Fun with textures and new supplies

Linking up to Texture Tuesday today -- since I most always do flowers, I thought I'd try Kim's textures on different subject matter.

This is a sunset picture I took in Tucson a few years back, processed with Color Efex Pro and two of Kim's textures.  I like how it came out -- in the original, the front part was all sandy and full of garbage.  The magic of Photoshop :p

I'm off to do some art -- I'm trying to figure out how to combine photos, paint, and collage elements.  It involves lots of trips to an art store, to get new supplies.  A terrible job, but someone's got to do it, right?  I'll show you how it comes out.

One of the supplies I got was Ranger's crackle paint.  I tried it over several painted bits and it didn't crackle.  Has anyone ever used this?  How does it work?

Have a great day.

Check out this photographer/painter

This morning in the Santa Cruz Sentinel there was a story about a local photographer, retired orthopedic surgeon Mark Wainer.  He does "painterly" photographs so of course my husband pointed the article out to me. 

One of Mark Wainer's beautiful photographs

I found this reproduced on another website, so I hope it's okay to reproduce it here, with a link to Mark Wainer's website.

I was surprised (and delighted) at his work; I had expected that a "painterly" photograph would be something like mine, but they are really not at all.  I think where mine look like photographs manipulated to look like paintings, his look like paintings done in a hyper-realistic style that looks like photography (though he does start with a photograph).

What do you think?  I think his work is beautiful.  When I look at some of his landscapes and seascapes, I wonder whether he turns them into HDRs before he starts the painting part of the process.  They look kind of like HDR, which would contribute to the "photorealistic" feel of his work.

Do you like it?

And the marbles just roll away . . .

Those of you who are "of a certain age" will understand this -- those not of a certain age, this is what you have to look forward to. :)

I find myself, these days, saying often "I'm really losing my marbles," in response to what seem to be gaps in my thought processes, memory, and so on.  In class or in conversation, I will be reaching for a word, and it's just not there.  I know if I keep trying to think of what it is, it won't make any difference; I have to just choose another word, and of course a minute or hour or day later, I think "Interaction.  Duh."

I have rarely used a calendar with any frequency; I'd start using one and then it would fall by the wayside and I'd just store things in my memory, which resembled a steel trap at that point.  Today, I forget that we need bagels, that I was supposed to be at a watercolor class at 10AM, not 1PM, that I needed to return those papers to the insurance guy last week, with alarming frequency.  So now I'm trying to use a calendar -- I have Google calendar set up on all my computers and devices -- and I forget to put things in it.  I think I've put things in it, but when I look back, I haven't.  Because I often forget my phone, I write something on the back of an envelope in my purse and then forget I've written it there.  I find myself gasping to myself -- oh no, I should have canceled that doctor's appointment, or I'm supposed to be at a meeting for Open Studios, or we're leaving on vacation in two days and I haven't had the car looked at or printed out the confirmations or talked to the woman who's going to house sit while we're gone.    

While all this is, as people have told me, perfectly normal, I still find it provokes a lot of anxiety.  I've always been the person that was on top of things, that could keep a lot of balls in the air without ever letting one drop.  But things have changed.  To wonder "Am I losing my marbles?" is really wondering, "Are these the first signs of Alzheimer's?" and I upset myself just thinking that.  (One of my grandmothers had Alzheimer's, I'm pretty sure, but we didn't have the term back then  -- we just thought she was loony and cried at unexpected moments and was, well, losing her marbles.) 

This morning, Grace and I showed up for an appointment that I had clearly mis-scheduled on my calendar, because the person we were to meet never showed up.  We waited for 20 minutes, and then left.  I need to call her to find out what the real date was.  I look like a doofus in both people's eyes, I'm sure.

Hmmm . . . is this a downer of a post?  Sometimes I can laugh about it, and I guess that's the frame of mind I should try to stay in.  Have you ever had to deal with this?  Do you have strategies you use to stay on top of things?  Or to cover the fact that you've completely drawn a blank?

On a lighter note, I recently finished an online collage class that was really fun.  Here's a digital one I did:

The title:  The Urban Forest.  I liked the class so much, I'm going to do it again in the fall.

And how are you doing?  Have your marbles started rolling away?

Well, hellooooo again --

I'm speaking to you from the land of retirement, where clocks have no meaning, every day is Saturday, and the biggest decision is whether to play with my pictures, do a little watercolor painting, or take a nap for a while.

It's been all of 3 days that I've been retired!  It's a kind of tumultuous time, no matter how happy it may be (and it is very happy, for me) -- it's also a time of looking back over things, taking stock of the things you've accomplished, wondering with all the things you're putting aside . . . who am I any more?

