pixels, light and hot wax

Our grocery store had local tulips on special, which seemed an obvious sign for what I should shoot next for the upcoming show in May.

This was a much more difficult edit for me — these five are my favorite at the moment, but I went ahead and ordered small prints of about 40 for real decision making purposes before I commit to large scale metallic prints.

Images from another shoot, this time with a different kind of red-and-yellow tulip and also a white-and-pink tulip, are downloading as I type.

Maybe it’s just all the summer flowers in bloom, but I started making my floral space whimsy pieces again and I’m not inclined to stop. Here’s how the latest one evolved:
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I’ve been working on this piece for at least 6 months, probably longer (I don’t trust the “Date Created” stamp on a file that has lived on three different computers through its life.)  I don’t know that it is done yet, but I think it is getting closer; I’m really hoping I can hurry it along in time to send to Confluence. (Livejournal readers have seen this at least once before.)  It’s at the point where it’s really more “fine printing” than “image development”; the tweaks are getting subtler, I’m not moving things around anymore.  And while I love Vue, I am finding that printing certain kinds of renders is incredibly frustrating — fine detail, particularly things like leaves on trees, or in this case, the strata details, don’t print at what for a lack of a better word I will call appropriate texture. (I know there are people who go straight from Vue to print, with no postwork in Photoshop. I don’t know how they do it; of course, I’ve never seen their prints in the flesh either.)

Of course, how to crop it probably counts as more than a minor tweak, and there are three versions I currently can’t decide between:

What I think is the hardest is trying to figure out what best serves the story, rather than just being the prettiest; I have a sneaking suspicion when I do these landscapes (and there are a lot, they just all seem to take at least a year from conception to print; Summer’s Exile is the only one currently for sale) that the story I’m trying to tell is too heavily encoded in my own personal symbology to be legible, or even intriguing, to the viewer.

Edit: of course, a mere day after posting this, I decided what it really needed was the action of birth. So this one gets added to the possibilities:

And I am still not sure if  it’s going anywhere, or will be eventually filed under “Technical Exercise.” It’s definitely not “done”

Well, I’m not on the cover, Anna is. But I created it. This is an almost-done work-in-progress, done entirely in or as homework for the two weekend workshop on visual stories I just took with David Julian, which *rocked*.

Model: Anna.

Clothing: also by Anna.
Accessories provided by the Seattle Aquarium

More coming! I haven’t been this productive in a short period time since, oh, I had to put together my thesis show. Aren’t deadlines wonderful?

This piece has been stuck at work in progress for close to a year now; with the inspiration from the workshop I’m taking with David Julian at Luminous Works, I decided to bring it back out and whale on it a bit, adding a lot more color and complexity.

Model is Jaime.

There is still something I’m not happy with in the relationship of the figure to the rest of the piece, and I’ve lost all hope that my Elements series is going to be visually cohesive. Then again, if I only finish a new one every 18 months, does that really matter? (I have *sketches* for at least 5 more, but casting, scouting locations, and everything else in my very tight schedule means, well, prolific I am not.)

I will be showing at the Artspawn Open Studio Party, in Woodinville, on the 9th and 10th, from 11 am – 5 pm along with artist-in-residence Lisa Sheets

(collage)

Joe Lee Davidson

(acrylic on canvas)

and Alma Chaney:

(acrylic on canvas)

And I’m really excited about it!

I will primarily be showing work from the Space Whimsy series, but possibly also some of the newer mixed-media body pieces.

Artspawn Studios
13931 Bear Creek Rd
Woodinville, WA 98077
425 881-2192
lisa@artspawn.org

Stop by to share in art, food and conversation. See Artspawn’s new facility!

Orycon starts Thursday, and in addition to my normal art show presence, I will be on several panels and giving a presentation about Fantasy Photography.

My Art Track panel schedule:

Friday, Nov 17:
2 pm: Collecting Science Fiction Art

Saturday, Nov 18:
10 am: Creating your art portfolio
2 pm: Fantasy Photography
This one is my solo gig, full description is:
Fantasy Photography from 1850 to the present
Fairies, Aliens, and Saints, oh my! Explore the Who and the How of Fantasy Photography from its earliest practitioners to now, including a slideshow and how-tos for any tech level.

A few of the artists I’ll be showing and discussing include:
Henry Peach Robinson
Oskar Rejlender
Anne Brigman
Julia Margaret Cameron
William Mortenson
Jerry Uelsmann
Scott Mutter
Suza Scalora
Margaret Dean
Tracy Cornett
John Picacio
Timothy Lantz
…and more!

I am rather ill, which means the only way to not feel completely retched is to stay close to completely still. The only good thing about this is that, while I can’t do any of the work I was planning to do with this time, I can sit at the computer, so I got started on a piece I doodled the plan for just last night. This is probably not *done*, but it’s a good bit of the way there:

Cosmic Cat at Play
(unfinished, work in progress, photomontage)