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 1 - 2015 Weekly Art Challenge

I want to continue doing a weekly challenge this year, but it's taken me awhile to decide what I wanted to do. I thoroughly enjoyed Blue Twig Studio's weekly sketch challenge last year and want to do something again this year.  I can see in looking over my sketches from last year's challenge (see posts here), that taking time to sketch weekly helped me improve my skills. Also, it was also a lot of fun! I enjoy creating Zentangles, too, and thought about doing these daily, with a weekly sketch thrown in. Even though a Zentangle can be created in a short amount of time, I was afraid it would be more than I could realistically accomplish when I examine everything else in my life at this time.

Another weekly challenge I had thought about participating in was a weekly photography challenge that would help teach photograph skills and editing photos. I would love to improve both of these areas. However, I don't have the required DSLR camera or Adobe Photoshop and can't afford either of them currently.  So that challenge is out for now.

Lastly, another area I want to improve is my mixed-media skills. I found an online challenge for a 52-week art journal called  the "Documented Life Project 2015" (DLP) at Art to the 5th Academy. They will be giving a prompt every week to create an art journal page. I thought this would help me explore my art journaling more, as well as, be fun to do.

After much thought, I've decided to to the Documented Life Project (DLP) 2015 with Art to the 5th Academy for my weekly challenge.  I'm going to be behind one to two weeks, as I'm waiting on my Dylusions Creative Journal to arrive via mail. It was supposed to be here in 2 days, but so far it's been almost 10 days. Hopefully, I can catch up in a short amount of time once the journal arrives. In addition to the DLP, I will post my sketches, drawings, Zentangles, photos and digital artwork as I create them - I am just not going to commit to having these done on a weekly basis.

With all that long explanation now out of the way, since I can't start the DLP without the art journal, this first week I worked on some digital artwork. I used Pixlr Express to create the following digital artwork made up of blended photos or photos and drawings. I took all of the photos myself and drew all the drawings. I hope to print some of these on paper and use in my art journal once it arrives!

Photo of a rose with the morning dew (see post dated May 21, 2014) blended with a photo of a palm frond. Both photos taken  at Vina de Lestonnac in Temecula, CA, May 2014. The palm frond creates an interesting texture across the rose and rosebud. Overlays added more color to the background.

Photo of winter berries covered in ice blended with a photo of a funny looking tree in the middle of a river. Both photos taken  in Toledo, OH after a snow storm on Dec 6, 2011. Overlays added the bubble texture, while the red lines bring focus to the berries and tree. 

Photo of the winter berries covered in ice (taken in Ohio, Dec 2011) blended with the photo of the palm frond (taken in CA, May 2014). I like the contrast of the radiating straight lines from the palm frond with the round berries and organic shape of the ice covering the berries. Overlays added more color to the background.

Photo of a carpenter bee blended with a photo of a yellow flower. Carpenter bee taken in Chandler, AZ  (see post dated Mar 20, 2013). Yellow flower taken at my parents in Lima, OH in July 2013. The flowers the bee was hovering over blended with the yellow flower to create a unique background. The carpenter bee seems almost transparent. 

Photo of sunset blended with Dragon Rider drawing. Sunset photo taken in Chandler, AZ 

on Dec 4, 2013 and dragon rider drawing created in Dec 2014 (see post dated Jan 1, 2014). 

I cropped the sunset photo and saturated the colors to make them more vivid.

Same blended photo as above, but the blending is reversed. I like the way the reversal 

changed the colors of the sky and changed the black/white drawing into colors. It 

creates entirely different emotions than the previous digital artwork. This one seems 

more fantastical and otherworldly to me.  What kind of planet has a green sky?

Another sunset photo taken July 16, 2014 blended with a fairy dragon drawing (see post dated July 30, 2014). The colors of the dragon are almost lost in the sunset colors and he seems transparent as well. I added a bubble overlay to give an appearance of a moon behind the dragon's head. 

Another sunset photo taken  Sept 17, 2013 in Chandler, AZ  (see post dated Sept 18, 2013) blended with Mesoamerican dragon drawing (see post dated  Jan 1, 2015).  An overlay created the starry sky. This was one of my favorite dragons to draw. I like how he appears to be soaring across a night sky, barely visible as the sun is setting and the stars are coming out. Only a select few that believe in dragons can see him!

I enjoy editing photos and playing with all the various features of the programs. The various overlays and special effects are fun to experiment with. I also like changing or enhancing the colors to create different moods with the digital artwork.  I'm beginning to feel fairly comfortable with Pixlr Express. The company keeps adding updates, such as this photo blending feature I focused on in this blog. I'm still learning all the possibilities with Adobe Photoshop Elements. I do not find this program as intuitive to use and I haven't found a good book to help with the learning curve. The company has online tutorials, but I'm always having to re-watch them. I'm learning this program slowly.

Thanks for stopping by!
Keep creating!
Lynnita

Week 27 of 365 Days of Art Challenge

View of dust storm heading our direction (coming

west) Photo taken from backyard. The opaque 

cloud that can be seen over the tree tops and

roofs is the dust storm. The trees and roofs give

an idea of how high the dust cloud is. Blue sky 

can still be seen above this cloud of dust.

It's been a hot muggy week here in AZ. We officially started our monsoon season with a huge dust storm last weekend. Visibility was reduced to 0 in some areas. I went outside to check on the chickens and could see a wall of dust coming our way quickly! By the time I got my husband to help me round up the chickens to enclose for safety, they had already gathered in their nesting box and we were able to just close it. They are smarter than I give them credit for!! The storm hit just then. Hard to see with keeping my head down and eyes covered (still got dust and dirt in them!). Wish we had gotten rain with the storm!

