. After being transported to the barn, they were tossed back off the hay wagon down to someone who would load them onto a conveyer belt that took them up to the hay loft. In the loft, we caught them as they came off the conveyer and stacked them as neatly and as high as we could.

This was inevitably done on the hottest day of August while wearing long pants and a long sleeved shirt to protect one's flesh from the sharp hay. It was and ugly job, but it had to be done. Gads we got tired and dirty!


You will understand then why I have so much fun watching a load of hay being delivered and unloaded for me these days, especially since the monster bales we buy now weigh several HUNDRED pounds each! A load came in this morning and I managed to catch the end of the process with my camera. I think the drivers thought I was nuts -- it was foggy, damp, and COLD out there!


These are the last 18 bales left on the trailer. Just look at the size of those babies!


That's the "Squeeze". I love that machine. The driver takes aim with those long arms at the base of the stack he wants to remove from the trailer, and...


...Carefully now! ...he scoops up 6 bales...

...backs carefully away from the truck, and then sets them down.


He drives to the other edge of the stack to get a good grip on the long edges, pinches those big mechanical arms together and lifts one more time...


for one last trip into the hay barn. Each trip takes about 3 or 4 minutes at most.

Wasn't that easy? If I had had any sense I would have watched the whole thing from inside the house with a last cup of coffee in my hand, but I wouldn't have been able to take very good pictures that way.

Photo of the Week

This is Gatsby, our resident goofball. You may remember him as one of the litter of kittens that was dumped on our front porch a while ago. (He was the "hungry one", and believe me, he hasn't changed much, LOL!) He literally moved in to our house and would not be moved out. Every time a door was opened, in he would scoot. Eventually, we succumbed to the inevitable...

I'm not sorry because once I got used to him I learned to love him. He is the funniest cat I have ever met and has been the source of many smiles as well as outright laughter. Not only that, but the girls swear he can see ghosts. I have seen him staring intently at something only he can see myself.

***

I wish I had some artwork to share, but I have been completely unmotivated to do much more than read or spin this week. However, I have been working hard trying to learn some of the more advanced aspects of my PS Elements program. All of my books seem to stop at the same place, leaving things like layers, filters, and blending modes almost completely unexplored. So I decided to just start punching buttons and see what happens. Blending modes are still a mystery to me, but I think I am getting a good handle on layers, filters, and textures.



This is the unretouched original of a photo I took last summer, one of my favorite cow portraits. It's also a nice simple subject with a clean background -- a good photo to play with.


I may have gotten a little carried away with the posterization, but I love how the clouds turned out at least!

Photo of the Week - February 16

Recently, my friend Linda sent me a link to a photo of a calf born in Japan with a heart on its forehead. (The article called it an "ox", but it looks an awful lot like a plain old holstein calf to me, but oh well, I'm just a farmer's wife. What do I know?!)

Anyway, I knew I had seen hearts on our cows too so I went out to investigate... turns out, they are awfully common. This little girl is just a few days old.



Happy Valentine's Day!

Sunbathing Cows

Bright sunshine is a precious commodity in the Pacific Northwest in winter. Still, we can usually count on a high pressure system to bring us some clear days in February. Even the cows appreciate the respite from the seemingly neverending dark and damp. They all congregate at the end of their barns to stick their noses out into the sunshine. I can relate, LOL!



Just for fun I'm including this photoshop rendering of the above photograph into a pencil sketch. Just about the time I think I know what I'm doing, I realize that there are dozens of buttons in that program that I haven't even pressed yet. Thank goodness for good, clear tutorials! (The tute for this project can be found in the current issue of "Digital Scrapbooking.")

Meet Margeurite

I made this doll as a custom order -- she has safely arrived at her new home so I feel safe posting her here now. She told her owner that her name is Marguerite.



I think this is the first doll I have ever made that I am completely satisfied with how she turned out.



I think if I had been going to keep her I would have added more beads, but she was already way more work than I had anticipated and she wanted to go home.



