I love it when I get to play, letting my imagination fly, letting images and words interact, fed by the muses, joined together in a fusion of moments of fancy. I love blessings. I love the blessings that arise in my heart when epiphanies embark on a road less traveled where even my simplest inspired impulses are safe to tread.
I see faces everywhere. Always have. And when I start to draw, faces appear. It’s just the way it is.
I accidently spilled some permanent ink on my desk the other day, while I was playing with a pen/brush thingy that was really cool, instead of working on what I was “supposed” to be working on. I tried to wipe it up with some paper that I had at hand on it’s way to the recycle bin. It didn’t work real well, because before I could really clean it up, there was this fellas eye staring back at me.
Of course, I immediately dripped some more ink on my desk, and semi-wiped it up. There he was – my accidental drawing! With a tiny tweak or two I had a new visage for my desk. I don’t know if he really can be cleaned off my desk. One day, I’ll get tired of him staring peekedly at me, and I’ll attempt it. In the meantime, I dressed him up with some layers here, and wrote him a poem. I thought I’d give him a moment in the limelight before destroying anything.
Today’s image was the result of a prompt in Melissa Dinwiddie’s “Creative Sandbox 101: Kickstart Your Creativity With the Power of Play” which I’m doing in her Creative Ignition Club.
I did two separate 15 minute sessions: one photographing myself and one playing with those images in Photoshop. I was strict with myself on the timing. I took 103 images of myself, playing with props, lighting, indoors-outdoors, making faces, looking all different directions.
I have needed a more updated image of myself, yet have been reluctant because I am not fond of how old I look right now (I suspect I’ll have to get used to it!), so I was hoping the camera would secretly do some kind of time warp thing and take a photo of me about 20 years ago. No such luck!
Of the 103 images, I gleaned 44 worth looking at twice, which I narrowed down to an even dozen to play with. This was the winner. It playfully expresses a true bit of me without making me look like Methusilah’s mother. Since I spent so much time ( a full half hour plus comment time) on this today, I am posting it on my blog as my daily image.
Thanks Melissa for the fun project, and the new way of approaching image making! I always enjoy your way of inspiring me to raise the bar on my creativity.
Every year
I discover
anew
the beauty
and majesty
that appears
without fail
come spring
as if
the birds
deliver it
on wings
of surprise
while I
impatiently
await
further
developments
without any
embarassment
whatsoever
Playing more with layers today, and a bunch of new brushes I created out of old rubber stamps that I carved back in the day that I discovered I could make them out of erasers. Wow! That was a day of discovery. Discovering that I could create my own brushes in Photoshop was a day like that too. Today was just a moment of play (not to downplay the value of that).