View of dust storm heading our way from front yard (coming up from the south).  The dust storm looks bigger from the front yard. The wind was strong enough to topple huge trees in the neighborhood.  

I played on my tablet this week with two photo-editing apps. One is Pixlr Express, which I use frequently to touch up pictures. This app also allows me to combine photos, add text, texture, stickers, etc. to photos as well. It's fun to experiment with. The above photos of the dust storm are edited in Pixlr Express to help emphasize the dust clouds.  

The other app I enjoy using on my tablet for editing photos is Paper Camera  because of the choice of effects that can be used to make photos look like drawings or paintings. The following photos are ones I edited in Paper Camera. 

My Jack Russell Terrier, Abu, is 15 years old. He loves to sleep on his pillows all day, except to take a walk or to eat people food or a doggie treat! I love the Sketch Up effect in Paper Camera. This photo really looks like a sketch, even though I've not picked up a pencil at all! This is my sketch for this week! Lol!!

With this photo of seed pod on a cactus in our front yard, I used the Neon Cola effect of Paper Camera.

It creates bold outlines of the various colors in the photo and puts them on a dark background. 

Photo of my daughter edited in Paper Camera using the Haystack effect. The Haystack
effect transforms the photo to look like it's been painted using pointillism (tiny dots of color). 

A photo I took in Sedona last fall. I used Paper Camera's Acquarello effect. This

makes the photo look like a watercolor (albeit a paint-by-number watercolor! Lol!).

This is another photo from Sedona. I used Paper Camera's Andy Pop effect to create a tiled
image in the style of Andy Warhol. The number of rows and columns can be changed. 

This is another photo I took in Sedona last fall. This is the Pastel Perfect effect to make the photo look like it's been painted in pastels. I like this effect, but wish it were a bit lighter and brighter. 

This time I used the Gotham Noir effect from Paper Camera with the same photo
as above. Gotham Noir creates rich black and white images of photos. 

I hope you enjoyed the various effects of the Paper Camera app. These are only half the effects available in Paper Camera. There are a several other styles in Paper Camera that I did not show today, like Comic Boom (I believe this is suppose to give a comic book like effect), Old Printer (black and white dots like the old printers use to do), Contours (looks more like a charcoal drawing with outlines), Bleaching (the photos is outlined with the colors faded), Half Ton (similar to the Old Printer but in color), Granny's Paper (sepia toned), and Pen and Paper (photos is done in shades of blue).  I'll create photos using those effects and post them in another blog.

Made it through another week! Keep being creative!!

Week 22 of 365 Days of Art Challenge

It's June!!! Where is the time going? I think it goes by faster every year! We need to be sure we are taking time to smell the roses along the way! This week has been a struggle for me. I've been sick most of the week, but have managed to get a bit of sewing done and played with more digital manipulation of photographs. 

Being sick, it was easier to lay in bed and play with my tablet, than to get out my sketchbook and draw. I went through several tutorials (again) for Photoshop Elements. With step-by-step instructions, one would think the images would end up like the tutorial.Not me - some I wasn't even close to the results the tutorial showed! Lol!! I did figure out enough to manipulate the following photos into something I thought was interesting. 

Rosebud overlaying century plant. It was difficult to control the fading of the rosebud to achieve
the affect I wanted. Too much of the rosebud disappeared when I tried make it more transparent.
I like the century plant leaves and debris in the center showing through the rosebud.

My original photos of the rosebud and century plant. 

Striped red/yellow rose on top of geranium leaves. I like the green geranium leaf showing through
the bottom of the faded rose. I can see using this photo as a place to start a mixed-media project. 

The original photos of the geranium leaves and the striped rose.

Vegetables rippled, warped and re-colored provides the base for the bunch of tiny purple flowers and a orange rose. This is my favorite photo. I definitely want to print this and use it for a mixed-media painting, or possibly on fabric for an art quilt. 

These are the original photos of the purple flowers, the orange rose, and a pot of vegetables that I used to create the above photo collage.

I learn more each time I use Photoshop Elements ( (or stumble my way through it). Maybe one of these days, it will actually start making sense! Lol! It's fun to play and manipulate photos to create new ideas, textures, and shapes.

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.

More Photos of Vina de Lestonnac, Temecula, CA

More photos from Vina De Lestonnac, Temecula, CA that I would like to share with you. I know you would like to see some of the art quilts being painted. However, since the work is not mine, I don't feel that I can post others' work on my blog. I did not take many photos of Patt Blair's work, as I took so many last year. Her work can be seen on her website here. Thank you for understanding.

Not sure what type of tree this is, but the blossoms are beautiful.  Spiky red
stamens with beautiful pink-tinged petals that remind me of cowrie sea shells.

Another local denizen. These little hares can be seen in abundance. However, they
don't usually sit still long enough to get a good photo. This little guy posed for awhile for us.

Small barrel cactus with tiny pink blossoms. 

A fountain in the center of a rock garden is a favorite for the birds, especially the goldfinches. They enjoyed bathing in the fountain, splashing merrily. They flew away quickly whenever I tried to snap a shot!

These budding trees were just beginning to bloom . They will be beautiful once they are in full bloom. 

I can't remember what bush had these clusters of tiny blossoms. The flowers are only about an inch in size. 

Thank you for allowing me to share my nature photos from the quilt retreat.

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.