Category: Art

Day 68 – Teasel

Teaselw

Autumn

When the trees their summer splendor
Change to raiment red and gold,
When the summer moon turns mellow,
And the nights are getting cold;
When the squirrels hide their acorns,
And the woodchucks disappear;
Then we know that it is autumn,
Loveliest season of the year.

-Carol L. Riser

 

I thought about going out and trying to capture fog this morning but after looking at the thermometer I decided I would rather not. So, I spent half the day working on this attempt to emulate an art piece in one of my Photoshop artistry lessons. I don’t think I quite captured the technique but I still think it has potential. Just need a little more practice.

Day 67 – Grape Leaves

GrapeLeavesw

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

One of the challenges in a project like this is getting to day 67 or 78 or 93 and not repeating yourself. There are after all a finite number of subjects. Though there are an infinite number of ways to treat them. I almost threw this image out because it was a little overexposed but I really liked the blend of colors so decided to play with it in Photoshop and came up with something I at least liked better. I was thinking to find a poem about art or creativity but was not successful. However, I think this quote from Leonardo says it all.

Day 66 – Big Leaf Maple

BigLeafw

November

November comes,
And November goes
With the last red berries
And the first white snows,

With night coming early
And dawn coming late,
And ice in the bucket
And frost by the gate.

The fires burn
And the kettles sing,
And earth sinks to rest
Until next spring.

-Elizabeth Coatsworth

I have to say I have been trying for, well, 65 days to find the right combination of weather and opportunity to get over to the Applegate Valley to photograph. I did find some good fall color today. Though the wineries were definitely past prime, the big leaf maples were quite showy. I ended up with nearly 100 images so you may see more from this trip down the road. I wouldn’t mind going back either. No one seems to be writing poems about big leaf maples but I like this one about November.

Day 65 – Flower

Flower1w

Flowers in a Vase

A bunch of flowers
Sat in a vase
Colourful and lonely
A mind looks at them
Wondering
What is it they have to say
Are they a thank you
Or a gift of love
Are they an apology
Or given in remorse
Perhaps they are for nothing
Given to bring a smile
The mind looks on
Wondering for a while
The flowers sit in their vase
Unmoved by thought
Or the reason given to them
A little water at their base
To keep them fresh for a while
They are the end of the day
Just flowers in a vase 

-Matthew Holloway

Another busy rainy day. So I took the flowers I bought yesterday into the studio and played for awhile this morning. Then took the results into photoshop and added some textures and french ledger script for visual interest. All in all I think it worked out pretty well. And though it is only one flower in a bottle I thought searching for flowers in a vase might be more productive, and so it was.

Day 62 – Buttons

Buttons3

The Button Tin

Memories of the cracker tin

My Mother kept her buttons in

Such treasures beautiful and bright

That brought my childish heart delight

 

I don’t know where the time has gone

My Mother’s race is nearly run

The buttons now seem so passe

Who’d want to use them anyway?

 

Red buttons, blue and green and white

Are seldom ever brought to light.

But I can still remember when

I loved my Mother’s button tin.

 

-Jeanne Hoadley

I borrowed my Mother’s button tin some time ago with the intent of photographing it’s contents. She never asked for it back so I thought I might just keep it since she doesn’t sew anymore. The weather finally drove me to find something inside to photograph so I finally opened the button tin and found the buttons not nearly as intriguing as I remembered them. But I went ahead and photographed them and then I spent quite a bit of time working it into an art piece. Then I went looking for a poem and could find nothing suitable. I couldn’t quite fit what I had to say into a Haiku so I had to write a full blown poem. Not that great I know and how gauche to actually rhyme the lines. But I like it. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

 

Day 57 – Utensils

Utensils

My Wooden Spoon

When your soup comes to a boil
and starts frothing,
You should place a wooden spoon
atop the pot
to keep the contents
from spilling over.

Alas, i must leave you here,
as i’m going to the kitchen
to clean the stove.

-Middlesteps

Yep, I was getting desperate for something to photograph and for a poem to go with it. It wasn’t fit for woman or beast outside today so I decided to find something in the house to photograph. This jar of wooden spoons caught my eye but by the time I got around to photographing it I wasn’t really in the mood. But with a little help from my creative software I came up with something. The poem on the other had didn’t do too much for me until I thought it through and then it made me laugh so it got the nod even if the author apparently didn’t want to claim it.

 

Day 55 – Tree Abstract

Trees2

The Presence of Trees

I have always felt the living presence
of trees

the forest that calls to me as deeply
as I breathe,

as though the woods were marrow of my bone
as though

I myself were tree, a breathing, reaching
arc of the larger canopy

beside a brook bubbling to foam
like the one

deep in these woods,
that calls

that whispers home

-Michael S. Glaser

Not feeling quite up to par today so I decided to create art from the files. This started as an intentional blur shot in Lithia Park where there is a grove of trees all planted in neat rows. I layered on some textures to give it a little more interest and depth.

Day 48 – Buddha

Buddahw

Buddha in Glory

Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet–
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,

a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

I have to confess, I am not much of a fan of Halloween. But, since those of you who subscribe to my blog will get this tomorrow, I thought, well alright I will take a walk around the neighborhood and see what I can find to do a tribute to Halloween. Well, yes, there were a few jack-o-lanterns, ghosts and skeletons. But the most interesting things to me were this statuette of Buddha and this sunflower. So I decided to just go with it and create an art piece from them. And soon Halloween will be behind us. Fred Meyer was already putting out Christmas stuff in it’s place this morning. Sigh.

 

Day 37 – Yellow Woods

YellowWood2

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
-Robert Frost
I managed a walk in Lithia Park this morning before the rain set in. I have to say the colors were amazing and the reflections in the lower duck pond took my breath away. I went with a painterly treatment and texture effect on this one and it immediately put me in mind of one of my all time favorite poems… probably because it was introduced to me by one of my favorite teachers, ’round about 4th or 5th grade.

Day 32 – Still Life with Pears

Pearsw

Eating Alone

I’ve pulled the last of the year’s young onions.
The garden is bare now. The ground is cold,
brown and old. What is left of the day flames
in the maples at the corner of my
eye. I turn, a cardinal vanishes.
By the cellar door, I wash the onions,
then drink from the icy metal spigot.

Once, years back, I walked beside my father
among the windfall pears. I can’t recall
our words. We may have strolled in silence. But
I still see him bend that way-left hand braced
on knee, creaky-to lift and hold to my
eye a rotten pear. In it, a hornet
spun crazily, glazed in slow, glistening juice.

It was my father I saw this morning
waving to me from the trees. I almost
called to him, until I came close enough
to see the shovel, leaning where I had
left it, in the flickering, deep green shade.

White rice steaming, almost done. Sweet green peas
fried in onions. Shrimp braised in sesame
oil and garlic. And my own loneliness.
What more could I, a young man, want.

-Li-Young Lee

I had these pears in a bowl on my counter and thought they looked very photogenic. So I took them up to the tiny studio and made a few images. Then into the computer for some lighting effects and textures.