Exploring the Unknown

I have been curious and intrigued by encaustics for a few years now.  Finally, a month or so ago, I took a photo encaustic one-day workshop that opened my eyes to how I could incorporate it into my photography – and collage as well.  For those of you who may not know what encaustic medium is, it’s a mixture of beeswax and resin.  It can be clear or a natural color which is a pale yellow.  Pigments can also be added to it to result in colors.  Let’s take a look on my practice pieces from August….

 Two Trees

This is a photo I took of a couple of trees not far from our home.  I placed the photo on top of some vintage sheet music.  Altho this came out ok, I think I can do better.  Still, good for an early attempt.

Morning Journals

This was my favorite one from my first practice session.  To me, it speaks to some things that I do often in the mornings – write in my journal, my morning pages, and photograph the area wherever we are, home or traveling.

Late Autumn

There’s a lot going on in this piece.  I incorporated a number of collage elements, but the centerpiece is another of the trees I love to photograph.  I do sort of like the textured look of this piece, but I don’t think it’s as strong as it could be.

Gloomy Winter Day

This is another of my favorites.  I shot this image on a winter day while driving around in a snow storm!  I really wanted to capture this deserted cabin during a winter storm, so when opportunity presented itself, I bundled up and went driving around to see what I could capture!  I began playing around with how an oil pastel crayon sort of melted and flowed when I heated up the board to fuse the layers of encaustic.  It reminded me of how it felt outside on that wintry day, and I knew I had to include this image in this piece.  I kept thinking about adding something to it, but after trying several different items, I decided that the piece really spoke to exactly how the day was when this image was captured. 

More practice to come, but for now –

Enjoy!

 



Paintings of a New Mexico Sunrise

These images are from a sunrise about a week ago.  I made them look like oil paintings just to give them a bit of texture. 

 

I just love how a few minutes can create such different colors and patterns in the sky.

 

 

Enjoy!!

Flower Garden Mixed Media

I've started building inventory for my online shop (which I'll open later this year), and here are some mixed media pieces that I'll be offering, combining not only my love of paper, but my first love of photography!  Take a look - 

 

The first piece, above, is called "Relax".  The foundation for this piece is a photo of a flower that I altered, using a filter that makes it look like it's painted.  Add papers, both machine prepared and hand made, and this is the result!  The relaxing feeling of this piece resulted in its name.

 

For the second piece, I again started with a flower photo, altered to look like a drawing with crayons.  Add the same types of paper resulted in this light, bright piece, focusing on the "Beauty" of the flower.

 

This last piece starts with a photo of a sunflower made to look like an oil painting.  I love sunflowers and they really seem to spark my imagination in a very good way.  So, of course, the name of this piece had to be "Imagine".

 

Enjoy!

Winter Sunset

Yesterday, we had quite a lovely sunset.  I was lucky enough to have noticed it (actually Jeff noticed it first and told me to grab my camera) in time to capture it.  It was all over in the span of about 15-20 minutes.  The first image below is at what I call the beginning of the spectacular part of the sunset.  I love the lines in the sky and how it adds a bit of texture to the color.  Oh, by the way, these were the natural colors - no special effects!

The second image really captures the bands of different colors that were in the sunset, ranging from the almost apricot looking color close to the horizon to the deep blue, almost purple in the upper part of the image.  If you look closely at the image, you can see just a dot of color in the dark section - it's a bit of the sunset reflecting in the window of one of the houses. 

In this next image, I feel like 2 of the best parts of New Mexican sunsets are displayed.  The BIG skies we have here, and the colors of our sunsets (and sunrises, too).  I love the way the different colors are reflecting in the clouds and the bluer background sky, turning even darker toward the right hand side of the image (which is east).

And, finally, here are the last remnants of the sunset.  You can see the rosy glow right along the horizon.  I especially loved the bands of blue/grey as the night is overtaking the sunset.  It seems to be telling us the excitement of the day is over, and it's time to kick back and relax.

Enjoy!

Photo ATCs - Landscape - Sepia

These images are of ATCs that I created from photos, and that I converted to black & white photos and then applied a sepia filter.  The swap these were prepared for required the photos be sepia toned, and be either landscape or architecture images.  Landscape being one of my favorites, I chose that.  The first image, below, is of a juniper tree I took on top of Sandia Crest.  The leaning of the tree is due to the winds that blow up there quite a bit!  I also love the pattern created by the Manzano mountains in the background.

Last spring/summer, we had a terrible wildfire season.  One evening, we had smoke drifting in our area from a wildfire burning a few hours south of us.  This was sunset, and it had a surreal quality to it, due to the smoke in the air.

We do have some wonderful cloud formations here in New Mexico, and the sunrise image, below, captured that.  The sepia tone helped to accent the texture of the clouds in the sky.

