Barge

#262
Source material: Idaho cloudscape, dicycle, postscript print error, honey locust bean pods
This week I pulled out my Robert Rauschenberg book and revisited some seriously influential paintings; most notably "Barge," which reminded me that very little of the work I've done in this series has been strictly black and white. Before Photoshop, I had an elaborate system of black images on mylar that I would overlay to get compositional ideas, and once I was collaging electronically, the complexity of color possibilities superseded those earlier experiments in B&W. This piece could very much have been my first electronic collage, since most of these elements were in my repertory pre-computer days.

Monkey wrenching

#261
Source material: Wrench, railroad rust.
The wrench was scanned on my scanner and the background created by combining railroad rust with painting bands of color and color modifying in Photoshop. Brut force.


#260
Source material: Globe, privacy envelope pattern.
I keep coming back to this out-of-focus image. I had to research it again to remind myself what it was. I like that very much. The pattern overlay is from the inside of an envelope to disguise the contents.


#259
Source material: Ashland cloudscape, cloud icon.
A failed attempt at "straight" photography: color modification, image manipulation (to move clouds into a different composition), and added pattern to contrast with the abstraction of subject matter.


#258
Source material: Japanese Obi (thanks Laurie), cloud icon.
These two drapery studies came from the same material and went in different directions.


#257
Source material: Japanese Obi.

Fabric and Flowers

#256
Source material: fabric
In a very simplistic exploration, changing levels and hue can dramatically alter the feeling of the same subject. Wanting to add a level of meaning is the reasoning for the added word. I have used "sync" before, but the double meaning here seemed apropriate for the deep blue.


#255
Source material: lilies
Fully intending to layer these flowers over the fabric to see what kind of interplay might result, this painterly image came up instead. I was happy to abandon the experiment once I saw this.


#254
Source material: Fabric
Here and following image use the same photo with different levels, again, creating substantially different moods.


#253
Source material: Fabric
The actual fabric color is a blue gray, but I like this metallic look.


#252
Source material: Fabric, kindergarten eye chart
It never hurts to simply add an eyechart to any image. The extra level of depth, and the reference to how well we see things works to my liking here.

(Almost) Unaltered Photography

#251
Source material:Fabric
The most recent two images begin a new focus for me to use "straight" photography as the focus; here modified with only one level adjustment and one color overlay, these two images of drapery are now the most un-manipulated images I've done. Drapery has always fascinated me as it has artists for millennia.


#250
Source material:Fabric
The first of its type in this series, it doesn't have the same depth and sensuousness of #251, but something about its coloration and composition I find interesting.


#249
Source material:Tree trunk
A continuation from last week: here I obliterated the original photo so to focus on the rhythm and movement of the composition.