Digital doodles

Just having some fun with one of the pics in the previous post. Since they're pretty dull, what ever you do to them is an improvement, really... 

Original photo:

Frosted leaves

Some days ago I went up the hill to take a couple of photos of the afternoon light and found all these frosted oak leaves by the north side of it. Unfortunately some of the pics came out a bit blurry, but scaled down to this size it was ok.

Is there anything more beautiful than frosted leaves this time of year?


Of cause I also had to play around with the collage and make a few digital doodles, one of which you can see below.

4th annual Challenge of Color

I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to do something for this challenge when signing up, but the idea Erin presented for this the 4th annual Challenge of Color was so fun that I finally did sign up.  Keeping my fingers crossed that there'll be something to blog about today.

You can read about the colour challenge game here. In short it's a combination of a colour game and a word game where you start off with one word and search for a colour using it and then use the last word of that colour to search for the next colour. I'll be showing two colour palettes I made using this game/challenge here. First up is my very first try at it. (Note that you can click on the palette thumbnails to see a bigger picture of it at Colourlovers.)

Color by COLOURlovers

dragon prince  
prince charming  
charming orange  
orange dusk  
dusk of blue

Not surprisingly it started out with the word dragon and ended with something less predictable for me: blue. Read as a text it looks like notes for a fantasy story about a dragon prince watching the sunset or something.

While I didn't have any plan for the colour combinations other than to pick colours that looked pretty (and with a name that made it possible to continue the game), I did end up with a palette that turned out to be pretty easy to work with considering I decided on making this a stash busting challenge. I do have components in these colours, even the blue, but even more so I realised I've got some space-dyed viscose gimp in pretty much exactly this palette. No cheating, I swear it wasn't until rummaging through the stash that I realised it.

Ok, it's got a somewhat green tint on one side and it would've been better if combined with the light copper and montana blue cord I also have, but it's still pretty close (not sure how well the colours show up in my photos though).

So it does perhaps look like an easy challenge, but I still procrastinated and got very little done as I felt stuck. In the last minute I made this simple necklace using the whole skein of gimp. It's pretty much just folded on the middle with strands held together with rubber o-rings (quicker than whipping the ends, but wish I had some other colour than black) and copper jump rings attaching the clasp to the cord.

But that does not feel like a finished piece and I really, really wanted a pendant or some other form of focalpiece. Or maybe even just some beads randomly placed on the cords. It's just... I haven't found a focal that feels right yet. One idea was to make a clasp using a big flower or something, but there wasn't one in the right size and colour for me to use -- and I want the dark colours in front.

The closest I've found is this:

But I don't know... Just before going to bed my brain asked me why I didn't just make a pendant using my ginormous stash of seed beads and cabs. A bit too late, brain! Well, if nothing else I could just keep it as is, without any kind of focal, or wrap it a couple of times around my wrist and wear it as a bracelet instead (= no need for focals)...

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For my second palette, I picked one of my own colours to start with. Partially because I couldn't think of a good word to start with, but partially also to challenge myself to use something other than just the favourite words that kept popping up in my head that day. So that way my first colour and starting point became powdered thyme.

Color by COLOURlovers

powdered thyme  

thyme & again  
again home  
home is Argentina  
Argentina sky

Again, the challenge ended up somewhere quite unexpected. Starting with thyme and ending with the argentinian sky. And creating a lovely, soft palette along the road.
 
While I really like the colours and should be able to find quite a few matching beads or fibres in the stash right away, I didn't end up with enough time to make something. At least not something tangible, but I did do something creative with it: a pattern (using the pattern template Peonies by yoksel) that I later used in my twitter background (not that I use my twitter account, but I do have one and wanted a prettier background than the one I had). There's a special "Twitter Profile Designer" on Colourlovers called Themeleon that allows you to use your own or others' patterns on your Twitter.


Vector Patterns by COLOURlovers

That's the pattern above (click on it to go to Colourlovers and see it full scale) and here's the Twitter page:

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So that's what I ended up doing, but as I see it this will be an ongoing challenge. I'll keep doing these word/colour games on Colourlovers (here's my profile if interested) and find inspiration for my creative process in it. It's a lot of fun almost a bit addictive once you start. If you haven't tried it, you should! Therefore I want to end this post with a big thank you, Erin, for coming up with this fun, inspirational challenge for us to play with!


PS! To see all participants in this challenge blog hop, please click here.

Aronia in the autumn

Well, I've got 176 autumn photos, mainly of leaves, but didn't have time today to got through them and pick out which ones to post so I ended up just picking one -- of aronia with its beautiful, beautiful leaf colours -- to play with in the photo editing software. I call it höstmys which might have been the name of the post too if I knew how to translate that into english.

