Playing…

Inspired by my visit to a new city, new photos from the visit, and even a new app for my iPhone, today I have been playing…in between painting new doors and windows…almost done now, only the bathroom left for the worker guys to do.

The app is called CollagePro. It has a lot of nice things about it, however, it kept crashing before I could save what I was doing and I got very frustrated with it. Then I realized, if  I saved after every move I made instead of only at the end, maybe it would not get so temperamental about the whole thing and treat me nicer. So, I started doing frequent saving and combining parts I got out of CollagePro with other apps and I became more successful…a combination of CollagePro, PicGrunger, Blender, and Snapseed gave me these…

The center image is a texture shot of a large, bronze elephant statue in a Portland park.

Have I mentioned how much I like bridges? Here, the best is last…

Freesia Break…

It is such a good thing that there is a Trader Joe’s to run to in order to quickly pick up a spot of color for the table when you have guests. After the blooms grace the table for the event, they can do second duty as photo subject. A nice way to test composition and color combinations.

Hipstamatic app, Fusioncam app, Blender app

The rest are taken with the native camera of the iPhone and processed with Snapseed app on the iPad.

Play Break…

Took a small break to play with my iPhone today. Exercises my brain, keeps me young, wards off senility-they just haven’t done the research to prove that last one yet. But I know it is true anecdotally.

A shot from Okenagen Lake last month in Canada given a run through ArtistaOil app, Blender app, and Snapseed app. Makes me think that it would make a nice silk screen…hmm, what do I have planned for this week.

Poppy break…

A pink poppy from earlier in the spring. I took a break to process it in a new fashion.

August Break…

A college made with my iPhone that contains a background image that includes an old advertising sign from Effinger Brewery in Baraboo, Wisconsin (Terry’s family’s brewery that became an ice cream factory during Prohibition.) Processed with Juxtaposer, Blender, and PicGrunger apps. Maybe others, can’t remember…

iPhone Photo Friday…

I know, I know, it is Saturday, but I have an excuse. My daughter took me out to lunch yesterday for a belated Mother’s Day and I spent a couple of hours on the road to get to where she lives and back home again. Also, my iPad arrived from China, so I just had to play for awhile!

Today, even though it is Saturday, I will explain this montage of photos.

I started with backgrounds.

This started as a watercolor painting with a print from a leaf on top. After it was photographed with the iPhone native camera it was processed using Pic Grunger. Another image (of the skin of a snake at the Academy of Sciences) was processed and had some of its colors changed.

This image of a wall at the Academy of Sciences was layered using Blender app and the snake skin colors started to change.

I layered the snake skin layer with the water color layer using Blender app.

At this point I put it into Impression app for the numbers.

I had also taken a photo of a fish at the Academy of Sciences in one of their aquariums.

I switched to Juxtaposer app so that I could control the images separately. The fish was the top image and I erased some of the image and then rotated it to where I wanted it on the bottom image.

I put this back into Impression app so that I could place the word water and then a second time so that I could put my name in the corner..

The last step was to put a frame on it using the Photo Studio app.

iPhone Photo Friday…

This image started from a painted piece of watercolor paper that I took a picture of with my iPhone. I combined that with a picture of a butterfly from an exhibit at the Academy of Sciences using Blender app to create this background layer.

Last week my first sterling silver rose bloomed in my garden. I put the image I took of it into the Artistaoil app. I also put the original image into Toon Paint to create a line drawing of it.

I combined the two versions of the rose in Blender app so that there would be more definition around the edges of the bud. The resulting rose and the background with the butterfly were combined in Blender app. The image was put in Pic Grunger app for some texture (newsprint) and then two different times into Impression app for the word rose and then my name.  A rose by any other name…

iPhone Photo Friday…

The cherry hit its glory yesterday and today with a wind picking up it has started to blow pink petal snow everywhere. The cherry blooms never last long enough in my opinion, but it is consistent each year with its abundance and beauty.

This week I had fun capturing the first blooms in the garden with my iPhone and then processing with PicGrunger app (new update) and Blender app for layering with backgrounds I created.

This lilac is not really part of our native plant garden. It is in the front, under an oak and constricted by junipers. Each year it sends up one or two blossoms which I enjoy smelling and sometimes I cut them to bring inside. They are not abundant so if I cut them there is not much left.

Here are the natives:

Apps for this week: Diptic, Blender, Pic Grunger and Impression.

Hands…

A few weeks ago, I was going through my iPhoto files. I was scrolling— looking for shots to process in Photoshop and caught a glimpse of photos of student work from years ago. Fond remembrance was in the back of my mind when I visited the Legion of Honor last week. The project had been one of my favorites and highly successful with my 7th and 8th graders (not measured by a bubble test, but by student rubric and teacher observation!) but there had been a struggle on my part to find graphics of hands in order to introduce the project. I do not remember what my solution was at the time, but at the Legion of Honor, I had a do-over. Thank you Rodin. Now, if ever given the chance again, I can introduce the project easily.

I further processed the hand pictures I took last week by putting them in Blender app and layering two of the images together and then into Pic Grunger, which just had an update and now includes some textures to layer, also. (Great update!) Then into Impression app to put my name on the corner. (This also has a new update where you can choose different fonts, colors, and transparencies.) Too cool.

The Project: A “Handbook” for the Art Room

Each student was given a piece of ribbon that they draped around their non-drawing hand. (When they drew on their 5″x7″ piece of paper, the ribbon needed to start and end on the mid-point on the edges of the paper in the landscape direction.) They did a light sketch in pencil and then used black ink, shading with a variety of textures and dividing the background into sections with patterns. I took the finished drawings and made copies of each one and then my students got one copy from each member of the class to attach together into an accordion book. We had made paste papers that were used to cover cardboard for the covers. Each student also used plaster gauze to make a mold of their hands that were painted (including patterns in a contrast color) and attached to the front cover. A ribbon was threaded through the hand to tie the book closed.

The students took the original ink drawing and mounted it in the middle of black tag board with a four-inch border. Then they extended the sections and patterns into the frame using metallic colored pencils and pens.