Week 22 - Weekly Art Challenge - Cactus photography

I'm still trying to catch up on my weekly art challenge posts. I'm at week 22. An online art group I belong challenged us to take photos of something close by. I chose to photograph the cactus garden in our front yard.

New growth from old. The texture the dying cactus arm captured my imagination.

The main trunk of the cereus cactus died, but new branches have sprouted.

The red cacti fruit  contrasts nicely against the green branches. 

Water trapped on petals of a Wandering Jew plant.

 The bright green of the philodendron contrasts nicely with the dark
purple Wandering Jew and it's delicate pale lavender flower.

I'm trying to improve my photography and composition skills.  Digital cameras are a god-send, since I can take as many photos as I desire without worrying about film and developing costs!

Keep creating!!
Lynnita

Week 16 - Weekly Art Challenge

This week for the weekly art challenge, I chose to work with digital art again. I tried a new photo app that Deb Prewitt of Blue Twig Studio introduced to me. It's called SuperPhoto. These are the photos I created with the app on my Android tablet.

Mosaic filter on a hedgehog cactus in bloom photo that I took while taking a walk. 

A dragon I drew and painted was encapsulated in a melting ice cube with SuperPhoto. 

I isolated around the eye of the dragon from the above photo and used a graffiti filter.. I love the way this one turned out. It just needs some words splashed on the wall now! One of the other things I really like is that it's black and white photo with just a few touches of color here and there. 

I enjoyed trying out the SuperPhoto app. Not all of the resulting photos that I played with turned out well, but it's a fun app to continue experimenting with.  It is easy to use and has many options/filters to choose fun, even in the free app. It shows many other options/filters that can be used if you are willing to pay for these. Right now, there's enough for me to explore in the free portion.


Have a great week!
Keep creating!!
Lynnita

Dec ATC Challenge - Winter Wonderland

This month's theme for the ATC Challenge by Blue Twig Studio is "Winter Wonderland."  I made two cards this month.

For the first one, "Let it Snow!", I painted the background of a 140lb watercolor paper in pale blue watercolor. I cut out white snowflakes on a dark blue background from a postcard that came a couple days ago. I glued these to the edges of the ATC card with matte medium. Then using a Sakura Moonlight gel pen in blue, I wrote "Let it Snow" three times. Finally, I added a few AB and clear sequins to the card for embellishment.

Let It Snow ATC Card, 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" on 140 lb watercolor paper.

For the second ATC card, I cut out a scene of the AZ desert. Using matte medium, I attached it to a Bristol paper ATC card. Using a Sakura Moonlight gel pen in white, as well as white acrylic paint, I added snow highlights to the cactus, ground cover, and mountains in the background. This is what the Arizona desert looks like in winter. It's rare to get snow, but when it does, it creates a beautiful landscape. Then I added AB and white sequins to simulate large snowflakes falling for embellishment.

Winter in the Desert ATC card, 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" on Bristol paper.

I hope you've had a wonderful holiday filled with laughter, happiness and family time!

Happy New Year!!

Keep creating!
Lynnita

Week 46 of 365 Days of Art Challenge

This has been such a busy week. I've been burning the midnight oil almost every night until 1-3 am working on a quilt for the Mavericks' quilt guild annual challenge. Therefore, I did not get a sketch done for Blue Twig Studio's weekly sketch challenge for her 365 Days of Art Challenge. I'm using my finished quilt in place of my sketch this week!

The Maverick's quilt guild challenge is called "States of Mine" and is composed of two quilts - one about Arizona (AZ) Naturally (which can be anything to do with AZ) and the second is about the person's state of origin. The only restriction is the quilt has to be 18" wide by 48" high. This vertical composition made it difficult for me to decide what to do.  I had many photos that would make great quilts, but cropping them to fit the 18"x48" vertical restriction made me throw out several of them. I did finish my AZ quilt, but my Origins quilt will be late.

For my AZ quilt, I decided on a night-blooming cactus flower. I'm not an early bird, but I got up at 5 am to see all the beautiful white blooms on our cacti in the front yard. I photographed several, as the sun was just coming over the horizon and highlighted the flowers beautifully!

This is the flower that I cropped for the quilt challenge. 

Cereus or Queen of the Night cacti bloom. From our front yard.

I hand-painted the quilt with Pebeo setacolor paints, Tsukineko inks, and Silk acrylic glaze on white Pimatex cotton fabric. I used two pieces of fabric to make the quilt 3-dimensional. I painted all the front flower petals on one piece of fabric, and the back petals that look blue due to the shadows created by the sun on a second piece of fabric. I did a lot of thread play of the flower on wool batting using a variety of trilobal polyester and silk threads. Then I added two layers of byAnnie's Soft and Stable foam stabilizer to the top layer of petals to give them lift. When stitching the layers altogether - the padded top petals and the blue bottom petals onto a thin cotton batting and backing fabric - I added an extra layer of polyester stuffing to puff up the center petals even more. Then I finished quilting all the layers together. Finally, I embellished the flower with 3 mm, lime green, flat, twisted aluminum for the stamens of the flower.  Following are the various steps of my process in creating this quilt.