Well, anyone who's read this blog knows that I've been reinventing myself as a fine art photographer, so "fine" at this point that I've been accepted into Open Studios this year!  I was astonished to hear that they had chosen me  -- I really wasn't expecting it.

 Link to French Kiss Tableaux Textures

So, I've been working hard to get my stuff together, even though it isn't until October; I don't want to be rushed.  My greeting cards are done, I'm ordering big things printed on canvas one by one, my advertising postcards are done -- things are moving along pretty well, since it's only July.  

I like this picture of a heron I took a couple of years ago but just processed today.  For some reason, it makes me think of Gustave Klimt, and I wonder what the printed photo would look like, on matte paper with little gildings of gold here and there.  What do you think?  It looks like the rock behind him (her?) could be made into a circular moon kind of thing.  I really want to move into something that's kind of mixed media; I just finished a collage class and loved it, and I wonder if there are ways to incorporate my photos into collages and so on.  Anyone doing this kind of thing, so you can show me examples?

Anyway, I've missed you all, and hope that one or two of you have missed me :)  I now have the time to put my thoughts together enough so that I can share them with the world (haha) and so I'm returning to blogging.  Seriously.  I am.  Stay tuned . . .

 

A Very Nice Day!

Today my new camera and I headed up to Berkeley to stay overnight, have dinner with my son, and breakfast tomorrow with my dear, dear friend.  I went for the first time to Annie's Annuals in Richmond, just north of Berkeley.  It's a fabulous huge nursery with incredible plants, and their "demonstration gardens" are wonderful.  I wandered around for quite a while, lusting for this and that, but fortunately for my credit card balance, I couldn't really buy anything because I won't get home until late tomorrow night and I can't leave plants in the car all day in the hot sun tomorrow.  So I got two succulents.  :)  Here's a picture (not taken by me) that shows you only a part of the vastness of the place:

  

They do a lot of mail-order business and I've gotten a few things from them that way.  But I wanted to see it for myself, so of course my camera came with me.  Here's one I took:

 

 Everything is soooo beautiful.  They must have a battalion of workers there to do all the deadheading and so on.  Check it out, if you like garden stuff.

I'm staying tonight at the Berkeley City Club -- a beautiful building designed by Julia Morgan in the Thirties.  It's very goth in its style, and there are beautiful vignettes all over the building.  Tomorrow morning before I meet up with my friend, I'm going to go down and snap a few pics.  

 

Berkeley City Club

I'll have some more pix tomorrow, I hope.

One more day --

This will be a quick post, but guess what?  Tomorrow evening is the last class I'll teach for nine months!  And my retirement date is July 18th, but between now and then, I don't have a lot to do other than sort through 23 years of accumulated debris in my office and figure out what the heck to do with it.

But, in the meantime, I gave myself an early retirement present -- a Canon 7D, which I'm thrilled with.  I haven't had a lot of time to use it yet, but I did take a couple of snaps last evening, and this is the only one I've processed so far:

 Linked to Texture Tuesday

I'm also continuing to take art classes -- the latest community college class is on collage.  I'm surprised how much I'm enjoying it, but there's a kind of freedom that then allows the process feel a little like play, and if you make a goof, well, you can usually figure something out to make it right.  Here's the first one I've been really happy with (we were supposed to make an abstract landscape):

If you can look closely, you'll see that some of the layers are kind of fun -- the top one is a magazine picture of a giant fingerprint, and the next one down is chocolate muffins with sugar crystals on top.  I used Color Efex Pro to process the picture, and it looks dark, but 1) it was supposed to be nighttime, and 2) it was the only way I could get close to the actual colors, which are pretty vivid.  Here's the photo that was my inspiration:

I love this picture, but unfortunately it's not a good one -- it was night and I didn't have my tripod, so it's really fuzzy.  (And of course I should have gotten rid of the telephone pole.)  It really was a beautiful scene, and I guess it will have to live on as one of the "ones that got away."

Anyway, got to run for today -- I'm seeing my son for dinner in Berkeley.  Yay!  

Okay, I'm back. No really, I'm back.

Hello to everyone!  Stand by for the Grand Reopening -- I think I said something about it before, but this time, because I am FINISHED teaching for nine months, and my retirement is just down the road, I'm returning to blogging.  I'll be back with updates and pictures and recommendations and, I hope, a giveaway.  Join me!  Rejoin me!  I've missed you all, and so has Buttercup.

Buttercup is excited about the Grand Reopening