Abstract Photo Art

This started with a low-angle picture of a communication signal tower I took several years ago.I can make some interesting patterns just by mirroring images of man-made structures and messing with color hues and saturation.

Original photo

Mirrored original

A quick digital painting

Revisiting an abstract painting I did almost exactly two years ago, I decided to see if I could recreate it digitally. This was done using a spiral shape imported from Adobe Illustrator and various gradients, layer effects and the "drips" added with the stylus of my Wacom tablet in Photoshop.


Abstract art really isn't "my thing" but I think I'll have to learn how to do it because realism is obsolete these days.

I like digital art because it's fun, easy to undo mistakes and no mess to clean up afterward.  It also satisfies my OCD by approaching a level of 'perfection' not possible with traditional media.

For a visual of the actual painting.

Blue Spiral Redux, October 2014

Sometimes we all feel like we suck once in a while. And you know what? It's okay.

New skill acquired: Chinese brush painting

Brush painting as an art form is over 2,000 years old (from the Han Dynasty which spanned BC to AD) and it predates paper in that culture. The first painters in China used rolls of silk or bamboo. About the year 105 by the Western calendar, paper came into widespread use and the art form really evolved.

Chinese brush painting involves using watercolor pigments, the simplest and yet most difficult of mediums. Though many young kids try it in grade school art class due to its minimal mess cleanup, It's deceptively difficult because it dries in seconds and mistakes can't be painted over or erased. 

Brush painting is a forced lesson in patience, calmness and fine brush control. They say do not rest your hand on the paper, but hold the brush almost vertically, gripped gently, and use a feathery stroke, barely touching the paper. The emphasis is not on detail, but on rapid, fluid strokes to suggest the shape and form. The traditional Chinese script writing evolved the same way, if you think about it each character is a tiny simplified gesture painting. 

I bought my art partner a Chinese brush painting set last christmas, and after we both played with it, I liked hers so much I went back out and bought the same one for myself. These can be found at Barnes & Noble sometimes, or I'm sure they can be ordered online. Here's what the set looks like.

The set has colored watercolor tubes, a mixing bowl, a tiny water dish and spoon for adding water a few drops at a time, a black ink stick and square grinding stone,  two brush handles and 8 interchangeable tips made of different animal hairs. The crown shaped thing on the bottom is to lean the brush handle on, keeping the brush head in its pointed shape. 

 A small 40 page accompanying lesson book is included. The only thing it doesn't come with is very much paper.  There's only about 10 small sheets, which I wouldn't waste practicing. They recommend rice paper, but that isn't easy to find. So I'm just using a watercolor pad with thick tear-off pages for now.

If you buy this set, I would recommend this book also to supplement it.

The book is 145 pages, with many more lessons to try and there is also a calligraphy section in the back. 

Before you get serious about painting, do a five to ten minute warm-up session of practice strokes on scrap paper. This lets you find the correct mixture of water and pigment, and develop the kind of strokes you want to use while painting.  Here are some of my practice sheets as examples. I have to do it a lot until I get the right feel to it.

The first thing the book teaches is how to paint bamboo leaves, because the stems branching out into the long, tapering leaves uses all the basic strokes. Here was one of my early attempts at bamboo. Again, it's not as easy as it looks. It uses very thin and very thick strokes, and the leaf starts out thick and tapers to a point. It needs heavier pressure and then less and less until your brush is lifted off the paper. As you can see, my strokes are not consistent.

It's also a challenge to use enough water to let the color flow smoothly, but not enough to dilute it.

My attempt at cherry tree branches was not great either. I couldn't make them very thin; I used too much water and the loaded brush flattened out, widening the lines.

6 months later, I revisited this art form and decided to try my hand at panda bears instead, following an example in the book. This picture below is today's result, the first painting I feel is finished and I'm happy with. 

This art form is extremely hard for me, because I have a hand tremor that wreaks havoc with my fine motor skills. But I put on some relaxing meditation music, moved very slowly and did this in about 30-45 minutes. It seems my brush control is improving.

Each one I do is getting better!  This takes practice and lots of patience but I think I should keep doing it. 

Whenever it's a rainy day I like to paint. The sound of the raindrops helps me relax and focus. So maybe I should practice whenever it rains.