Step 1. Fabric is placed over pattern on a foam board.
Painted yellows and oranges with Pebeo setacolor paints.

Step 2. Added deeper oranges and reds with Tsukineko inks in
red delicious, tangerine, autumn leaf and vintage wine.

Step 3. Continued to deepen the values and added the background in the top of the quilt
with Tsukineko inks in apple green, vintage wine, cool gray, ultramarine blue and midnight.

Step 4. Deepened the values of bottom petals and added background with
Tsukineko apple green, vintage wine, cool gray, ultramarine blue, and midnight inks.
Also lightened some of the yellow areas with Tsukineko white and lemon yellow inks. 

Step 5. Removed the first piece of fabric, and covered the pattern with the second 

piece of fabric to start the back petals. Used Silk acrylic glaze in blue for the main color. 

Added Tsukineko inks in ultramarine blue, cerulean blue, red delicious, apple green, 

tangerine, and lemon yellow. Deepened the value of the background with Tsukineko 

midnight, cool gray, and ultramarine inks. Added the pistil in apple green and thistle inks.

Step 6. Added thread play and quilting with Superior Rainbow trilobal polyester, 

Bottom Line polyester, and Kimono Silk threads. Also used YLI Silk threads for the 

thread play. I used parallel, softly curved lines that followed the shape of the petals for

 my thread play and quilting motifs. Added Soft and Stable foam stabilizer and polyester 

stuffing under the front yellow and orange petals to give a 3D effect. 

Cereus, Queen of the Night quilt, 18" x 48". This is my final
quilt embellished with the 3mm flat, lime green, twisted
aluminum for the stamens. Finished with a facing, label, and sleeve.  

Close up to show the 3D effect.

Close up to show the thread play, quilting and aluminum stamens.

This quilt took me much longer than I expected, but I'm thrilled with the result. Now to finish my second quilt for the challenge - my Origins quilt. I will post that quilt when I am finished with it.

Keep creating!!
Lynnita

Week 21 of 365 Days of Art Challenge

Another week done!! I can hardly believe how fast the year is going - it's almost half over! Where has the time gone??

Once I returned from the retreat, I was busy helping my daughter-in-law with 3 sick children and a newborn, helping another friend who is closing her quilt store after almost 14 years, and giving 3 demo's on Zentangles for a local quilt guild.  Rather than sketching this week, I decided to play with some of the photos I have taken recently. I have an a photo-editing app called Pixlr Express on my tablet that I enjoy using to edit photos. It doesn't do everything that Photoshop Elements does, but I find it much easier to use.

My first photo is a collage I created of my 2-year old grandson. He was playing a small electric piano and just having fun singing and dancing when he didn't think he was being observed - three of the photos in the collage reflect this. The other two photos are from two weeks ago, when his baby brother was born.

2-year old grandson playing the piano and taking a photo of his new baby brother. He has such cute expressions! Now if I can figure out how to blur the edges of the photos and make it look seamless... That's for another day!

These next photos are flowers and succulents I took on the Vina de Lestonnac grounds at the quilt retreat.

Combined two yellow flowers into one. I placed the center of the flowers close
to each other and highlighted the dark center surrounding the daisy-like flower. 

These are the two flowers that I combined into one photo. One is a daisy-like bloom on ground cover plants. The other is a yellow lily. 

Combined two succulents, one green and one red, aligning their similar centers. 

These are the original photos of the two succulents. I love the texture that appears when combined into one photo. I want to play more with this and see what else I can do.

I also took the photo of the red succulent and added doodles with the app to make it look like a Zentangle. It didn't turn out as well as I would have liked, as my stylus battery died, so I had to use my finger to draw. I saved it anyway and had planned to post it along with these photos. When I re-opened it to copy it to my computer, the doodling wasn't saved as I had drawn it - it was all over the place with half of the doodles missing! I was disappointed with this. Not sure if I did something wrong or it's a glitch in the app.  I will try again when I can use my stylus.

Thanks for stopping by.

Week 20 of 365 Days of Art Challenge

This week went by so quickly! Started with having a new grandson! Then I went to CA for 5 days for a quilting retreat with Patt Blair, where we painted wholecloth quilts using Tsukineko inks. The retreat is held at Vina de Lestonnac, a quiet retirement center for nuns and a few priests, in Temecula - beautiful southern California wine country.