And on that same theme, I'm spending time adding some photos to my Candlelight and light ideas pinterest board. Mainly candles, including some creative hand-dipped branch candles. So check it out if you too need some candlelight now that the sun sets so early (yeah, I know, don't remind me that it's still late as the sun sets after 6 o'clock unlike in midwinter...).

What will the cats say?

Apparently it was World Cat Day or International Cat Day yesterday, which I didn't know. Luckily the kitties didn't know either or they might've demanded extra treats yesterday -- though, to cats all days are World Cat Days, of cause. They are to be celebrated 365 days of the year if they get to choose.

While being real cat nuts, my sis and I don't celebrate the cats' birthdays (some aren't born at home, other we forgot the date for). When we were kids we did have a collective birthday for them on Lillen's birthday for a couple of years. Then we kind of forgot about it. It wasn't something we cared much for. But the cats always get extra treats, fancy food and (if we have kittens or playful young cats at the time) toys for christmas. They have to get something special too.


UPDATE: I completely forgot, when writing this, that we do sometimes celebrate one cat day, the national cat day called Kattens dag, which is celebrated on the first sunday of Advent (which perhaps makes it sound religious, but it doesn't really have anything to do with christianity -- if anything it's probably chosen as it's easy to remember, often being a "skyltsöndag"/julskyltning, a sunday when the shops in a town/city put up the winter decorations and are all open). Despite the name, it can be a weekend-long event (especially in pet shops as people don't shop on sundays that often).

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I made this digital doodle today. Not related to the Cat Day or anything, I just wanted to use one of Temari09's new textures. If you want to see it full size and read more about the images I made it with, just click the pic. And yes, it's another one with the silhouette photos I took of Julle.

Meowy Monday: Cat photo of the week

It's so warm here, I really don't feel like sitting in front of the computer (or, well, not sitting in front of the computer doing anything that require brain acticity, such as editing cat photos), but I do have one cat photo for you today. One that I wanted to make something with as the background was boring, but the result is pretty so-so. It's still a photo I like as it's not often I get "Jinna" and "Ninna", daughter and mother, in the same pic.

Digital doodles with Julle

Seeing a couple of textures from Temari09, I got stuck on the computer doodling with textures and photos. After combining two textures -- this one and this -- with one of my own, I wanted to add a bit of cat. So I took what I had closest: the pics of Julle I posted earlier today. These are a few of the digital doodles I ended up with.

I added a quote to one of them too. Often when I made digital doodles I want to add a quote, but although I have collection both on Pinterest and older ones (mostly poems) written down in a folder, I can rarely find what I want. In this case, it was pretty much just grabbing the first cat related quote found...

Edited to add: Oh, I never saw that green spot on the right when making the pics -- now I do and I hate it! Blä! Need to edit it out ASAP... or at least soon: the family is invited to grandma's birthday party tomorrow, which will include helping her prepare the food (mum helped with the smörgåstårta/sandwich cake today) and my sis and I are apparently in the cake decorating team. So not really much time to do it now.

"Behind the scenes"

Remember that digital doodle I showed here? Well, today I took some photos and it included a couple of the old windows from that photo so I thought I'd show you the original photo before photo manipulation and a few pics of the windows themselves.

 Managed to get some sunshine through the glass, which made a huge difference (it has been somewhat enhanced in the finished doodle, though). For the pic I used a texture made from a photo of weeds seen through the greenhouse glass so there's actually two types of glass even though one can't really see the latter.

As I've mentioned many times before, I love taking photos of all the old glass we have lying around. Some of it is fitted on the greenhouses. Some makes up the old henhouse and barn windows -- you know which ones those are as they're covered in cobwebs. Some are just being stacked against a wall, waiting to be used. And some narrow old windows are being reused as cold frame covers (I often call them hotbeds as I never remember what cold frames are called in english, but they are cold frames). Now that it's warm, those windows have been stacked against a decaying old wooden chair under a big bush in the garden behind the barn (where the smaller, still useful, greenhouse is). 

 You have to get close to the glass to really appreciate the textures and colours you can get when photographing old glass that's been subjected to weather and wind. And algae, weeds, dirt, everything that objects are exposed to when being left outdoors for years and never having been properly cleaned or restored every now and then.

A gentle reminder

Ha! That's a bit how I feel right now. "Turn off the computer -- make art!" A little something I stumbled over on Pinterest one day and which is usually so true. Through, I like to make digital art so it's partially not relevant to me -- and sometimes it's rather "stop re-reading that magazine for the fourteenth time and go create".