If you are interested, the instructions for her hair vine can be found here.

My Sweetheart

I actually have a new doll all finished and ready to post, but it's Monday and the first day of our new modified photo challenge -- how can I waste such a golden opportunity to share a photo of my one and only granddaughter, LOL?!

I have bunches of more conventional snapshots, but I am quite taken with this one of her playing with Jake's hand. She *was* playing with her toes, but he thought it would be fun to interfere...



I tell you the truth... I can't resist these sweet laughing blue eyes.

Last Day

Whew... I made it. Here it is the last day of our challenge and I DID IT! I thought when we started that for sure I would run out of things to take pictures of before the end, but instead I learned to look for new things. My world is so much more interesting now that I have learned to watch for photo ops, LOL!

Thanks for issuing this challenge Linda. It has been a wonderful experience.

Today is also the beginning of the end of another era. My youngest daughter is a senior captain on her school's dance team. Today was the first competition of her last dance season. I can't say I will miss the busy-ness of being a dance mom, but I will miss the dancing so much. They are so beautiful! And finally, after FOUR YEARS, I have learned enough to set my camera to take a decent photo in a high school gym. (I owe Linda big thanks for that too!)



And one last photo. This one is an "oopsie" -- I spotted our resident hawk posing on the power line at the end of my driveway and hurried to take a picture. I was in such a hurry that I forgot to switch the camera from ISO 1600 (for the gym) back to 100 (for a sunlit afternoon.) I also did not get a chance to change settings and snap another photo before the darned bird flew away. This photo is straight from the camera, completely unedited.



Sometimes, a "mistake" still makes for an interesting effect.

Spring?

One of the very first signs of spring around here is the appearance of pansies and primroses for "winter color" in the garden. Now, I love my garden as much as the next Oregonian, but I am much to lazy to even imagine myself crawling around in the ice cold mud to plant anything at the time of year! My mother-in-law does though, and she adores primroses.

These appeared on display this week on tables in front of my local grocery store. (The plastic is to protect the blooms from the freezing fogs we have been having this week. Alas for spring!)



Aren't they pretty?

PostScript

The planet so close to tonight's crescent moon is Venus, according to In The Sky .

It amazes me how close it looks in the sky to my eye, and yet in the photo, it is quite far away. Gotta love perspective!

New Moon

OK, so it's not technically *exactly* the new moon tonight... but it's the first time I've seen the moon in a while and it's more new than anything else!

Come to find out that the human eye is still the most magnificent optical instrument in creation. I can see it all at once, but I find that with my camera I can show you either the whole moon, with the sunlit side completely blown out in glare...



... OR the really cool sunlit side itself. Alas for a lens that could REALLY bring detail into focus at that distance. As it is, I used a 300mm lens, a tripod, and a delayed shutter release so my hands wouldn't cause any lens blur.



I wonder if I were to try a manual focus if I couldn't get it just a littler sharper...? And I also wonder what planet that is -- anybody know??

My Comfort Junkie

Anybody who has ever shared house room with a dachshund knows that they like to snuggle. It doesn't matter what the temperature is -- they will find a blanket to huddle under.

This is Sailor. He has long hair, but it makes no difference.



Some days I wish I were a little dog.

Wait 15 minutes...

The saying goes that, if you don't like the weather in Oregon, just wait 15 minutes and it will change. As beautiful as yesterday was, today was just plain nasty again. Oh well, it is still winter after all.

But, what do you take a picture of when you can't see anything??



You've seen these trees before this month, but not like this. This photo is straight from the camera -- I swear I didn't do anything to it!

My world... literally

It is a beautiful winter day here in the Pacific Northwest. The sun is shining and the air is clear... a perfect day to grab my camera and drive up the hill to visit Mount Angel Abbey. You can see our farm from up there. (The green arrow is pointing to it - be sure to click on this one!)

