More rust

More rusty surfaces from the latest Tacoma Tide Flats photo tour...

My intention is to use this surface in a digital collage but I haven't gotten around to it yet. It's still cool-looking as a stand-alone piece.

Recent encaustics

I spent Wednesday afternoon in the garage working on some encaustics. This first piece is something I've been working on for a while...I'll add something and hate it so I remove it. The only thing consistent was the blue ground (which you can now only see through the photo) and the photo. I actually broke into the color wax I've had squirreled away (I found a $20 electric griddle that seems to work well) and tried to lay in some color to the surface. I think the transfers show up really well over the color (the map is a sailing route in the South Pole and the circle is some sort of medieval distorted view of the world as 6 spheres). I'm not sure what it means yet but there's something about journeys and identity in there.

With the next piece, I drew with charcoal directly on the board and then applied the medium on top of it, hence the smearing. I then framed it with the reddish brown and applied metallic watercolor to the surface. Unsure about meaning with this one either...knots? Being bound up? Charcoal squiggles? I like the look of the smeared charcoal so I think I'll play around with that some more.

This last piece is just a first step. I was listening to a story on the CBC about flying squid and went looking for pictures of squids in flight. I found a photo of one in the air (about 1 foot off the water from what I could tell) and messed with it in Photoshop to turn it into a black & white line-drawing-like figure. I then transferred it directly onto the board using nail polish remover (ugh! don't get me started on how nasty that stuff smells). I then applied a layer of medium and a thin layer of the metallic watercolor. Not sure where I'm going from here, but it definitely needs color.

Flying squid

A morning in Seattle

I went to the Frye Art Museum in Seattle this morning to see a sculpture show by a Taiwanese artist named Li Chen. The work was beautiful in its decay and roughness. He used clay, rope, wood, and wire to build his figures, which aspire to immortality and greatness but are finite and earth-bound.

Detail from Eternity by Li Chen

Figures from Soul Guardians by Li Chen

If you haven't gotten to see this exhibit, it's worth a trip. Admission to the Frye is free and there is free parking! The museum is closing in a couple days for renovations so get there while you can.

After my museum visit, I made a trip to Kinokuniya and bought some stickers, pens and books (I really must stop buying books!). I then wandered into Uwajimaya where picked up some Sencha tea (a bargain at $10 for 100 teabags), roasted chestnuts (supposedly organic) and tiny mochi that came with their own plastic pickle fork.

All-in-all a really fine day.

Work-free Monday

What a delight to have 9 days off in a row. Yesterday, it was wandering around the Tide Flats taking photos. Today it's been chill-out time with practicing Czech (the few words I know), a yoga class, errands, and working Lightroom and Photoshop. I printed a couple of the pieces I was working on. This one I printed on a Pictorico Unryu paper (it has beautiful threads running through it). I cropped it and split-toned it. I really like how it looks like a drawing.:

Ducks in the muck

This next image is the bigger piece I worked on that includes the above image. Didn't like how it printed on a fiber paper so I'll have to try it again with different ICC settings perhaps.

Ocean triptych

It's so beautiful right now - I'm an idiot for being inside. I need to get my outdoor clothes on and work in the garden while I have the chance.

Rusty Tacoma

One of the great features of old, industrial cities is the decay and rust that can be found despite all efforts of city councils to modernize and "prettify." Tacoma has a great industrial area that has many abandoned spaces side-by-side with functioning buildings and industries.

Today we took an early morning photo wander around Tacoma's Tide Flats area with a friend. I schlepped my Fujica 6x4.5 and Zero Image pinhole cameras along with the Canon G9 (I can never be accused of favoring one camera over another). Took lots of rust photos with the idea of using them for textures in digital collage. However, I may just keep some of them as stand-alone photos since they're so cool looking.

I took a G9 macro shot of these rusty nails that were scattered on a cruddy old forklift.

Rusty nails

It never ceases to amaze me how many photo-worthy scenes I can find just by stepping in close.

Spider and the fly

This spider spent quite a bit of time in my window catching flies.

Here's one of the flies that didn't survive.

Should be doing other things

I ought to be doing something productive, but instead I'm meandering around the computer. I could be in recovery mode from Artfest, or I could just be lazy (probably the latter).

I just upgraded to Lightroom 4 so I've been noodling around there. New features and some things that I used to hate (boosting brightness and contrast on import) are apparently gone. Hurray! I'll have to spend more time with it to see what else has changed.

Here's a shot I took the other day of a placid ocean and cruel looking clouds in Port Townsend.