Flower Edits

Some different edits of the same photo. There are so many possibilities to edit a photo using editing software such as Lightroom (my favourite). And it's so much fun playing with different options, experimenting, trying out new things. But sometimes it's difficult to decide, which one I like best.

Photo Sunday May

There are those special places. Places where you feel at peace, relaxed, free to breathe, and just generally happy and content. One of those places isn't too far from where I live, just on the other side of the small mountain. In 1953, Robert Seleger, a master gardener, discovered, among the rich green fields and pastures, a patch of hill more and planted a first rhododendron there. In the following years, he travelled the world to find rhodondrons, crossing them to grow plants of different colours hardy enough to survive the cold winters. The place grew into a beautiful garden, beautiful azaleas, rhododendrons, ferns, peonies and many more plants and trees as well as rivers, ponds, a little lake, bridges, and lots of soft pathes. The water lily ponds are home to hundreds of frogs a well as dragon flies and water snakes. The air is filled with the scent of flowers and the song of birds. A truly magical place. I went there with my Mum at the beginning of the week, and we picked just the perfect day. Not only the last warm and sunny day before another series of cold and rainy days, but also when the rhododendrons, azaleas and peonies were in full bloom. Of course I took loads of photos, and so for today, it's a bit of a photo overload. (You can find more information about this beautiful garden on their website).

Happy Sunday!

Photo Sunday May

I've been taking so many more photos again this year, that I have decided to post a little series this months. One or more photos every Sunday, without (m)any words.

ap-pre-ci-ate. judge the value of; understand or enjoy fully in the right way; be thankful for

Around us. Within us. Sometimes so easy. Sometimes oh so hard.

Hello spring

I'm still spending most (too much) of my free time with tidying up my photos. It's time consuming and rather tedious, but once I'm finished, I'm sure it will be worth it. And I just want to get it done now. So not as much studio time as I would like at the moment. But I have been drawing for a bit yesterday, and hopefully I can drag myself away from the computer and do some painting too this week - and share them here later this week. 

 

In the meantime, spring has arrived here. The past few days have been mild (apart from freezing mornings and evenings) and sunny, without a cloud in the sky. So today I grabbed my camera to get some shots of a patch of snowdrops near by. Those snowdrops always make me happy, and after spending so much time going through, sorting, and deleting photos from 5 years ago, it was a nice change to do some editing, and finally installing and playing around with Lightroom presets. Still much to learn, but I'm enjoying getting back into photo editing again.

Colour or no colour?

I love doing little sketches in my sketchbook. I don't have as much time and energy for getting out my acrylics and a canvas or art journal, as I would like. But I want to do something creative as often as I can, every day, if possible. And sketchbooks are just perfect for that. I have a number of different sketchbooks for different themes and media.

Nature is my biggest inspiration, and I love sketching flowers, and flower/nature patterns. I usually make a pencil sketch first to get the design and composition right, then go over it with a variety of pens.

I love colour, but I also love the purity of the black and white sketch, and I often can't make up my mind whether to add colour, or to leave the pen version. Like in this case, where I really liked the black and white version, but felt that I had to add colour, because this is a sketchbook with proper water colour paper. Such sketchbooks aren't always easy to find here, and this one, I had ordered in the United States, so it felt like a bit of a waste to not add some watercolour paint.

At the end, I made three versions of my simple flower pattern. The first one I left without colour, in the second one I only added colour to the flowers, and in the third one, I added a background too. I love to see the three different versions, and the different effects the paint give. But most of all, I love drawing up the designs. So relaxing, and therapeutic.

Summer of Colour, Week 5

I wasn't too happy about this week's colour combination, Candy Apple Red & Yellow, I must admit. I like red, but yellow really is my least favourite colour, and I just wasn't convinced that the combination of the two could produce something I'd be happy with. But of course I decided to give it a go, and as the yellow wasn't a specific yellow, I decided to make the best of that and use as warm a shade of yellow as possible, bordering on light orange.

I've only come as far as finishing the sketchbook page, and preparing the background on the sheet of watercolour paper. But I'm determined to finish that one too over the weekend, and catch up with the the past two weeks too, to be ready for the final week next week.

I did the doodles only last night, and, with my head being full of all the new stuff that starting a new job brings with it, my imagination was a bit limited. So I decided to go back to one of my older designs from my trainsketches. I love these sketchbooks, they are becoming such a great source for inspiration.

I have to say that I'm quite pleased with the result. The colours work well together, and I'm glad I tried a combination I'd never would have chosen myself. Can't wait til Monday now, when the last combination will be announced (can't believe it's already the last week!). I already can't remember what combination I voted for, but I'm hoping that it's going to be one that includes blue. We haven't really had any proper blue so far, only the turquoise in week one. Anyway, still lots to catch up with, so I'd better start working.