And then there's the times when you're on the computer and lack the energy to take care of the stuff you should take care of, like replying to e-mails, and end up doing other things and perhaps even use the "get off the computer and to something useful" exhortation to procrastinate all those online chores.

Then I get off the computer and can't get anything started. Perhaps end up on the bed re-reading something as I've felt I didn't have the money to get something new to read (and can't get to the library, which doesn't have the books I want to read anyway). Which is pretty useless and I keep feeling that's precious time I should make better use of -- reading new books or creating something.

I know I've blogged about that before, how I keep losing that important start button. That I love sketching and planning, love creating and love being in the "embroidery flow". But that I'm rubbish at starting. Especially without deadlines. There are many reasons: feeling stuck in life, lacking the right spark (e.g. goals), frustrations as some ideas doesn't work out once beginning to realise them, getting ideas that require buying supplies I can't afford, wanting to keep certain supplies for "that special project" (not using them as they'll run out) -- and despite not feeling at all creative lately there's still a bit of  Buridan's ass issues.

But, hey, I'm not totally useless -- I just made that digital image above. The text isn't brilliant, the way it's added, but I sort of like the rest. And with creating, especially when in a rut or feeling rusty, it's more about producing that about the final product.

It does, by the way, show how I've started to more and more embrace blue -- a colours I've never really liked to work with before. I recently shocked my sis by having bought beads in several blue shades. She didn't expect that! (It's really thanks to my favourite colours purple, green and copper, which all works so well with many blues.)


You know what? I'm getting off the computer now. To go make something? Maybe, maybe not. But doing something else is always a step in the right direction. Moving slowly might seem useless, close to doing nothing, but you will eventually reach your goal. That's a big difference from standing still once you've come far enough to look back!

Bleeding hearts

I have so many photos of the bleeding hearts right now, I just had to turn one into a digital doodle even if I were to get off the computer like an hour ago (and then I got caught up spring cleaning my Flickr page now that we got all that free space, more sets available for free accounts and room for a cover photo).

Meowy Monday bonus: a digital doodle

Could'nt keep myself from playing around in Pixlr Express with one of the pics of Jinja and Julle.

Digital doodle: sunset in May

I haven't done many digital doodles lately so I thought I'd just show one I made last weekend. The original image is of the view north by sunset, overlaid with two different textures (one a cobweb-covered window, the other a greenhouse glass pane) and some added frost to the sides. Kind of remind me of a painting. Perhaps one of Peter Frie's?

That's one out of three version I made from that one photo. And the only one with white edges, the other two were both darker, one more of a night scene than a twilight scene.

Below is another one I made using one of the fern photos in the sunday post.  Just for fun as I felt like playing with colours. Don't know if I can get something useful out of it, but I must say I like how the leaves on the sapling in front of the fern look as well as the mixed plants in the lower right corner. That reminds me of a book cover of some sort. Don't remember which, but probably a combination of several different ones (the colours in one, the style in another). Not like I copied or had a purpose to create something inspired by those book covers, more like I stopped when I got to a point where I found something to like in the image and that happened to remind me of the covers.

Maybe I should've cropped the left side? The mottled ground distracts a bit from the plants.

I used to love vignettes and dark edges, but lately it's been pretty even between doodles with dark edges and doodles with fog/white edges. Do prefer the mysterious darkness to the more romantic mist, but sometimes it can help creating a pretty washed-out feeling. It makes quite a difference -- as you can see here -- so it's a good thing to not just slap on the same old frame just out of routine, but instead reflect on what is the better choice for this particular image or doodle.

(PS! As I'm not actually home today, well at least not for large chunks of the day, I haven't picked out any cat photos for today. This is just a quick post I did yesterday when editing the fern and flower photos posted then and scheduled for today. So it'll be a Meowy Tuesday instead.)

Meowy Monday: Cat photo of the week

I don't really have any photos for today so you'll have to make due with these two that I took one night when Uggi tried to sleep. The end of his tail was standing right up while he was sleeping -- as you can see below -- and I just had to get a pic to show the sis.

Still messing about with my digital doodles...

Ah, to live between winter and spring

When I showed the first snowdrops and dared to tag the post spring (as well as winter), I knew there'd be a backlash. After all, March was already then colder than usual. It was just that the snow had melted, the birds sang, and the sunsets had spring colours. It was more about wanting spring than actually seeing it, even if the first signs were there.

This is what it looked like on Tuesday night. After one hour of snowfall -- there came more later.

It continued to snow throughout Wednesday (see below). Doesn't feel like spring anymore, now does it? Well, some of it melted today and the sky was sort of blue towards the evening so it doesn't feel like midwinter again. Just a slow spring.

