Finger Painting (on the iPad)

I am currently obsessed over a new app I’ve recently acquired, “iColorama”, and have been trying to figure it out now for quite some time. As you may remember me saying a while back, I’m heavily right-brained and these sorts of things never come that easy for me. And of course there is no user’s manual either (not that I’d read it anyway).

I learned about this app while reading an article (or two) about the technique that artist Sarah Jarrett uses to create her unique and imaginative iPhone portraits.

There is so much to this app -it’s amazing what a couple of dollars will buy these days…and I am discovering more and more as I play with it.

Today I decided to see if I could replicate painting with acrylics – I wanted to try and get that layered, glazed look and I like the results so far.

After finishing up in iColorama, I opened the image in Glaze and then in DistressedFX to see what other effects I could come up with.

I can’t emphasize enough how freeing it is to have so many art tools at your disposal whenever you have a free moment to ‘play’.

There is no longer any excuse for not taking a minute or two out of our busy days to make art.

And what a difference that can make.20140707-221247-79967491.jpg

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Lost in the Fog Tubes

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Having so much fun combining random images and merging with Blender…

Such a great way to get your fix when time is limited!

Improbably Delicious

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Oh the joy of creating with reckless abandon; without care or concern for the outcome.

And why, if I know this to be true, am I constantly surprised with the results each and every time??

Here, I have simply grabbed a couple of unlikely images (those without a drop of potential) – or so I thought – and carelessly merged them together with the iPhone app ‘Blender’.  I then tweaked the (pre-set) Blend Modes until I came up with these fun results!

You must try this at home!!

Already Art: A New Project

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I’ve written posts before about how much I enjoy photographing parts of my artwork…how extracting smaller juxtapositions can create completely different perspectives of a piece and turn it into something completely different.

Well, this weekend I stumbled upon yet another way to do just that.

But in this case I’m taking the smaller part and building on it.

I’ve started a new project – a new journey, if you will. A mixed media journey where I travel as lightly as possible.

No paint. No glue. No encaustic medium needed.  Its a journey you can embark on when you’ve got a few minutes (or a few hours) – depending on your addiction – and it is very addictive!

There’s something truly wonderful about traveling lightly and in this case having everything you need right in the palm of your hand – literally.

This new project is one where I will create art simply with my iPhone and the apps I have on it; compositing in its simplest form, without turning on the laptop; setting up the workspace, or importing into Photoshop.  Very low tech.  The point is to keep it very simple; to use what I already have on hand – to build on what I’ve already created: to breath new life into ‘already art’. I’ll be using the phone to take images and to make art from those images.

The above is one of my first attempts.

This is the result from wandering around the studio snapping photos of various artwork, dried paint palettes, found objects, etc.; manipulating the images (via apps) and then combining the parts or the whole into one image.

Does the scribbling look familiar?  That’s from the image in ‘What Are You Waiting For’ (my previous post). The polka dot sheet is a piece of tissue paper I had on hand that had been covered in encaustic medium.  All photographed by the iPhone and all manipulated/combined with iPhone apps.  

I’m feeling partly cloudy.

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Blender Splendor

I’ve recently discovered the amazing world of iPhonography.

I was browsing in the digital camera section at Barnes & Noble a couple of weeks ago and I happened upon the book, iPhone Obsessed: Photo Editing Experiments with Apps, by Dan Marcolina.

I’m always on the look-out for new books – and since I visit bookstores fairly regularly, I notice things like that.  So I started looking through it and immediately got that fluttery feeling in my stomach.  You know the one I’m talking about – the one that makes you feel a little excited and a little queasy at the same time?  Well, its the feeling I get and its a feeling I know to pay attention to – because its an indicator of good things to come.  You’ll just have to trust me on that. But mainly because I bought a book on iPhonography and I have a Droid!

Long story – short…I have since adopted an older iPhone (that had been relegated to iPod status) and the rest is history.

To date…I have thirty-two apps…if that gives you any idea.

This image was taken with “Blender” – a close up of my eye, a photo of some text, and a photo of some flowers outside a restaurant…Its like having a photo studio in the palm of your hand!