Here comes the rain

Rainy day, but we badly needed some rain. I got down on my knees and took this oak leaf on a sidewalk while coming home from work.  Rainy days are when I should be working on my art. This counts, right?

I think there is so much interesting stuff to see even on ugly days that busy people just trying to get somewhere don't notice.

Arts Awareness Posters

Every so often I choose to pick up an old school assignment I didn't like and redo it now that my design skills are better. Here's some examples of some completely "reimagined" posters to promote arts education which I originally designed for Advanced Computer Graphics. 

ORIGINAL 2007 DESIGN BRIEF

Advanced Computer Graphics

Spring 2007

Research Stimulus: PSA Poster

THE ISSUE: Importance of an Arts Education

THE FACTS: Schools all over the country are reducing funding for and even dropping arts from their curriculum.

STATISTICS: Young students who participate in artistic and creative activities at least 3 hours a day, 3 times each week are between 3 and 4 times more likely to:

-be recognized for academic achievements,

-be elected into a class office,

-win an award for school attendance

-win an award for an essay or poem

-attend music, art and dance classes

-read for pleasure nearly twice as often

-perform community service

Art also has a significant affect on reducing delinquent behavior and improving the academic performance of struggling students by giving them an alternate means of expression. It teaches them to be more tolerant and open to other people’s ideas. It gives them the freedom to be creative and explore new possibilities. The arts also cultivate a sense of individuality, increase self-esteem, and improve academic performance by renewing a child’s interest in school.

Statistics show that 89% of American parents believe an education in the arts is important and should be a part of a school curriculum, but it is a sad fact that kids spend more time at their lockers in between classes than they do in an actual arts class.

Most businesses also understand the value of an art education. They have found that an art education creates an environment of competitiveness, discipline and academic thought that is beneficial to future members of a workforce. It also develops trends of high quality work ethics and setting of goals; all excellent life skills that will help a student both today and tomorrow. The arts also encourage parents to get involved and become active in the community alongside the students, with a dedication to volunteer works, fundraisers and mentoring programs.

In addition to making students and parents more community-minded, they foster an awareness of a global community and provide a fascinating opportunity to learn about other locations and cultures.

Americans For The Arts understands that a parent’s voice has the greatest influence on the education a child gets. Their goal is to provide parents and families with all the help and information they need to make a difference in their learning community.

(http://www.americansforthearts.org/public_awareness/facts/default.asp)

The audiences targeted for this PSA are the parents of young students in middle and high schools, which are in need of a more valuable and diverse arts education program. The message should reflect contemporary issues, but have a message or image that could also be timeless. It should reflect research in the relevant field and include a link to the website for a foundation or company that supports arts advocacy. This issue is a relevant one all throughout the country because many schools are de-emphasizing arts education in favor of sciences and sports, under the perception that the arts are less important and a career path in the arts is less rewarding, despite the evidence in academic and business communities all over the country that shows otherwise. In short, schools are cutting arts out of their curriculum simply for budget reasons or a lack of good art teachers. However, they seem not to realize that the reason there is a shortage of art teachers is because so many schools have fired their art teachers or forced them to leave because of drastic pay cuts to their departments and individual salaries. As current events have shown, smaller private schools and colleges are equally subject to these pay cuts as public or government-funded schools or universities.

This is the original assignment that I turned in during that senior course in 2007. It was actually my least favorite of all the concepts.  I don't like the green.

My birdhouses, one year later

The set of 3 whimsical birdhouses I made last July were installed at the Talley Day Park Library this spring by the Wilmington Garden Club. It looks like the birds have already started scratching them up, so I wanted to snap some pictures of them in place while they still look nice.

Creative Life According to Bill Waterson

Mozart inspires me

AMADEUS (1984)

I like this movie a lot.   To think that people ever criticized Mozart shows that all artists suffer their whole lives, no matter how good they are.  Nobody will ever understand a genius.

Artist Dorkyness Since 1986

This is a picture of me painting, taken in 1986. I was two years old at the time.  I now look older than my Dad was here.

How to make your own tear-off notepads

An economical way to make recycled paper notepads:

Take about 10-20 sheets of used printer paper, cut the sheets in half with a paper chopper (if your office has one) 

Alternately, if you routinely trim paper on the cutting board, save any off cuts that are about 4 inches wide and use these, rather than throwing them away.