A citron green & turquoise flower garden

It's the first week of Summer of Colour, and the colour combination that got the most votes was citron green & turquoise. And as usual, with challenges, my mind immediately went totally blank when I started thinking about what to paint with these colours. I saw postings popping up everywhere, in the Facebook group, on blogs, thinking, 'ah yes, that's a good idea', and 'this techniques works well'. Blank. Then I saw Tracey's gorgeous bag (I want one!!), and thought, well that's an idea. Look around the flat for something in those colours, and just draw it. Blank.

So at the end, I decided to keep it simple. I did this flower doodle page in my little sketchbook on the train to and from work, and decided, to just paint the flowers turquoise and the background green. 

I quite liked it, so I decided to do another one, this time using proper watercolour paper and watercolours. I splashed some green and turquoise on the paper for a background, and then started doodling on top of it. It's not the most ingenious idea, but I'm in a kind of doodling mood this week, and it makes me happy, and that's good enough for me, really.

And of course, when I had finished my two little sketches, I saw all those turquoise and citon green things everywhere around me. That necklace, which I haven't worn for ages, and somehow just felt like wearing again today ( - just look at its shape!). 

My current favourite mug which I bought on my holiday in the south of England last month.

And my new notebook that I got earlier this week, and which is going to be my little "blog book", to help me get more organised with my blog, and better keep up with blogging. And the new matching pens, and the different washi tapes I already had. And my other favourite mug. Isn't it just typical!

Linking up to Summer of Colour and Paint Party Friday.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone! Can't wait what next week's colour combination will be. I might just keep going on with my water colour splashes and doodling, to save my sanity :)

Some more Train and Lunch Sketches: Fruits and Flowers

I did these sketches a few weeks ago, but somehow never got round to post them here. Actually, I've been very bad at blogging in general recently. Either I haven't got time to edit the photos, or the light is too bad for taking photos and I just can't get it right, or I just simply never get round to write up a post. 

But hopefully, this will all change from next month on. Because next month, I'll start a new job, and with the new job comes a much shorter daily commute (from up to two hours to under an hour one way), and a whole day off a week, which all means: much more time and energy to put into my art. And my blog.

It will also mean the end of my little TrainSketches. Although I hope to keep up the occasional lunch sketches. There's a lovely park sourrounding my new place of work, which I think would be nice for some fresh air and sketching. At least during summer. But we'll see.

So, here are a few of my latest train and lunch sketches. Some delicious kiwis, sketched in my lunchtime...

... some paisley and flower doodles, sketched during a couple of morning train rides, ...

... and the lovely lilies of the valley along the the main road on my way to work (I so will not miss having to walk or cycle from the station to the library in wind and weather, after having already spent 1 1/2 hours in various trains), sketched again in one of my lunch breaks.

And another thing on my to-do list for when I'll have more time is to finally give my blog its long overdue makeover. Can't wait to see it all fresh and new. It'll be a right energy boost, I'm sure.

Sunday Walk

I finally managed to force myself to go for a Sunday walk today. It's not that I don't like walking. On the contrary, I love going for walks, especially in the woods (and of course on the beach, but that's not much of an option here). But I just usually end up having too many other things to do instead. Or rather, making different priorities. In order to help me get back into a Sunday walk habit, I made a list of benefits, to give it some purpose, such as looking for inspiration for sketches and paintings, and capture beauty in the ordinary with my camera. I've been neglecting my DSLR camera far too much since I got my iPhone, usually using it mostly for holiday pictures. So today, I decided to use my little 50mm lens instead of my everyday 17-70mm zoom lens, in order to get a different perspective. 

With it's option of an aperture of f/1.8, the 50mm lens allows you  to capture a terrific depth of field, and, according to light, some fabulous bokeh.

I walked along some beautiful flowering meadows. Who would have thought that common little wild flowers can be so fascinating?

And trought the woods. Unlike the woods in England, where many of them are filled with carpets of bluebells at the moment, the woods here are rather bare of flowers, and instead present mainly a lush green.

The weather kept changing from minute to minute, but except a very short little shower, the weather stayed dry, and there was even sunshine as well! It was rather windy, though, which made focusing rather challenging at times.

Some of the rhododendrons (or azaleas, I never really quite know what the difference between them is) in some front gardens where in full bloom and just totally amazing.

And I even found some bluebells in a grassy patch outside a block of flats.

To capture this little fellow, my allround zoom lens, which has quite a good macro function as well, would of course have been perfect. But then that's the challenge; to work with what you've got, and make the best of it. I think he turned out rather well.

What I love about photography is how it allows you to chose how you look at things. Some of the pictures were taken at places that were not exactly the most picturesque. The gras strips between the pavement and the main road, road, on traffic islands etc. But even in those places, beauty can be found, if you care to look for it. And your camera allows you to focus on just that beauty, and to block out there rest. It allows you to capture and elevate the ordinary, to decide for yourself how you want to look at things, what perspective to choose, and on what to put your focus on.

I really enjoyed my little walk, and 'll definitely try to go for a little Sunday walk again next weekend, and make it a regular habit. But I'll better try not to take 220+ photos again - or I'll end up spending all day with downloading and editing them, and won't have any thime for painting, or anything else, at all.