Painted Texture - Jazz

I finally managed to get my painting stuff out and produce a hand made, painted texture, rather than a Photoshop one. It's fun to do and I've learnt a lot of great techniques and tricks from my fabulous painting teacher in the last 15+ years and I got a lot of inspiration and a few new tricks from the texture e-course (where I'm slowly catching up and am hoping to get through all the remaining lessons before the classroom closes next week). So, now I just have to start making more textures :-). It's good to take out those paints and brushes and use them for something a bit different.

What is quite new to me is the size of the paper, canvas, cardstock etc. I'm working with. I'm so used to a rather big canvas or sheet of paper, but for textures, that's no good. If it's too big, it won't fit on to the scanner. So I'll have to get used to working with about an A4 size now. The advange is that it takes a lot less working space, which is good as I have to work in my study/library/studio and have to be carefuel all the time not to splash any paint on the walls or carpet of a rented flat. I so wish to have my own proper little atélier one day...

So that's what I've come up with on a productive Sunday:

Not sure yet, really, if it's any good as a texture and with what kind of pictures to use it. It might actually be a bit too "strong" in its own way. Well, I'm still learning :-). But it sort of seems to work with this:

Feel free to download the texture here (or click on the texture image) and give it a try. And if you like, let me know if it's any good or not :-).

While working away at the texture, I've been listening to a CD which I rediscovered the other day and which is just perfect to listening to while getting creative with brush and paint: Choose your boots by Fredrik Lundin Overdrive. I discovered jazz relatively late and usually prefer the old jazz stuff along with any music from the 1920s and 30s. But there's some modern bands I really like.

My favourite track is "The long haul", but I couldn't find that on Youtube.

I've been racking my brain trying to find a suitable name for the texture, and finally, I've come up with one - I'm just going to call it "jazz" :-)

New texture - Autumn leaves (I know, I know...)

It's Sunday again, which means that I have the time and energy to spend some time at the computer working through some of the online classes and experimenting with creating textures. And that's what I've come up with, using several layers to create a texture. The layers are scans of book covers, old paper and a piece of hand made paper with leaves and dried flower petals in it, which is absolutely gorgeous.

One of the biggest problems with creating your own textures really is finding a suitable name for them. I'd like to try to avoid just giving them numbers, but deciding on a name just seems to take up at least as much time as creating them. Well, I decided to call this one "Autumn leaves textures".

Another great problem with a texture is the question of where to use it. The texture itself might be vey pretty indeed, but is it any good for being used with a photograph? And if yes, with which picture and in what way? This texture has much of an autumn feel, I think. I was therefore looking for some pictures taken earlier this year, with some brown tones. I found one which I thought might be suitable and gave it a try:

I think it works quite well and I like the sort of painterly effect of it and the bright whitish patches help to intensify the cool feel (this was taken in late January/early February on a very cold and grey day) and goes well with the snow on the roof.

Admittedly, this picture (and the texture) does not fit the spring season at all. At this time of the year, we're weary of the cold and the bare look of everything outside and welcome the warmer weather and each tiny little piece of fresh green and colourful blossom that appear outside. But unfortunately, I'm still without my camera *sigh* so all I can do is using my old pictures - and experiment with creating textures :).

If you would like to try it out yourself, feel free to download it here or click on the image of the texture above.

But oh I wish I had my camera back! I feel like I've been waiting for ages! Spring is early this year and it's been exceptionally warm in the last day or two and the trees are all rapidly beginning to bloom. The magnolia tree in my street will be in full bloom very soon, as will everything else - and I can't take any pictures of it all :-(.

So I'll just have to go on experimenting with textures in the meantime, I suppose. I've even started with a painted one and hopefully, I'll manage to finish it today and scan it next week. I've also set up my easel in my study and started working on a big canvas to make a new picture for the living room. I've slightly altered the colour scheme and the picture which is there now just doesn't really fit anymore. That's the convenient thing with painting - if you want a new picture, you can just paint one. It's much cheaper than having to buy something and it saves you the trouble of having to find the matching colours as well. And it's fun to do as well :-). It just takes some time...

* the secret of patience is doing something else in the meanwhile *

I'm still without camera and waiting, patiently, to hear from the camera shop that my camera is ready. I still have a little hope that they'll call tomorrow, which would allow me to go and pick it up Saturday afternoon, after my painting class. Which would mean that I'd be able to go out on Sunday to take some spring pictures. But then, I'm a born pessimist...

So I went through some of last year's spring pictures instead. I read about this colour palette idea on the Divas & Dreams blog and liked it a lot, and of course wanted to try it out myself, and as I can't take any spring pictures at the moment, it was the perfect thing to get some spring colours on to my blog :-).

I took these pictures nearly a year ago, just after I got my camera. It was the very beginning of my photographic journey and I was using the "beginner's" mode - landscape, close-up etc. I didn't really have any idea yet about how to handle my camera. Most of the pictures are really useless, and by going through some of them I managed to free quite some space on my memory drive :-). But some of them aren't really that bad at all. Just the odd lucky shot, I suppose :-). I'm so looking forward to getting my camera back and to taking spring pictures again and to comparing them to last year's and seeing the progress I've made since then and what I've learned in these last 12 months.

