Las Floras

I have worked on the Flower of Life for the TwobyTwo challenge until I'm about blue in the face. I really wanted to give the theme the old college try and work it from different angles.

I really like the one I drew on a leftover watercolor best. As per my usual, I used recycled materials to draw on, with Sharpie, natch. The one on the bottom left, started with the wrong geometry, but no mistakes, right? The Diva Challenge for the week was to use Umble and that worked out just fine. It's just different.
I didn't want to cheat and not actually "do" the Diva Challenge, so this all came about:

I got to keep up with my zinchies AND break out a brand new set of Pitt sepia markers (Thanks, Laura!). The sepia brush marker made an interesting bronze color on the paperboard, almost sparkly. Interesting.
To finish up the Flower of Life I really wanted to do some sort of collage--cut out leaves or petals and arrange them just so. But that wasn't really working for me. What I really need to do is learn my way around the newest rendition of Photoshop which arrived last week. Thus, this version came about on my computer, my official response:

Some of the new alignment tools made this so much easier than I expected. And who knew? I CAN work in color. ALL of 'em!
Thanks for taking the time to check out my artwork, I appreciate that you do. You could be doing something else, like making a sandwich, taking the dog for a walk, laundry. But you chose to spend some time with me, you're so swell! And if you're ever looking for something different to do, (warning: shameless promotion!) try the TwobyTwobyTuesday art blog! We all would like to see what you do with that! Join the fun!

Teenie Venus

One of my favorite paintings of the Renaissance period is Boticelli's Venus de Milo. She's beautiful and the colors are fantastic. I also have a love-hate-love relationship with Leonardo diVinci. I love him for the mind he had to wrap around geometry and some of his inventions. So I knew I just had to work this out somehow. The resulting digital collage has a layer of mica built in to add even more age to the images that make it look more like stone than paper, paint and canvas. Because, stone is ageless.

Yes, I did some editing of Vetruvius Man; I didn't want to be accused of some pornographic message but I also didn't want to have to put pants on him, although that could be a humorous take on the imagery. Perhaps I need to revisit this concept?!

Quartz Inchie

The inchie from EIM this week is quartz crystal. I knew I was going to get all techno over this one. Rocks, chemistry, computers! Today I was mostly focused on the chemistry of quartz crystals. I wanted to get the molecular structure in there and the importance of silicon dioxide in circuit boards (not to mention ordinary glass, but that's a whole other thing). There is also the bright light as clear quartz crystals have to do with the soul chakra and a lot of metaphysical stuff that I don't understand but I don't want to fluff off, either.

While researching, I found some great molecular diagrams that would make some neat tangle patterns, how cool is that?

Did you know there are left- (beta) and right-handed (alpha) quartz crystals? I guess I knew that from chemistry class, but it's buried in the grey matter. It's been awhile since I took chemistry (although not so long that my kids have, and therefore I did all over again!).

Privacy issues

So I wandered over to Every Inchie Monday the other day to see what the word of the day was going to be. Thoughts, even creative ones, can use some provoking, so it helps get the brain to think. Today it was, "PRIVACY." Nothing as easy as some previous choices, like, "ORANGE," perhaps?

I immediately decided to try to illustrate how our privacy is affected on-line and I'd really like to channel how frustrated I am with security software/hacking/bugs/viruses (and don't even get me started with the NSA/FBI/IRS), but I think even my digital illustrations would incinerate.

So, until I get the nerve to upload this to Inchie's site, here goes:

(And, if you have a couple hours to spare, check out what your identity is on-line; you may be amazed at how much information it says about you).