Crease the stack of paper (about the size of half a letter-size sheet) and fold it in half. This will double the number of pages.

Staple 2-3 staples across the top and you have your notepad! Tear across the staples and it will tear off a page neatly

A Lesson in Overbranding

Video promotion for Song Airlines, early 2000s. A new airline tried to revolutionize the air travel industry by re-branding themselves as "Song". They spent millions and billions of dollars developing this identity, enlisting the help of artists, musicians, poets, psychologists and holistic healers and who knows what else to create an airline like no one had ever dreamed of...  

The fledgling airline went bankrupt less than a year later.

I think the downfall of it all was they got so excited about marketing a brand, and making inspiring commercials that no one even knew what the heck they were selling.

And 9/11 sort of killed all the fun in air travel.

The first (and possibly last) TV commercial for Song Airlines.

Office Hero!

Having worked at my current job for almost a year and analyzing the way my store runs it's business, I find myself working behind the scenes to make little things more efficient. For example, this recycled pen holder I made out of waste materials. 

February --The Photo Sabbatical, Part 2

"Frozen Tundra"
Some of our high areas are prone to very hard winds that are freezing cold, creating a climate like the tundra of the Arctic.  Here I took some neat patches of windcarved snow where it made this sand dune effect.  Snow dunes?

Okay so where was I...

The reason I was going out every day was, I was actually looking for animals. Like birds and foxes.  I trudged for miles and miles and saw nothing.  And it turns out every bird within a 10 mile radius was at Mom's birdfeeders when I woke up about 3 days ago.  So I got plenty of practice.  Here I was experimenting with "sports mode" on the camera which has a shutter speed of up to 1/2000 of a second.  I actually stopped time!

Practicing bird pics with my Dad's 400mm wildlife lens.

This is my favorite. A female cardinal and a nuthatch went on a little lunch date.

Some cardinals having a powwow.

I don't know what it is but our yard has been attracting a crapload of cardinals lately. The most I ever saw at once was 7.  It's no secret that my Mom puts out an all-you-can-eat buffet for these things.  It's been said we have the fattest squirrels and birds in Wilmington.

Some Canada Geese fly off into the sunset.

Another awesome sundown at the Hawk Watch. 

I have been going to the same spot every day after work for about a month to watch the sun go down. I love doing it, it's so relaxing and it helps me clear my brain after a long and tedious day. If you live near a good scenic overlook I recommend you also do this as often as you can.

Last day: Friday, February 28

I'm starting to get quite good at this! I found a trick with these old lenses.  The lack of aperture to adjust means you need lots and lots of light, fiuxed lenses don't seem to do very well in low light conditions. And the trick with the DSLR is turn the shutter speed up really high and use the sensor to compensate for the aperture accordingly. It also helps to have a tripod and a shutter remote.

Nailed it.

I'd tell you how many cardinals there are in this photo but I almost can't count that high.  My neighbor calls these things "Redbirds"

I take the coolest shots in the most unlikely places.  This one looks like a beach, but it's actually a frozen fountain pool at Brandywine Town Center in front of the Red Robin and Target.

Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.

Takin' a shower.





This concludes my winter photo odyssey. I hope you'll join me again for spring and summer, when the world comes back to life and all the furry critters crawl out of their holes. It will be awesome!

Until next time...I'd like to end with a quote, and share with you the soundscape my mind explored while I was exploring many of these secret and less obvious places. Close your eyes and think about where this takes you. Into your past? Your subconscious? Your future? Or another plane of reality altogether?

"...To be confronted by solitude and beauty without decadence, or a single material thing to prostitute, it elevates you to a spiritual plane where you feel the presence of God...now there's the God they taught me about in school, and then there is the God that's...hidden...by what surrounds us in this civilization. And that's the God I met." -Fernando "Nando" Parrado, survivor of the 1972 Andes plane crash

February - The Photo Sabbatical

Hey people...I will try not to make this post 10 pages long but we'll see how it goes.

From February to March is always my least favorite time of the year. The weather is awful, bleak and cold... nobody's outside unless we have a freak heat wave and it goes up to 60... it rains and snows a lot...but not enough to really do anything fun and wintery.

