I came across some really inspiring artwork on Pinterest the other day.  This is nothing at all new, but this particular time it got me to thinking.

One piece in particular, that caught my eye, was an acrylic painting; I loved the colors and the composition.  But I haven’t been doing much acrylics lately; in fact I just recently shelved all the acrylic paints and mediums to make room on my big work table for my most recent, latest newest obsession, working in a more organic way with pigment sticks and encaustics. I needed the space because I’m attempting this on a 36×36 inch panel.  Of course I haven’t actually started that project yet…but anyway…that particular process du jour was learned in a recent workshop I attended (you can see more about that in my post, ‘Lost…and Found’, if you’re interested).

But even being the hummingbird-type artist that I am, I’ve really kind of settled in on the process of manipulating images on my iPhone lately.  It’s just so easy and so accessible. When I don’t have the time to set up in the real studio, I can set up the iPhone studio – wherever I happen to be – because I can always find a minute or two, or three, (sometimes an hour or two, or three!) to play with images.  Everything is right there (literally) in the palm of my hand!

So, I got to thinking…why not try and replicate the acrylic painting process with the iPhone.  Instead of creating/using realistic images to build composites with – why not approach it from a more abstract perspective and see what I can come up with.

Sometimes I get so locked up in my box of square thinking, that I forget about all the other options and it takes seeing it elsewhere (Pinterest, in this instance) to make it ‘click’.

So…here’s an image.

I was playing with my iPad at lunch and decided to take a photo. I haven’t used it much for that (it’s still pretty new) but I could not figure out what was wrong with the camera.

Why was it so out of focus and why was it blue?!  And turquoise blue at that.

Hmmm…probably had something to do with the turquoise colored iPad cover I had on it!!

But instead of discarding the image, I decided to take it from there and build on it.   I decided to continue to focus on similar type subjects.  But since I was sitting in my car eating lunch, all I could come up with was an image of the console in my car – and I zoomed in to focus on the distorted reflection in it.

It didn’t look like much but after just a minute or two (literally) of combining it with another image in my camera roll, using ‘Blender’ app, I came up with this…

And I decided to see what else I could do by further enhancing it with the ‘edit’ feature in the camera’s settings.  It’s such a simple thing to do but can change things dramatically!  I actually stumbled on it by accident.

Here’s what I came up with…

Two totally different looks.  And nothing at all like the original console!

I’m hoping to continue experimenting with these ideas – and maybe I’ll actually get out of the car next time!