Dragon head - created by Lynnita Knoch
for art quilt for Patt Blair workshop.

I continued to work on my dragon head that I started at last year's retreat (see previous post here). I hadn't had a chance to work on it since then - it's a large piece  (approx 35" x 50") and I don't really have a place at home to set it up.  I'm not posting any photos of the quilt yet. I don't want to unveil it until I've finished it.  I've changed the colors a bit, from what I painted on my drawing (shown here) - it is fresher and I don't need to do as much mixing to get the colors I want. I'm very pleased with how it's turning out.  I'm a little more than halfway done. I realized that when I paint, it usually takes me several months to complete a work this large, so I shouldn't be frustrated that this is taking me so long.

At any rate, I didn't get any sketching done for this week's art challenge - between the newborn and the quilting retreat. But I took many photos around the retreat center, so I'm posting some of those as my "sketching" for this week's art challenge.

Windmills in CA from I-10 highway. The mountains still have some snow.

Overlooking the Danzai winery from  Vina de Lestonnac retreat center.

Several hot air balloons over wine country early Friday morning.

Vina de Lestonnac has lovely grounds with a wide variety of plants. This purple prickly pear had its first blooms while we were there. We just need to look to Mother Nature for our color palettes.  The purple and yellows are just stunning!

One of the local denizens! He was soaking up the sun. He posed for me, allowing me to take several shots before he decided to move on. He has a lovely purple throat and belly to show off to the ladies, which he displayed for me. He has attitude and I would like to paint him for a small art quilt. 

Several rose bushes were still blooming, although many were past their peak by the time we were there. The colors are awesome on this lovely striped rose. 

Red rose still drenched in dewdrops. 

 I hope I didn't overwhelm you with photos. Vina de Lestonnac is such a relaxing, quiet place for a retreat, with beautiful scenery everywhere you look.

The only problem we had this year was the fires north of San Diego. We were between 40-60 miles from them. You could see the black smoke clouds in the distance and occasionally smell smoke. One evening, we actually had to drive from the classroom to the dining room, as the wind blew smoke from the Camp Pendleton fire into the area, making it very difficult to breathe. I pray for all those affected by these fires, especially the firemen and the people who have lost their homes.

Cactus Flowers and the Sunset

Hedgehog Cactus taken at sunset taken over the weekend. 

My husband and I were walking our dogs this weekend. The neighbor's hedgehog cactus has just started to bloom. The bright pink flowers against the olive cactus and sharp spines with the sunset highlighting the petals -  wish I was a better photographer or had a better camera! Thank goodness for photo-editing software!

Close up of hedgehog cactus bloom. 

Close up of another hedgehog cactus bloom. 

The clouds created a beautiful sunset that same evening. 

Looking to the east.. The mauve against the deep blue makes me want to dye fabrics in these colors. 

Sunset over the weekend. I love the bright yellows and oranges against the lavenders and blues.  

Sunset over the weekend. 

I enjoy taking photos of sunsets and sunrises - well, sunrises when I can pull myself out of bed that early! I love the way the colors mix and blend. I also enjoy taking photos of flowers, especially close-ups. They are so full of color and come in so many shapes and sizes. Studying the colors of nature helps me to pick colors for quilts and artwork.

Flowers

The night-blooming cactus, cereus, grows in our front yard. I don't see the blooms very often, as it's just way too early for me to get up when they are in bloom! In this case the saying "The early bird gets the worm" is very true! After blooming, they wilt by full sun-up (around 7 a.m. here). The beautiful white 6" blooms occur mainly during the months of June and July. I made myself get up between 5:00 and 6:00 a.m. a few mornings to capture some of these gorgeous blooms with the camera. Even though I groaned and grumbled, it was well worth the effort!!

Cereas bloom backlit by the early morning sun just 

coming up over the horizon. This bloom is starting to 

close already. I didn't get up quite early enough to see

the bloom completely open.  Edited in Pixlr Express.

Another early morning I was able to get a bloom with the sun 

shining on it, creating yellow-looking petals instead of the 

usual white ones. Edited in Pixlr Express.

Cereus bloom with sunlight coming through the 

transparent white petals. The sepals appear 

highlighted with more red than normal due to 

the sunlight. Edited in Pixlr Express.

Cereas bloom closeup. 

One of these days, I'd like to use these photographs (as well as others I've taken or my husband has taken) as a reference to create a painting of these blooms. I'll have to think about what technique would be most effective - watercolor, acrylics, pastels, or some combination of these. I use to paint oils frequently, but the smells bother me now, so I rarely paint in oils anymore, unless I use the water-soluble oils. I've not worked with these, so I don't really know how they compare with regular oils paints.