I'm not saying I'm tired of snow. I just want some more green, sun and temperatures that aren't subzero. More of the first photo, less of the last (both taken midday). Is that too much to ask in mid-March?

More digital doodles

These are two variations on the same theme (which appears to have been "spooky" -- not a planned theme, just something that grew out of playing with the photos). I've been layereing three or four of my own pictures, then tweaked the colours and brightness and added frames, creating two different pics.

Neither of them are perfect, but then again that's why I call it digital doodles and not digital artwork (well, I do call it art in the tags, but that's just because it's shorter). Looking at them today, though, I kind of like them. Made an oops with the second one as the frame got more grey in the corners than I would've wanted. Ideally it should've been white/invisible. Other than that, they're dark and weird and I like them -- despite that light "veil" on the right.

Challenge of Music 2013 -- the reveal

The tricky part about the Challenge of Music is to pick just one piece of music. One piece, out of all the great music in the world. This time the theme was instrumental music, but it doesn't really narrow it down very much as I enjoy instrumental music of all kinds, from classical to contemporary electronica. In the end I settled for one thing, a specific sound I adore. The sound of an instrument that goes plink.

I love instruments that go plink, be it a celesta (that lovely instrument you can hear e.g. in Tjajkovskij's The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy), glockenspiel, music box, harp, clock or synth. There's a little bit of magic in that sound. Like a beam of moonlight, a lone star shining in the evening sky, dewdrops shimmering on a spider web or gentle snowfall at night (you know the kind that is silent, but still makes that unmistakable sound). Or the "true" magic you find in the more poetic fantasy stories I read.

Now, The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy is lovely, but it was ruled out as so many associate it with Fantasia (which I've never seen by the way). So what could I find instead? Wintergatan. I actually discovered this group after signing up for the challenge and starting to look around for my challenge piece. I began to think about my favourite instrumental music, both old and new, when Detektivbyrån popped up in my head. Sadly, the band dissolved in 2010, but listening to one of their songs on YouTube I read a comment mentioning on of the band member's new project -- and thus I found Wintergatan. And my chosen piece of music, Sommarfågel (= Summer Bird).

Wintergatan, which means the Milky Way in swedish, is a new band by Martin Molin. This time he's joined by David Zandén, Evelina Hägglund och Marcus Sjöberg. They use instruments like glockenspiel, analog synthesizer, music box, vibraphone, drums, accordion, theremin, vibraphone and many more. Their first album will be out in May so at the moment you can only listen to/buy their double single Sommarfågel & Starmachine2000. You can read more about on their website.

Below, I've also added the video for the second piece of the double single, Starmachine2000. Not for the song, though nice, but because you can see how the music box and the punched cards with the melodies were made after the end of the song.

That's my inspiration. So where did I go with it? Well, first I have to admit that it turned out to be trickier than I thought to make something inspired by Sommarfågel. Maybe it was my trying to hard, maybe it was the fact that the song has several passages, that differ somewhat from each other. In the end, the part that actually captured me the most was the more serene music box melody after the song and introduction of the band (you didn't stop listening when Martin started talking, did you?). I also focused on the sound of the music box, which is at the heart of the melody in Sommarfågel, even when the other instruments take over.

I wish I had the supplies to make something of the first idea that popped into my head -- and that might also be the part that made the challenge hard, having to abandon something I felt immediately -- as it was all about the mechanical motions, clockwork parts and old-fashioned handicraft that's behind music boxes and musical automata like the Peacock Clock at the Ermitage or the Silver Swan. Or a simple modern dancing ballerina jewellery box for that matter.

Alas, my focus had to change and instead I kept focusing on that idea of magic that I find in the type of instruments mentioned initially. Be it real fairytale magic or illusions to create a sense of magic in everyday life. Magic and starlight.

As the challenge was not only about creating jewellery, I thought of other things to do and at first it resulted in a series of digital art doodles:

The I made one more yesterday.

For the last image I used a picture of a frozen brook with a few added stars from the software, but the "stars" in the other pictures are actually grit on a greenhouse window pane. If you're a follower of my blog you know I love my moody greenhouse window photos.

I also made a bracelet last minute, after scrapping several ideas. Not the piece I'm most proud of -- wanted to use other materials, like matte blackened wire, but had to make due with what I had -- and it's going to be redone later, but I wanted to create something a bit more hands-on. Not that the challenge demanded it, but because that's what I wanted to do from the beginning. And that means showing you something I'm not pleased with -- or maybe I should say something I'm not finished with. Because I do think it could be the base of something good. It's not a bad piece of finished jewellery, it's a WIP that can show it's full potential yet.

