I’ve cleaned up most all of the leaves left in my yard last fall, and all of the geraniums are doing a happy dance, looking all springy and celebratory. I really enjoyed the way the leaves stacked up on the schoolyard fence a couple years ago, so I found an excuse to use it now, even though the geraniums are singing quite loudly.
abandoned tracks
abandoned attachments
dragonfly dreams
in the mystics vision
awakened tracks
awakened thoughts
like a dragonfly
flitting through inner eyesight
I stayed up extraordinarily late last night completing this image, and then I lost it. I gave up before I collapsed on the keyboard. I found it tonight right where it belonged. Perhaps I was too attached to it’s creation last night?
Today I again played with another detail from one of my paintings. I overlaid the acrylic on canvas image with watercolor on paper textures. I love that I can readily create layers on the computer that I could never do in real 3D space.
Someone whose opinion I highly respect told me once that my paintings were far to complex and overwhelming, that they contain too much information for most people to be able to comfortably absorb. Instead, I should simplify by creating a whole piece out of one detail of what would normally just be texture in my regular pieces. I started this image with one such isolated detail from a much larger painting. I couldn’t help myself though. It seemed to simplistic, so I added a few layers.
I’ve posted a simpler version of this photograph somewhere online (facebook?) before a few years back, yet I felt it was appropriate to re-work it here for Earth Day. I started this portrait by painting my own face with brilliant face paints. That didn’t work really well, but I went with it anyway, and photographed myself in all of the stages of putting on the makeup and taking it off. It ws quite a session. Next, I had a lot of painting work to do in Photoshop to make it really work as a cohesive image, and add things like clouds. Today, I layered with textures and added the heartfelt words. It is a good day to honor the planet that sustains us.