1000 Cranes for Japan

Last week, I came across the new Flickr group 1000 cranes for Japan (this is just one, there are more of them, just have a look around). The idea is to make a virtual chain of 1000 cranes to show our support for Japan and the people affected by the terrible events of the last week.

The crane, one of the holy creatures and said to live a thousand years, is a symbol of luck, good fortune and longevity in Japan. According to ancient tradition, the person who folds a 1000 paper cranes is granted a wish.

Today, the 1000 paper cranes are also a symbol of the peace movement and opposition to nuclear weapons, after the twelfe year old Sadako Sasaki died from leukemia in 1955 as a result of the of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima, where she lived, in 1945. She started to fold a thousand paper cranes in hospital before her death to fight her illness (there are different versions as to whether she succeeded to complete the 1000 cranes or not).

Seeing and reading about the suffering of the thousands of people affected by the earthquake and tsunami and the threat of a nuclear catastrophe in Japan in the news leaves one feeling completely helpless. It is impossible not to be shocked by the events and feel deeply for the people, but there is little we can actually do to help from afar. One thing we can do, however, is to show that our thoughts are with them. And a little paper crane is one way of doing so.

You'll have no problems finding tutorials to show you how to fold a crane online. For example this one (in German): http://www.origami.ch/kranich/kranich.html. The very last step made me smile: "if it doesn't look like this, you've went wrong somewhere". Or look here or here, or just google it and choose one that suits you and start folding.

* * *

One of the things the events at Fukushima have shown me is how little I know about things I have come to take for granted (and I'm sure I'm not alone here) and how we depend on things we don't really know much/enough about and ultimately, over which we don't really have much control, at least not when things go wrong (although we humans seem to have an undestroyable illusion about being able to control nature, despite everything that went wrong in the past). I didn't really have much of an idea about how a nuclear power plant works. We are so used to turning on the heating when it's cold outside to have a warm home, to turn on the lights, the telly, the water kettle, to get hot water out of the tap without really thinking (and even knowing) much about it.

The threat of a nuclear catastrophe in Japan has raised heated discussions about nuclear power all over the world. Here in Switzerland, any pending plans for developments and constructions of new nuclear power plants have been stopped for the moment and maybe even forever. There's talk of turning off the oldest of the five plants in Switzerland at the moment and even about giving up nuclear power at all. That it is possible to do without shows, for example, Austria, where nuclear power is forbidden by law since 1978, after a national referendum (although it should be added that although they don't produce any nuclear power themselves, they do import/use some). I think that nuclear power will be a thing of the past in Switzerland sooner or later (probably rather sooner than later).

But what we need to be(come) much more aware of (again) is about how we use energy, and where it comes from. We have become much too accustomed to having enough electricity whenever we want it, and often use it even when we don't really need it and just waste it. It's high time we start rethinking our energy consumption, each and everyone of us.

One Little Word: Frustration

Oh my, I'm so annoyed and frustrated at the moment.

At the very end of last year, I came across the One Little Word class at Big Picture Classes and immediately signed up because it just sounded so great and inspiring (inspiration being my word for 2011). It's a year long class where each month, you focus on your chosen word by creating a collection of images and stuff connected with your word which you all put into a pretty folder. So by the end of the year, you'll have a folder full of stuff about your word and a pretty keepsake to look at again and again. I especially liked the fact that you were working with differently sized layouts which you could download and fill your stuff in and print out and which all fitted into specific page protectors.

My enthusiasm was quickly dampened a bit when I clicked on the links on the supply list. All the three basic things -  the album, the lovely thick paper and the page protectors - were all not in stock at the big online store scrapbook.com (I'm deliberately not linking to them as I'm so annoyed with them at the moment). Okay, so I clicked on the "notify me when in stock" button and started working through the handouts, patiently waiting for the supplies to become available. At one point, one of the things was in stock - for about a day or two, then the next and then another. With shipping costs a minimum of $40, there was no point in ordering everything separately. But unfortunately, the three things were never in stock at the same time. At the end of January, I finally managed to order at least two of them, the album and the paper (and some other scrapbooking stuff) and I kept on waiting for the in stock notice for the page protectors.

After having waited for well over three months now, I tried to look up the product in the shop. I typed in some keywords and couldn't find anything. So I went back to the class supply list and got rather suspicious when I saw that the link was now gone. Instead, there was a sentence encouraging us to use our own supplies if we didn't want to buy the suggested material. After some researching I discovered that the page protectors had been discontinued. And obviously had been so some time ago, as they weren't even listed anymore in the shop. I was so annoyed that scrapbook.com never bothered to let me know that the product was no longer available (after all I had requested an in stock notificaton by e-mail), let alone suggesting an alternative.

