Creative
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Little Gem Magnolia | A Photographic Study
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Baloo | A Pencil Drawing
Whenever I think of myself as an artist I usually feel like a fraud. The simple fact is that this is the first thing I’ve drawn in a year. The last thing I drew was a sunflower for my sister in law and the month before that a hollyhock pastel. The drawing of this sweet doggie is titled Baloo after the man himself. If you’ve only been reading in the last two years and haven’t followed during my life in Florida, then you wouldn’t know that Chris and I dog-sat this fella for nearly a year and a half with many other fun stays along the way. We became his…
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Summer in Photos: Week 1 | June
June 1: Black swallowtail caterpillar munching on some parsley June 4: Leo hanging out with me while I write some blogs. June 5: A cropped photo of what I’m 97% sure to be Venus exiting the sun during its transit last week. I took a bunch of photos but thought I didn’t get anything at all until I opened them a week later. I used a red filter to force the camera to be able to shoot into the sun, turned my F-stop to 32 and ISO to 100 and hoped for the best. No, I didn’t look at the sun when I did this—you should see all the outtakes…
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A Handmade Blanket
Sewing is not one of my fortes but I do like to make quilts/easy blankets. Right now however I do not have a sewing machine so I took up this endeavor by hand—something very dumb of me to do in the middle of a big harvest season. My coworker is pregnant and due in a few weeks and I wanted to make something for the baby. Normally I would have used a machine to sew up a quick blanket or even crocheted but no, I did it the hard way. It turned out mostly good with a few blemishes but I think that adds to the charm. I miscalculated my…
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My Favorite Kind of Entertainment
Growing up, my hobby, other than playing outside, was reading. Now I don’t devote nearly as much time to reading as I should, though the internet is my source of reading a lot of times these days. Anyway, this is the stack of magazines I need to weed through. Chris’ dad gave me a stack of Outside magazines, a new Yoga Journal came in the mail, as did Urban Farm, and Backpacker. So did Texas Parks & Wildlife. I have a lot to flip through! And then there is this stack, too! I have finally worked up the nerve to start The Girl Who Played With Fire, the second in…
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My First Photo Show | Thoughts & Review
Last weekend I drove down to the San Bernard NWR for the Migration Celebration. It was very busy and full of activities but I only had time for a trip to the San Bernard Oak and to see the exhibit hall which included the photo contest exhibits. The photo above is the 2nd place award I won for the Nature Photography as Art part of the contest. As I said, I entered on a whim, mostly to test my skills to see if I even had a chance. And I guess I did. But, I don’t think I will enter this contest again. The photos above were the rest of…
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Photography Website Update: Wildscape Photo
I spent some time this spring working on my galleries on my section of our website. When I put everything together in late Fall 2010 I was rushed and hadn’t thought it through. I’ve taken so many more photos since then and while I haven’t put all of those up yet, I have re-organized the website into better galleries. I’ve also created an image index because our galleries aren’t easily searchable. I also wanted the words to be able to be pulled up in a search engine and this way they will. The headers of each listing should be linked to the appropriate gallery. I still have a lot of…
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Trout Lilies | In Macro
Remember back in February how I photographed trout lilies at Tandy Hills? Well, I finally finished processing my macro shots taken with our 65mm macro. And let me tell you, I think this lens is the sweetest thing ever! The photos were awesome and now that we bought the flash to go with it I’ll be able to do more with lower light conditions, which happen easily when using the higher ‘X’ magnifications. Here they are…enjoy! Today I’m also over at Sprout Dispatch, so come by and say hi!
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Almost-Instant Creative Satisfaction
The awkward mirror self portrait. Followed by the faux day dreaming self portrait. I brought out Big Bertha to work with this yarn. The yarn was a skein of Lang Maxima I received from my mother in law for Christmas. I chose the yarn to work with because I knew it would be fast and get results (creative satisfaction) in the manner I needed. The problem was the thickness. I was going for a cowl initially but there wasn’t enough yarn for that, so I went for skinny scarf instead. After I reworked it a few times, when I realized I wouldn’t have enough for a thicker scarf, I finally…
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The Creative Process
The other day I was lamenting that it is incredibly frustrating that I have my best creative moments in the middle of the work day. Those moments where I think, ‘Man, I wish I was at home because I could really get some writing/art/whatever done right now.’ So, in those moments, in the middle of the day I get excited for my creative energy and inspiration and then, what happens? I go home. And what happens when I go home? I’m hit with being tired, lack of motivation and an overall brain drain from working on projects for clients instead of my own works. I thought about this as I…