Arting

This week in the Piker Press, Michael Price has a story, "The Health Club Gallery Tour."

I did this picture for the cover, but my intention is to add to it as I get the other pictures done. Some will be simple, some not so.

This marks my first foray into colored pencils in about seven years, if not more. I was inspired -- bewitched -- by Alex's use of colored pencils on her blog, Zombie Mommy.

Maybe "inflamed" is a better word.

Anyway, I started out with small pieces of bristol, and a quick pencil sketch, then added permanent lines with a Pilot Precise V5, and then had at it with the colored pencils.

The work took longer than I thought it would, but that was fine, because I was really enjoying it. I did not care to go back in the warm house (the studio is perfect today) so I worked on the second of nine images that will eventually grace Michael's story. (I use the term "grace" very liberally.)

I even studied Picasso paintings for a different feel.

Different, and delightful.

More Art Bits

One of the stories in the Piker Press the other week was "Me" by Michael Price.

The story is about a very self-absorbed young man, and I remembered I had a pic of a narcissus stowed away in my Flickr account.

But while a narcissus may symbolize self-absorption, garage siding, the front bumper of a Vibe, and the neighbor's tree do not.

In Photoshop, I copied the leaves on the bottom left, and pasted them on other parts of the photo. Then I 'selected' only the narcissus flower itself and put it on top. A 'paint daubs' filter gave me the texture I was looking for, and thus I ended up with an illustration that pleased me greatly.

 
I do believe I also used Edit-->Transform-->Scale before I did the 'paint daubs' treatment.

And added a border by pasting the color pic onto a new field of black, merging the layers, and cropping off all but a medium frame of black.

This goes to show that we should take pics of everything in case you ever need a pic of anything.

Maybe someday I'll even have a use for my photo series "Things on the Back of Trucks."