I'm also frustrated because the class goes on with the materials being based on those page protectors. The "we encourage creative adaptations. None of the exact supplies are required to participate in the class" stuff is really not much use if you don't have a choice. I actually wanted to use the exact supplies. It had been one of the things that had made the class so attractive for me that you could just concentrate on the content and didn't have to worry about layouts and about adjusting them, because you could just download the fitting layouts, fill in your stuff and print them out. I especially liked the folder with the many little pockets. You could print out pictures on little cards (or rather cut the paper up into little cards) and put one in each pocket.

But now I sort of feel left out. I can download the pretty layouts which most of them will be rather useless and I'm left on my own to figure out how to adapt them and make them fit, and all in unfamiliar American measures. I would have wanted to put all my energy into focusing on and working with my word rather than on adjusting layouts and on searching the mega store and trying to figure out which alternative to use.

My little word for 2011 is "inspiration", but at the moment I don't feel inspired at all, just annoyed and frustrated. And I don't really have any motivation to continue at all right now. I'm annoyed about having waited and waited and never having being told that the product wasn't available anymore (that's just poor service for me), about not knowing what alternative to use and about a class that is based on using a product that isn't available anymore.

I had really been so excited about this project when I started it, but at the moment I feel that it has just been a waste of money and time. I chose this image as my "beginnings" page. Because I wanted this year to be inspired to do all kinds of creative processes and projects and to spend more time with creating art, to find, or rather make, more time again for things like painting and calligraphy and so. Right now I feel that really, instead of wasting time at the computer fiddling around with layouts, I should really just get out the paints and brushes instead.

It seems that the "one little word" and I haven't been off to a very good start together. To be fair, it does say "for alternative ideas, check out the gallery and message board!". So there might be some useful information about alternative products and about how to use them instead but to be honest, I haven't had a look yet. Right now, I just don't feel like it. I just don't want to know anything about that whole business for the moment.

I'm sorry if that all just sounds very negative and all and about ranting on about it like that. I'll go and make myself a nice cup of tea now and see if I find some chocolate and try to calm down. I know that it's not really worth to get so annoyed about it like this. But there are times, when it's just these little trivial and insignificant things that get you down and make you feel miserable. I realise that I get annoyed and irritated about almost everything far too easily at the moment. I put it down to low iron level. I've been there before, and getting annoyed and irritated about anything and everything really annoys and irritates me no end. The problem is that it also takes your energy away to do anything about it, even the things that would make you feel better, like phoning your doctor to make an appointment. At least, it looks like that, after a good six weeks, the cause for it all seems to finally have stopped. But that's the problem with "chronic", it's never going to go away for good... But that's an entirely different story.

A Bit of Spring

I've been complaining about the fact that there's nothing else around yet except a few snowdrops. And all the while, a field of lovely purple crocuses were right there, in the park. I only discovered them by chance when I took the route through the park after work last week. So I made sure to bring my camera the next day to take a few pics, both early in the morning and during my lunch break.

Early morning

I wanted to practice shooting in manual mode, but as I wanted to take "worm view pics" and didn't want to ruin my trousers and appear at work all muddy and dirty, I just changed to aperture priorty and put my camera on the ground. I quite like taking pictures that way because you can't really much influence the focus (unless you use the viewfinder, which more often than not, I find quite impractical) and you never really know how the picture turns out. Most of them are for the bin, but there are usually one or two quite surprising and cool.

Soaking up the sun

 The place was literally buzzing when I went back in my lunch break. Dozens of busy bees where flying from one flower to the next, diving deep into the flowers to collect the pollen.



I passed the place again today and the crocuses are now in a rather sorry state. But all around, on the grass, little flowers in all colours are popping up. I have to admit that I have no idea what they are, but they certainly look very happy and cheerful.



The two warm, sunny spring days are already over for the moment, it's getting cooler - and wet. But maybe, the rain will bring some more colour in a few days.

Grunge brush set & my first texture

I've been busy all evening - while watching Miss Marple solve mystery after mystery :-) - with creating a first proper set of brushes. I call them Seaside Grunge Brushes, because I used an image of some very rusty texture which I took last autumn on Torquay pier as a base. I haven't had much time yet to try them out and see if they're actually usable, but I'm nevertheless quite pleased with them :-). And now that I've got a first taste of making brushes, I certainly will do more of them :-)

Here's what they look like:

Seaside grunge brush set

Feel free to download here (or click on image) and use them - and let me know if they're any good :-):

Of course when I had finished them I wanted to try them out quickly, so I created a simple brown background and started stamping them down - and out came a texture :-).

Texture No 1

Again, feel free to download here (or click on image) and use it. I hope it's useful... I only tried it out once and very quickly to see if it worked at all:

 

I hope that I got all the download links right here. Let me know if there are any problems.

Well, making brushes and textures certainly is great fun, and not as difficult as I thought. It's fun to do them all in PSE, but I must say that I'm also looking forward to making some brushes and texture using good old paper and paint and other stuff.

Anyway, time to turn in, long day tomorrow... Have a wonderful start into the new week!