Here, the feeling of magic and starlight is to be found in the (on the photo hard-to-spot) light rose satin crystals and silver-lined transprent grey mini drops nestled among the peacock keshi pearls and aubergine silk cord, which represent the faster passages and the other instruments.

Funny how I throughout settled for dark colours when I don't actually perceive the music as dark. I find Sommarfågel to be a positive, upbeat piece of music. Maybe the darkness is just a way to make the glimmering shards (i.e. the music box melody) emerge more clearly. Maybe the fast pace of some of the passages felt heavy and that translated into darkness, eventhough it doesn't sound that dark.

~*~

If you've managed to get through this verbose post -- thank you for doing that! -- then you might also want to check out the rest of the challenge participants:

Erin Prais-Hintz -- Hostess
Alenka Obid
Ali McCarthy
Alicia Marinache
Amy Severino
Amy Grass
Carolyn Lawson
Cece Cormier
Cynthia Riggs
 Ema Kilroy (bowed out)
Emanda Johnson
 Emma Todd
Erin Kenny
Evelyn Shelby
Evie and Beth McCord
 Gerd Andersson
Holly Westfall
 Jennifer Justman
 Jenny Davies-Reazor
 Jess Green
Judy Campbell
 Karla Morgan
Kay Thomerson (bowed out)
Kristina Johansson   -- you are here!
Lola Surwillo
Lynn White (bowed out)
Malin de Koning
Mallory Hoffman
Mary K McGraw
Melissa Meman (bowed out)
Melissa Trudinger
 Michelle Escano
Michelle Bourbonniere
Michelle Heim (bowed out)
Michelle Mach
 Molly Alexander
Molly Schaller (bowed out)
Monique Urquhart
Niky Sayers
Pam Farren
Rebecca Anderson
 Sally Russick
Sharon Palac (bowed out)
Sharon Driscoll
Susan Kennedy
Tari Kahrs
Tracy Stillman (bowed out)
Veralynne Malone
 
PS! If the links don't work, you will find a list (with direct links to the reveal posts as Erin visits each blog) at Erin's blog post.

Photos for texts and textures -- or Why I save crummy photos and takes pics of boring things

If you've read some of my older posts, especially reading my named tag digital art, you might know that I enjoy to take photos to use as backgrounds or textures. Like the ones in the collage above.

I love old -- and broken -- greenhouse glass as it's perfect for creating moody photos (as is fog and water). Sure, sometimes they're dirty and if the focus has accidentally been on the grit on the glass rather than the glass or a object in front of or behind the glass (as in the post Caught behind glass), it can result in ugly pics. But most of the time you get fun pics ready to be used in what ever creative way you can think of.

I actually started writing a text about this back in september, but never finished it. The post was to be called Why I save crummy photos -- and take pics of boring things. This is what I was going to say about it back then:

I think at least some of you know the answer to why I do those things: textures. Previously on this blog, I've shown some pics made using both textures made by others and textures made by me. So far I've rarely made any fancy textures, but rather used special photos as textures. And it's turned out to be both fun and creative to find photos to use and think about what to photograph for new textures.

Here's one example of that. I'm going to show you the result, the original photo and the texture photo just to show what the two components look like and how easy it is to make textures of your own. [yeah, I'm not going to do that today. If you want I can show you an example some other time. Just let me know.]

There are some really fab textures available online. Many are free, other can be bought. I love them. But sometimes it feels more rewarding to use your own. It's your picture from start to finish, your creation -- from scratch -- to take credit for. And using your own textures, there's no copyright issues either to worry about.

Anyway, I wasn't going to write about it at all today. I just wanted some way of introducing two of my latest results of my "digital doodling". Two different approaches to the same photo that I intend to use as a background for text. Here, I just pulled out two quotes I found on my Words and quotes Pinterest board.

First a version with a black edges. As I like dark edges, makes it more moody and old-looking. There's also a slight texture (from a photo of the same greenhouse glass) layered on top of it.

Then I thought, "why not try something new and add a white mist to the edges instead of the usual black?" A bit washed out. If nothing else, why not do it to match the snow on the leaves? And that's how I ended up with this. Also with the same texture as above.

Wonder what the original photo looked like? I inserted it below. It's just resized, not edited in any other way.

It's a lot of fun taking these photos. Not sure how much longer I will have this great place to go for moody textures and backgrounds: dad has said he wants to tear down the old greenhouse as there's almost not one whole window pane left and the door rotted last summer. The smaller greenhouse isn't as good as this one, especially since the glass doesn't go as far down as it does in this one and there's less room to take photos. Well, it's not coming down anyway soon, I think, so there's still some time to take photos.