GPP Street Team Crusade no. 31

Michelle Ward has challenged us once again with an interesting theme:

Read all about it here and join the team if you feel challenged too: it is fun, open to everyone and you will meet such nice people there!

Thethird picture I showed in yesterday's post, was the beginning of the digital collage of today.

The possibilities it had were clear to me from the areas with high contrast in the bows and the balcony. After having photoshopped for almost a year now, the layer and blending function of the programm is beginning to feel as a tool I can handle. And for the time being there is enough to explore and play around. Shooting pictures simultaneously has changed too!

Before I started this blog, I hardly ever touched the camera, but these days I always take it with me. Because even a trip to the supermarket could bring me a surprise... One thing I am very reluctant to do until now, is taking pictures of people. Very often I see people walking or sitting along the road that are so beautiful, wearing clothes in colour combinations that really pop into your eye, but they are so picture perfect, these island people. For privacy reasons I am hesitating, have to find a solution for that, but I digress!

The above picture is an example of how I look at my surroundings these days. It was an ugly building, over there in Grand Case, but the billboard held this symbol of creativity (my definition), others say it is a symbol of eternity, but whatever it is: I like it and cropped the photo for the collage below.

Then I browsed through my picture collection and rediscovered this one, fabrics dyed, stamped and painted by 'moi', I layered it with the two mentioned before

and, after the oh so exciting playing with sliders, channels, filters and actions in PS
here it is:
Grand Case
digital collage

I hope you enjoyed this little disclosure of my process of digital collaging, I am certain there are more, much more ways to do it. In case you don't have access to Photoshop, I know there are some free photo-editing programms that might give you similar possibilities. Not sure they have all the functions, but you can always give it a try: one of them is Picnic

A nice and playful weekend everybody!

There you go: words!

GPP Street Team Crusade No. 30 theme was on using WORDS or USING words in your creative work, journaling, painting or even photography.

Usually I just go for the eye candy and I also never ever kept a journal as an outlet of my sometimes overbusy brain! Which does not mean I have nothing to say, oh no, not at all!! Being alone in my home almost all day, I'm actually thinking without stopping, I think the whole world over, about the people I know, I meet, love and remember, what not can you think and ponder about?! So allthough words definitely are my thing, using them in my work is something I am not used to. But I made a promise to myself to at least join crusade no. 30 with one entry with words. And today I decided I had procastinated enough.

So here are my words!!

One thing I remembered from Michelle Ward's introduction to this challenge is that it does not matter what you write down, it could be anything. So when I listened to music from my blog's playlist, I just jotted down words from various songs and artist names, quickly, without too much thinking and here are the results:

from 'Hands' by Jewel

from 'Dream walking' by Toby Keith

from: 'Clocks' by Coldplay


Journal pages 6 May 2009 (all pictures are clickable)

Sea-urchins (3)

Sea urchin

Nature's perfection

The ocean calls...

I made the haiku this morning.

Writing poetry and playing with words is a direction I would love

my work to go more. But yet there's always hesitation, do I use the right words, do they really express my feelings, and hey, do I want everybody to read my feelings?

On the other hand, what is wrong about saying and writing about what moves you, what enthralls you?? The Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea that surround our little island provide me with almost constant inspiration and I simply love being there.

One thing that complicates it for me a bit, is that the English language is not my native tongue. Fortunately I'm born in the Netherlands and there every child has to learn English (and German, French)! But especially when feelings and emotions are involved, I feel the lack of enough words that are exactly right to describe them. So by reading some blogs of people that use the language so eloquently, I learn new words every day.

One of these blogs is in my side bar: Ornamental by Nina Bagley

And I am thankful for Michelle Ward's prompt of this month's GPP Crusade no. 30.

As the challenge is to use WORDS and/or to USE words in journals, I don't know if this entrance qualifies, but I am working on more to send...

A lovely Wednesday for everyone!

GPP Crusade No. 29: more playing

Caribbean waters are too rough for swimming today, so I tried the brush theme once again!

Started with a waxy paper that was a bag for a surfshop in it's earlier life, tore it open, crumbled it and folded out again. I tried to imitate the batikked tablecloth of my second GPP entry, initially...

dry brushed Paynes Grey, Brilliant and Cobalt Blue

and here it is!
I listened to some of you and carved a stamp, applied it with white acrylic paint and across the surface it went

awaiting my punchinella, I made some p-ish myself with freezer paper and my
Crop-a-Dile

pounched gold paint through it at some places

and finally monoprinted the back of an alphabet stencil

in brown, hardly any letter visible, but brush effect all the more

(all pictures are clickable)

Have fun brushing!

Are you in for some COLOUR?

Since I expect to be very busy next week, and have an unexpected evening to spend on my own as my husband is stuck on one of the neighboring islands, I thought: let me try to do my brush-thing right now! Here is my process of something old, something blue and something new:

I started this experiment last year, really don't know what I

was thinking...

a la kindergarten cut out some freezer paper and used both stencil and mask...

though it's not clearly visible, I really used a brush with the acrylics,
then went on in my newest
addiction, playing with Photoshop

detail of a tablecloth we used with yesterday's lunch!

used layers, colorburning and what not in PS!
(I only just started learning, hence the word process, would not call it art, but I was having fun!

Brush effects: Crusade No. 29

When I looked what technique Michelle Ward did come up with for this month's crusade, I felt a shot of recognition, thinking: this is stuff I know!

After reading her explanation thoroughly several times (I try to be a little serious with my work, which feels more like playing to me...), my initial reaction was followed with doubt, as I saw all the different ways to create brush effects. What I tend to do then, is wait and let it sink in a little.

But yesterday I visited a friend of mine which is on the island for some time. She is a professional painter and since I had not met her for a long time, I showed her art journals and collages that I had made after we saw each other last year. And while browsing through all these pages, I saw that lots of brush effect in my work was readily available. So, awaiting new work after diving into this month's technique, I show some details of former brush work. These are details of pages in my art journal and I too prefer to leave them as they are, without putting more stuff on them

I realize my brushing is mostly done in order to tone down

as I tend to use very bold colours

and am usually fond of contrast!

It's so funny that my friend managed to analyse my work and made me aware how much it reflects my present life

This page I rediscovered yesterday. Right after making it, I thought it very ugly, maybe because it did not meet my expectation then, now I love it, how is that possible?

Experience, growth, developing style and skills?

If you're in for some eye-candy, want to participate and meet other creative souls, do visit GPP Street Team! There is a button at the right of my blog that takes you there.

And Michelle, thank you once again for your inspiration and challenging us all!