And to top all that off...no reenacting for another 2 months. Ugh. I might just die.

I think they named March for a reason. To me it always felt like a long, grueling death march through the mud. After a shortened month like February, March seems to go on forever until I just can't take it anymore.

Well... if you know anything about me, I don't like just sitting on my butt indoors. There are some people who work forty hours a week, come home at the end of a 9 hour shift, smoke a pack of cigs and fall asleep in front of the TV, and that's their entire life for 40 or 50 years until they die or retire, whichever comes first. I couldn't live like that.

I am constantly in motion. I feel like a sinner being inside on a warm sunny day. There is a freaking ginormous world out there, and most of us have seen close to zero percent of it.

In fact, there is so much history, neat-o Victorian architecture and lovely parks packed into this tiny state of Delaware that I wouldn't ever want to live anywhere else.

Those out-of-staters who are all like "Yawn...Delaware is boring" or "What's in Delaware?" are like people who say they hate something without ever experiencing it. Like people who hate Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. Have you ever seen the movies or read the books? No? Not even the trailers? ...I thought so. Anyway...

The surest sign you have never visited my state is if you think it's a boring state. Here's the proof.

All these amazing pictures I am about to post are taken in New Castle County. Every so often, I get overwhelmed by my surroundings at home and I need to get away, go on a "holiday" like Bilbo Baggins. I wander off into the woods alone, try to stay out as long as possible and leave my cell phone in the car or turned off in my pocket. This month was chiefly a "plugs out" month. So, sorry if I have been incommunicado.

I have a tremendous backlog of art projects to create inside my head (going back at least 4 or 5 years--no joke) and the hardest thing for me to do is slow down, and try to push them out one at a time. My ADHD brain seems to want to work on all of them at once. I am crazy at multitasking. Like right now, I am watching a movie, reading snatches of a book, trying to write a short story and listen to music, all while writing this blog post. I need to keep busy all the time, or I feel like I'm dying. I know, it's terrible.

So...without further ado...here are the highlights from my February adventure.

Outing #1: Brandywine City Park

The beginning part of February was very damp, rainy and foggy. I spent an entire day outside taking pictures of how creepy looking everything was. Some of these scenes look they are straight out of Silent Hill. This is Brandywine Park, a nice place to go in the city of Wilmington. It dates from around the 1880s-1890s, and the place is literally so huge and interesting, you can go there fifty times a year and wander around for 3 or 4 hours and not see everything. Even the tiniest details are really awesome, and there are all sorts of hidden nooks and secret areas to explore off the beaten path.

This old fountain looks super creepy sometimes when you get up close to it. It was once made of marble, and it's been so weathered by pollution and the elements that the people have no faces. Still, it has a sort of decayed and crumbling elegance to it...an ugly beauty. This part of the park makes me feel like I am in Paris around the turn of the last century.

A carved inscription all around the base of this fountain says the following anonymous quote that I really like:

"Art builds on sand, the works of pride and human passion change and fall but that which lives the life of God with Him surviveth all"

  This park has so many different things in it.  It's got an old mill race from a grist mill that was here all the way back in 1640 and long since vanished. There are railroad tracks in this park that start nowhere and lead nowhere. There's a fountain and a willow tree promenade. There are spots with markers that show what the site looked like 120 years ago.  There are trees so huge they look like they're from the Colonial times, covered with carved names and initials that go back to before the Civil War.  There's an abandoned cabin deep in the woods. There is even a zoo in the park with llamas. Yes, you heard me...llamas.

The ghost railroad.  I think this was originally linked to the Wilmington & Western,
or the Frenchtown railroad in New Castle. Now it starts and ends nowhere.

The Bridge to Terabithia.

Interstate 95 goes over part of this park. You can walk underneath it. The flyover is so wide that it's like a desert beneath; it never rains or snows and there's no life under there.  You can walk really far back off the path and take this view under it.

I think every photographer in Delaware has taken this picture at least once.

Here is a French style rose garden. It's all cut down and dead now, but in the summer it makes a nice romantic
spot to go for a stroll or have a picnic with somebody special.  It was planted in tribute to Delaware's Dutch (real Dutch from Holland, not hillbilly Germans) and Swedish and English Quakers who settled here.

