Seven years ago this month . . .

In January of 2009 Abby was almost five years old. And she's still around. She'll probably live to be 20, same as Sammy. Heavy sigh.

She's smart. She adores me and Chris. She's willful. Moody. And freaks out when she gets confused or feels frightened. (Just ask the vet, who has to approach her wearing heavy duty falconry gloves!) She's the bane of our existence and yet, and yet . . . we still love the little creep.

So here are four photos of Abby, taken when she was seven years younger. Not sweeter. Just younger. I originally posted them in January of 2009.

In the first photo, I wanted to emphasize her dark side, so I desaturated her face and saturated her eye. Spooky, no?

But I do like the shot of her cute little kitty nose. The last two are less dramatic, and show her "good" side.

Yup. She's almost 12. Lucky us.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Just start something . . .

This is one of my journal pages from years ago, where I'd just read about an artist named Scott Radke, and this is what he said that resonated with me:

"It's the excitement of what I think I'm going to make that gets me to what I actually make."

Maybe I think I'll make a landscape sort of image with papers I've hand-painted. Invariably that doesn't work out, so I just keep trying this, trying that, and finally (or not) something excites me and I'm off, creating an image I never imagined to begin with.

So yeah, like Mr. Radke, there's excitement there for starters, and because of that excitement, I'm encouraged to try a variety of things until I get that "aha" moment, and something cool (I hope) emerges.

In this case, I was looking at some hand-painted papers, some ink patterns I'd made, the big Enso circle, etc., and began putting them together. All of a sudden the blue streak down the center looked beautifully luminous to me, the circle seemed to look like glass. Okay! Keep that. Now how to "anchor" the circle to the base of the image? I painted some thin inky lines onto paper and used them. Boom. Done. (I make it sound fast and easy. It isn't. This took hours.)

Am I a painter? Not really. But I use paint a lot in my projects. And I shouldn't tell you this part, but I wipe my brushes, my brayers, etc. onto a sheet of paper that protects my art counter. I also test out pens, scribble things, spill things, etc. onto that paper. After a few weeks I pull the paper off the counter, replace it with a fresh blank sheet, and then photograph bits and pieces of the first sheet. So what you see in the background of this photomontage is just a shot of my "brush-cleaning paper." And I save the physical paper to use in collages or other projects down the line.

What's my point? Maybe that it's fun to think about something to make, but invariably it's even more fun not to stick to the original "plan," because the original plan is often just a springboard, a way to get you to make something unexpected, something potentially wonderful, something that might just surprise and astonish you. You never know.

Wishing you a day of surprise and astonishment.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Latest work . . .

I finished this the other day and I'm not completely sure about it. I used vintage Japanese papers, combined them together, and then used a 1903 Chinese illustration of a red and blue bowl for the color. This may sound weird, but this image really looks great as a throw pillow and as a notecard!

I'm also working on creating envelopes, a primitive-looking "book" I'm calling "Tiger Stripes," and a few other things. As soon as I've created more, I'll post them here. But in the meantime, it's fun working in the studio, working on one project for a bit, then turning to another, and then, waiting for glue to dry, working on something else.

Hope you're working on something fun and creative, too...

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Signage . . .

Any questions?  :-)

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Copying someone else's art (again) . . .

In a previous post, I talked about copying someone else's art, not the whole work, just the structure, and how you can make something completely different, but the "bones" of the piece were inspired by the original.

Let me show you another example, which is, indeed, a blatant copy of someone else's work.

Rich and CJ had (maybe they still have) a painting hanging in their house which I've always liked. The top photo here shows you what it looks like.

I took a cellphone shot of the painting and then, purposely, tried to replicate that painting in the computer. It's slightly different, but who am I fooling? It's a copy. I would never offer it for sale. It was a fun exercise for me and I like the result. But it's still a copy.

What making that copy led to, however, is something quite different. I used the forms and the colors to make a photomontage called "Science." The photomontage was even more fun to do and I consider it my own work.

What copying the painting did give me was a lovely palette of colors to work with. On my own, I doubt I would have put those colors together, especially the green and the slightly purplish-blue.

So yes, the colors and the forms in "Science" are the result of my copying Rich and CJ's original painting, but what I created in this case bears no resemblance to the original. I had no attack of conscience when I uploaded it to Fine Art America, and no attack of conscience when it sold.

An aside: I admire a Vermont artist by the name of Jane Davies. She posts video tutorials all the time of her work and how she creates it. I followed one of her videos, made eighteen images using her colors, her technique, and liked them. I then uploaded them to Fine Art America for sale. It bothered me a little when I did it. And it bothered me the entire time they were up. I took them all down last week and feel much better. I'm just happy they didn't sell!

Bottom line? Copying someone else's work is an exercise that encourages you to expand in your own art, whether you're a photographer, painter, quilter, collage artist, etc.

By playing with someone else's compositions, color palettes, techniques, you will gradually move away from their style and (hopefully) create your own look, your own style, your own way of expressing yourself through whatever medium you choose.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Industrial art

Maybe this should be called "military art." The bunkers at Fort Casey on Whidbey Island consist of multiple elevations. I liked how the cement steps lead up to an "intersection." Turn left to get to the guns, turn right to go up to the observation tower. I emphasized their starkness by opting for black and white.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

What's sellling this year

Here are some of the images I've sold at Fine Art America so far this year. It's interesting to see that all of these are photomontages of some sort, rather than "straight" photographs.