The final image, below, was taken as we were driving around the East Mountain area where we live.  As we drove down the back roads, at one point, we were driving parallel to train tracks.  We stopped and I climbed around the fence that was sort of there (it was half down) and up onto the track to get this shot.  

Enjoy!

Location, Location ATCs

I just completed some ATCs for a swap, and thought I'd share!  The theme of the swap was location and each participant was to create ATCs based on where they lived - state, province, country, etc.  US participants were specifically asked to focus on the state where they lived.  We were also to alter playing cards for this swap. I thought this was a great opportunity to show off New Mexico.  I'm always amazed by the number of folks think there is nothing to do here!  The following are only a few of the amazing things about New Mexico -

The above piece has a photo I took at the Bosque Del Apache.  Every fall, migrating sandhill cranes and snow geese make this their temporary home.  There are thousands of them, and watching them take off in the morning and return each evening is truly spectacular!  The photo I used was one of some sandhill cranes returning to the Bosque at sunset.

New Mexico is also home to many, many deserted cabins.  They sort of dot the landscape.  The photo that I used in the above ATC was of a cabin on a road about 5-10 minutes from our home.  I got up early one winter morning and drove there to catch it in the sunrise.  I had to do this during the winter as that's the only time of year the sun is positioned in the right place to have the sunrise happen behind the cabin.  The last time I drove by this cabin, it seemed to be surrendering to the elements.  I'm not certain how much longer it will be here, so I'm glad I left my warm bed and captured it when I did!

One time when we were camping, we explored the San Lorenzo Canyon. We found this wonderful place with very narrow sandy roads weaving their way thru the rock formations.  This is not a place that one would want to be during a summer monsoon storm, tho.  The "roads" tend to become "streams" during those times.  However, this was during the month of November, so we were pretty certain we had nothing to fear.

This last ATC was based on an image of the effects of the wildfires we can have here during the spring/summer months.  Unfortunately, due to the lack of rain/snow fall we have here, the forests are ripe for wildfires - some started by natural causes (lighting strikes) and others by careless humans.  The image that the ATC was based on was of a sunset taken thru the haze of a huge wildfire we had here last spring.  Ironically, we had been camping fairly close to where this fire started only a couple of days before it erupted.  Altho the fire itself was a couple of hundred miles from our home (where this photo was taken), the smoke carried up throughout a large part of New Mexico.  I guess you could say impressive and beautiful sunsets are one of the few pieces of silver lining to the awfulness (is that a word?) of wildfires.

Enjoy!

Mixed Media Mini Art

Here's a new idea that I tried initially to submit a Readers' Challenge to Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazine for possible publication (still haven't heard if my piece is selected).  It gave me the idea to take the idea I had for note cards, and use that idea on mini-canvases.  These are the results of that exploration, and were Christmas presents for some friends this Christmas.

The above piece is based on a photograph that I took of a lily in our front garden this past summer.  I used PhotoShop Elements 10 to enhance the image so that it looks more like a painting that a photo.  The background of the piece is a couple of layers of paint in a color complementary to the photo.  I then added some handmade paper, and other decorative paper to slightly contrast the color palette, and added the word "Live".  My feeling is that we should all strive to truly live each day of our lives, and not let life pass us by while we are unthinking passengers.

This piece speaks to me in terms of reminding me to be fully present every day.  The bright yellow flowers were taken this past summer when we were in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.  It would have been very easy for me to miss these beautiful blooms, given all the beautiful blooms in that area of Victoria. However, slowing down and looking down showed me these wonderful treasures.  Again, I added handmade and decorative paper to complement/contrast the basic palette of the piece.  Ribbon is added around the edges of each piece, which you couldn't really see in the first piece, but is more noticeable in this piece.  And, the word "Be" speaks to being present. 

There was something about this fern leaf that reached out and touched me when I saw it.  We were in Juneau, and had ridden the tram there up to the top of the mountain immediately next to the city.  Atop the mountain was a rain forest with a path winding thru it.  This fern was one of several photos I took up there, but it just sort of spoke to me as being the best image to use for this piece.  I love the fact that the handmade paper I chose to complement it has a leaf embedded in it that seems to echo the image.

This final piece uses a digital collage that I created as it's theme.  I love the image of the little girl and there is some handwritten paper in the background of the piece.  The autumn leaves reflect the coloring of the little girl, and the original title of the digital collage piece was "Someday I'll Write".  I decided to stick with that title and used the word "Someday" for this piece.  The snippet of handmade paper with handwriting stamped on it echoes the handwriting in the digital collage and the decorative paper is in keeping with the color palette.  The little piece of ephemera I added to the piece is not a feather, altho it sort of looks like one here.  It's actually a piece of sort of fuzzy ribbon that I thought added just the right touch.  I really like the sort of whimsical dreamy feel of this piece.

Enjoy!