It was at this park that I took amazing photos of a Great Blue Heron in 2011.  The Blue Heron is a very large, crane like bird with really long legs, a long neck and a needle sharp beak that frequents the marshy areas of northern Delaware. He still fishes in the river, I do catch a glimpse of him occasionally. He's tricky to photograph, he sees you from like 150 yards away and won't let you get close. As long as there is water still moving and the Brandywine isn't iced over, you'll see him gliding up and down it like he owns the place. I have never seen a female heron before, he seems to be a loner... like me.

Okay, so leaving Brandywine Park after a rainstorm and it's time to head home. On the way when I was near the Blue Ball Barn (now a State Parks headquarters) I took this amazing sunset.



Outing #2: Lums Pond State Park (Bear DE)

The next time I went out, I drove 25 miles downstate to Lums Pond, outside a town halfway between Wilmington and Dover called Bear.  There are no bears in Delaware.

Lums Pond is a very large wildlife preserve area and state park where you can do lots of things in the tourism season.  You can ride your bike, go hiking, rent a canoe, rowboat or paddleboat for like 6 dollars or run the Life Course (a fitness trail with different stops where you can climb on monkey bars or do pull-ups or sit-ups, etc.)

Tranquility.

And...you can apparently go zip lining now. They built stuff in the trees and you can slide down a long cable across the river. It looks like loads of fun but it's closed until spring. Sigh...

Haha. Yeah right.

You mean no ice fishing.

I didn't see a soul out there. I had the whole damn place to myself that day, but there wasn't much to do. But I did get some other neat little things I bet anyone else would just walk by and not even look at.  I am also fascinated by the world of the very small, like this tiny bird's nest that would barely hold a chickadee.

Oh hello there. 

Lums Pond was mostly dead.  So from there I drove a little ways further into Elkton, Maryland, and then to Fair Hill NRMA (national resource management area).  This is another very big place and it reminds me a lot of Ridley Creek where Stephanie lives.  I couldn't remember where the entrance to this place was, I drove around aimlessly until I found it, and my GPS was no help. It kept telling me to go off road. Sorry I don't have a Jeep.

Fair Hill Trails, Elkton MD

A covered bridge near the parking area.

A swiftly flowing creek. The water was ice cold.

A raccoon out fishing in broad daylight. How strange. I didn't get very close to him, this is through my Dad's old 400mm.

White Clay Creek. Newark DE:

It was here I got a text from some old friends in Newark asking if I wanted to hang out and go see the Lego movie. The movie was at 8pm and it was around 4pm when I got the message. So with 4 hours to kill, I drove back up near Newark and checked out another place I always meant to go see called White Clay Creek.  This park is a big, wide open valley with a tiny creek running through it. Might be a nice place to have a picnic or fly my stunt kite. Yes, I own a stunt kite. Bought it at the beach one year and still haven't really taught myself how to fly it.

Someone left this mysterious collection of stones in the parking lot. It looks like a scorpion. Some mysteries will never be solved.

I hung around until sunset and took this really neat shot reflected off the roof of my car. doesn't it look like a lake in the mist?





I know spring will be here soon, but not soon enough. Every day feels like a month. I really wish I could fast forward through March, and then I can join my reenacting buddies again. I miss the warmth, the sunburns, the heat stroke and sweating my skin off. Enough of this Polar Vortex crap.  Enough! 

The purpose of this whole journey was to clear my head, get away from Facebook and Youtube and practice photo-taking.  But I think the REAL purpose of this oddyssey was to scout out potential locations for future photo shoots and nice places to go with a date.  I cannot wait to come back and visit all these spots again in the spring. It will be awesome.

I got a somewhat decent paying job now, I don't feel quite so crazy and desperate and hopeless.  I have a very special person in my life who is my romantic partner as well as my best friend ever.  I have regular use of my car again, and I'm almost completely done collecting gear for both Civil War and World War 2 reenacting.  And, me and my S.O. have even started to draw up a business plan to make money doing the things I love and went to school for. 

Jeff...this is your time. 2014 is going to be the first year of the rest of my life, and possibly the best one or at least better than the last 6 or 7 years past.  I am so relieved that for once, I won't have to make it alone. 

Thanks for reading and I'll see ya next time!

I think here would be a good place to stop.  I will continue this adventure in the next post.