Broken window

My dear elderly neighbour called me over to show me his car. It had been in a bit of an accident and a square steel rod had gone through the rear side window. I sympathised and was told the full story but I couldn't help myself - the pattern of shapes, shadows, colours and textures was beautiful. He knows me well enough to forgive my insensity in taking a photograph. Just as well!!

I played around with the photo and came up with these images.

 

Now, if only I can transfer the image onto canvas with acrylic paint....

Lucas Parklands Sculpture exhibition

I don't class myself as a sculptor by any means, but I have joined in with local friends and colleagues who are exhibiting on June 12th and 13th as part of the Arts and Garden Festival in Maleny and Montville. Arts Connect Inc [a Montville based but rapidly expanding arts organisation] is organising the art side of things. I am making some 'ephemeral' and fibre based pieces for the weekend. My fabrics will be a stark contrast to the natural bush surrounding but I hope they will make a statement and get the audience thinking about 'art' and its various contexts. The piece above, 'Sail Away', was a 'trial run' a couple of weeks ago and will be dedicated to Delwyn's dad.

I am about to splash black paint along this length of fabric - about 20+ meters, draped along my deck into my studio. It was originally a lovely heavy linen hospital sheet which I dyed and stained and marked will various 'stuff'. I hope to drape it down a tree, over a rocky outcrop and maybe into a dam at the Lucas parklands. We'll see!!

How inspirational are the folds of this jersy fabric? I am toying with ideas such as "A FUN GUY" [ a fungus] and "RED MOSS" and attaching bunched fabrics to rotting logs.

The "'GUMLAND GARLAND" is coming along well, but I want it to be twice this length - hoping for a windy day to blow the leaves off my tree.

This is how I want my Gumland garland to look in the forest [this is a photoshopped pic].

Our big set up day is Monday 7th, so it will all need to fall into place in less than a week. My friends Fiona Dempster, Barry Smith, and Kim Schoenberger are all involved and have brilliant works. Keep an eye on their blog sites - they are great bloggers.

ALaW

aaagh - It is March already. That means Autumn here in Australia which is wonderful. Cooler weather. I love the autumn here - like Spring down south. We don't get much of the colour changes as we are sub tropical where I live but there are a few maples around which are spectacular for a week or so.

This is my latest effort for the ALaW project. The letter 'D'.

...select, clone, stretch, add shadow

First 5 letters for ALaW

The ALaW project is growing still. I think there are about 15 members now from about 4 or 5 countries. Well done to our lovely Fiona!!

As I have already indicated, I am using photos taken of an old painted hand made box to source my alphabet letters. For some unknown reason, my initial letters were vowels, thus I am a week ahead!! I am using mainly ACDSee [a simple version of Photoshop] to achieve these results. I will note when I use another programme.

Here are the original photos, the final letters, and some pointers on how I got to that stage.

a. Mirror image, flipping, cloning.

e. Flip, clone.

i. Flip, clone, colour changes.

o. Flip, clone, add contrast.

u. Change perspective [with 'Paintshop Pro 7'], clone.

There are some challenges ahead. I will need lots of artistic licence with some letters.

I am teaching these techniques at an ATASDA workshop in Brisbane on April 24th and 25th.

ALaW

Week 3 and here is my next letter - 'a'. I developed it from a knot in the wood of the lid - making a 'mirror' image to create a round shape, then 'cloning' the gaps in the wood and rotating the image until I made a convincing 'a'.

21st January.

I have added a couple more letters to my list today. The group is sharing images of letter creations on ALaW2010 blogsite. It's great to see so many varied approaches.

ALaW 2

I'm still happy working with letters found in photos of the old wooden box with its peeling paint. Many of the round letters will be formed from the round screws. I love the challenge of using 'photoshop' as my creative tool to manipulate and form new letters. I'm actually contemplating two alphabets from this source, presenting them as a concertina free standing 'book' with letters on both sides.

Here is the second week's letter - e .