I currently have 1,429 images for sale at FAA, which is a lot, but really not enough. My goal is to have 3,000 quality pictures to offer, which is hard work, but do-able. And since this is what I love doing, why not?

Those of you who took my photomontage online class will recognize the two crows. And you scoffed at the time! Ha!

The second photo, of the Enso circle, was bought by someone in China, which for some reason I think is kind of cool.

The third photo is a shot I took of a wall in a military bunker in Oregon. People laugh at my bunker predilections, so it's nice to see that at least ONE other soul liked the image enough to buy it.

The colorful graffiti-esque picture is a combination of two different graffiti bits I found in Portland, Oregon. This one has sold a number of times.

Although not mathematically inclined, there's something about numbers that appeals to me, and I find myself photographing "good ones" whenever I stumble upon them. This is the first time this "4" has sold, and I'm pleased (once again) that someone liked it.

The last three photos are part of a series of six photomontages I made, each one tweaked a bit differently, yet with an underlying sameness that will make a good wall display.

So there you have it. A delightful way to start my year -- doing what I love and happy that others like my work enough to purchase it.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Latest work: "Soft Brown Calligraphy"

This is a photomontage I made using my pictures of old Japanese papers, my own ink scribblings, part of a cover from an antique Japanese book, and more. There’s a softness and warmth to this image that I really like.

 ©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Anacortes yesterday . . .

Anacortes (just north of Whidbey Island, over Deception Pass, then make a left) is becoming a go-to place for my kind of photography. There are boats, nets, fishermen, reflections, an historic district, and a place where they work on really big boats. Nothing like the number of cool old fishing boats, huge piles of nets, and the accessibility I had in Oregon (at least I've not discovered it yet), but it's still a fun place to poke around in.

Here are my two favorite shots from yesterday, especially the first one, which is the side of a big tanker. I had to shoot from a distance through a chain-link fence, so this was pretty much my only compositional option. But I love it! So clean and simple yet weird and strange. Because at first you don't know what it is, do you? Love when that happens.

And then, while walking among the older boats (versus all the spotless recreational boats that fill the marinas), I noticed these cool reflections in the water. Yum.

It was a good day yesterday. Felt terrific to be out and about in the sunshine and under blue skies.

Wishing us ALL a few days of blue skies and sunshine!

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Copying someone else's art . . .

Sometimes I'll see a photo, a drawing, a painting, and, instead of seeing what it IS, I notice the composition, the movement, the elemental blocks of the picture. And I'll save the image for future reference, an image that might inspire me to perhaps create a photomontage using that same picture's structure. Not the technique. Not the same elements. Not the subject matter. Just the way the picture was put together.

And that's the case here. Have I copied someone else's art? Have I used their same subject matter, their technique, the actual picture? You tell me.

Up top you see a photomontage I created a few weeks ago. What inspired me was a photo I'd saved. A photo of rusted metal and rivets. I wish now that I'd saved the photographer's name along with the photo.

Because I'm drawn to rusty stuff, this photo caught my eye. But what really drew me in was the simple composition. A triangular form at the bottom with two rectangular-ish forms in the background. So that's where I began.

I blocked out my canvas, rummaged through my photographs of walls and various textures, put a big triangle at the bottom with two different-colored vertical elements behind it.

It was boring. But that's where the fun begins. I added other elements, removed some of them, altered others, looked through more of my photo files to see what I could add, how some ink slashes might look against the background colors, etc.

All that experimentation, based on a simple photograph of rusted metal, resulted in the colorful work up top, an image I call "Colograph." It also looks particularly well as a tote bag, which appears on my Fine Art America website. (This isn't an ad for the tote bag; I just thought you'd like to see how cool an image can look on one!) And I also think my "Colorgraph" image would look great printed on metal. But I digress...

Have I copied the photograph of rusted metal? I would say no. Did I copy the texture, the colors? No. But I did copy the basic bones of the photographer's composition. How he or she created something cool by using some simple geometric shapes and how I came up with something interesting and, importantly, decidedly different.

Just thought you'd like to see some background behind this particular photomontage.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Cemetery art . . .

It was cold (35 degrees) the other day, and rather rainy, but we went out exploring anyway, heading up to Sunnyside Cemetery on Ebey's Prairie. It's a beautiful location, with expansive views of farmlands spreading out below.

The cemetery is one of the more interesting I've visited, with lots of unique personalized markers, such as this one, a sculpture of two great horned owls. On warmer and dryer days I plan to explore some more. This was a great start.

P.S. We had at least four, maybe six, great horned owls staking out their territories on our property yesterday at twilight. Two hooting off to my left, two more to my right, and then, off in the distance, two more, softly muffled. These two in the cemetery didn't hoot once . . .

 ©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Industrial art . . .

A bit of colorful whimsy on a drizzly afternoon. Loved how these downspouts on the side of a building in Anacortes, Washington were artistically done as watering cans. Very cool idea.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

iPhone photo . . .

Just a quick experiment with iColorama in the cellphone and then below you see the original. I kind of like the softness the app created, and the way it turned decorative kale into a peony-esque image.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!