The Abbey was established in 1833 by Swiss Benedictine Monks. Their campus is one of the most peaceful places on Earth.


The bell tower was built on to the church only a few years ago.


These are the old bells.



Back when we still lived in town, on still days we could hearing them calling the monks to prayers.

A cold, wet, nasty Sunday afternoon

Coziness time!

(If you look closely you can see the second dog tucked into the curl of her knees. Two more napping humans and another napping cat didn't fit into the picture...)



It's what we do on Sunday afternoon.

Have you been "bitten"?

If you don't understand the reference on this bumper sticker on my daughter's truck, you probably haven't. Either that, or you don't have teenage daughters, LOL!



I tried a macro shot of the frost on her truck as well, but this is the best I could do. I REALLY need to concentrate more on not jiggling the camera as I press the shutter release. I never noticed before I started this project how much trouble I have with absolutely crisp focus.

Behind Closed Doors

One of the fringe benefits of working in a library is access to the Closed Stacks, the collection of books that are not allowed to leave the building. These books are irreplacable and usually too fragile to stand up the the rigors of being handled by the general public.



I love the leather bindings and that "old book" smell.



Most people probably don't even know that these books are here. All you have to do is ask and you will be allowed to look at and read them. You just can't take them home.



Does your library have a collection like this?



I love books!

Sunrise This Morning

Are you tired of Mt. Hood yet? Sunrises are much more dramatic in the summertime when the sun rises farther north, but then I would have to get much earlier than I would like. This is the view this morning at 7:22 a.m.



I want to "collect" some more of the little churches near our farm too. I took a different way to work this morning to catch the early light on this one, which is about 3 miles up the road to the north of us. We have actually attended services here when we didn't have time to make it to our regular church.



I love what the early morning light does to a photograph, and isn't that blue sky something. It is a VERY rare sight around here this time of year. Usually.

I was going to include a detail shot of the lovely scroll work at the base of the steeple, but I thought it would be unkind to feature the bird doo that has accumulated over the winter...

Capturing "Our" Blue Heron

This huge bird has been hanging out in our north field for months now, and for months I have been trying to get an in-focus photograph of it. I saw him out there as I drove in from work this afternoon, so I raced into the house to grab my camera. I carefully checked *all 3* of my settings, hooked up the gorillapod and used it to attach the camera with zoom lens to a fencepost to stabilize it and started shooting. Woo hoo! Success!

I got a couple shots of him posing for me and then he started stalking. Have you ever seen a heron hunt? It is a wonderful study in patience and guile. There he goes...



He pounces! Unfortunately for him, he comes up empty.



Almost right away he began stalking again, so I hung around.



He pounced again. Honestly, they move almost too quickly to watch.



This time he came up with something. Yesterday I watched him catch a rat, but today's catch wasn't quite so dramatic. Probably a shrew or a mouse, judging by the size of it.



He worked it for a few seconds,



... and then it was gone.



It was all over so quickly! This whole episode took about 1 minute.

A Day of Mistakes

I had such high hopes for today's photos! I have been wanting to photograph this tiny church in Silverton since we began, but the weather has not been cooperative. Today was a clear and lovely sunny day and I knew I would be out walking this morning, so I took my camera to work again just for the sake of getting these pictures.

So, we've been doing this for twenty days now and I've gotten a little cocky... Yeah, I know how to set my camera, LOL. Sigh... it turns out that the tricky part is *remembering* to set your camera when working in the manual modes. Arghhhh!

I DID remember to set the white balance for this photo, but I forgot to reset the ISO from the indoor shot I took yesterday. So, all of today's pictures, taken outside on a bright sunny day, are loaded with digital noise.

Another problem with this first shot is the fact that it was taken at exactly the wrong time of day. The late winter rising sun was right in my face and throws off the whole view. I need to go back there and try again at sunset.



Just for fun I took a shot looking up at the steeple. Now this one I am satisfied with!



I will go back again another day and try again. I have always loved this little building.