Tracey in Maine

Happy Friday night! Thank goodness the first day of this challenge was a quick one–as I spent the majority of my day apartment hunting! Nevertheless, the small amount of time spent exploring watercolor painting was worthwhile.

Here is the result of today’s explorations:

I had a wonderful time exploring different texture possibilities and types of washes using small thumbnail-sized boxes for my experimenting.

For tomorrow’s challenge, explore some special effects that can be achieved using items such as paper towels, salt, and the scratching effects that can be achieved through the sgrafitto technique.

Enjoy tomorrows explorations! Have fun with the process! Tomorrow will be the last day of paint technique explorations before we head out to explore the natural world through watercolor!

‘Til tomorrow…happy explorations!

I was lucky enough to travel to the seashore this weekend.  Like all of the other little kids, I found myself filling my pockets with seashells.  Today as the sun shone brightly throughout the house, I took photos of the shells in a series of different poses, so to speak.  As with the sunflowers mentioned earlier, I leaned toward the abstract.  Still working with the images, but here are few.  We’ll see what the rest of the summer holds in store.

Lately I have been struggling with photography.  If you’ve read through more than a few of my posts you’ll see I’m kind of everywhere.  Nature, urbex, architecture, portraiture… it’s because much like nurses will work in different specialties to find their passion I have had to do the same thing to figure out where I want to spend my energies.  There are thousands of mediocre photographers and I just don’t *do* mediocre.  Uninspired attitude begets uninspired photographs and I just don’t want to publish mediocre work.

My biggest problem has been wanting more from photographs.  Yes, that’s a cool abandoned prison, that’s a pretty flower, that’s a nice landscape but I’m feeling la-di-dah about it.  A unique angle, a well-lit subject, a neat camera effect is desirable but I want more of me in my work and I’m not talking self portraits.

Today I came across the work of Kristy…

I have been having great difficulty photographing sunflowers.  Somehow the image of the whole flower is never quite right.  Finally I decided to stop worrying about the mythic image and enjoy the beauty of the abstract.

Well, I won’t lie.  I was having a moody morning to be sure.  The approaching storm outside my window didn’t help.  But instead of denying that fact, I decided to use that darker energy for this post.

I may have had no choice in the matter.  You see, as I sorted through images this morning for a project that must be bright and colorful, I found myself drawn toward the darker photos, those with branches and leaves in stark contrast against pale skies.

Like a persnickety child, I suddenly wanted to select only those images, the darkest of my photographs in black and white …

… and those in hues of all the shadowy shades.

Even though I knew I could not submit them for the project.

But selecting the images and spending time in a darker place was like taking a deep breath … or smacking a styrofoam…

* more photos from the ONE series can be viewed here.