bee creative

dot as mask, day fifteen

erasing time.

just to see, day ten

Colors not altered, just layered.

more, day seven

More stars.

Now that I am more sure with my folds I've started making stars with old paper.

More fragile. 

A brief trip out into the garden this morning to capture, hopefully, a sense of cold.

And a sense of light. 

I couldn't capture the light without layering images.

Back inside, playing.

It was on my mind to make a butterfly. 

Maybe because a coworker found a pupa tucked up in a door...

maybe it was the moth outside my own door frame.

a list of sorts

I have a goal...that my altered photos always look altered. Altered not to "fix" something but rather to tell more of a story or to look at something differently. 

The cats continue to be "not helpful" when I am trying to sew clothing. 

The boys got locked in the bathroom for 10 minutes so that I could cut out a shirt.

I spent a few hours in the garden today, getting ready for cold weather.  This is the first medlar that has been picked off the tree I planted a few years ago.  Medlar's ripen off the tree.  I will probably use this to make some kind of flavored vodka that can be used as an "extract" for baking. 

Probably the last of the dahlias for the year...

 

something more

 

Blueberry ink. 

It was a dot but the paper was out on the porch during the stormy weather yesterday and the pigment drifted.

Lily pollen ink

 

Something more.

mark making again

Playing with the crayons and some ink this morning.  The ratio of wax is off on the yellow onion skin crayon so it clumps a lot.  It could be remelted, but I like it this way.

Then I added a digital layer. 

The sun was pink this morning from the wildfires.

I like this section where the green crayon was clumped.  I scratched at it with the end of a paint brush.

So much to learn about this.  Mark making is a funny thing.  I keep asking myself why I am doing this and what am I going to do with all this and have all kinds of answers...some good and some that need more consideration.

abundance

It's that time of year when there are so many yummy things to get at the farmer's market... My favorite find of the day was lemon cucumbers.  There are some in the garden but they haven't quite ripened. 

This afternoon I finished the charcoal ink I'd started a couple weeks ago. 

This image is two photos layered.

And this one has a filter applied.

Charcoal ink is "waste not" project number four.

I really do like mulling pigments....

playing with the rose petal ink

color transformations

A picture of the lily with the pollen removed, the ink made with the pollen layered underneath digitally. 

Goldenrod dye samples.

Silk, without a mordant, and two pieces of cotton, one soaked in aluminum triformate.

Using a mordant definitely makes a difference.

The rest of the goldenrod dye bath will be made into a lake pigment.

And then comparing the marigold and the goldenrod.  I used the same mordant for the marigold fabric. 

I was gathering up a few things and had the jar of rose petal ink in my hand, looked over at the paper and thought why not...pouring color over the paper is definitely the way to go.

This makes me think of stormy skies.

 

color as memory and other thoughts

This all may seem a little random, a gathering of thoughts.

Color...at least two times in my life it's become a memory.

The first was in Italy; in the Cathedral in Florence Italy, the Duomo di Firenze, there was a section of the Cathedral with all blue stained glass.  Or maybe it is just the way I remember it.

  Blue light.

The second is more recent, the creeks and rivers in Northern California and along the road from Crescent City California to Grants Pass Oregon this spring.  How green they were as we were driving through. 

A living, thriving, moving green. 

At the end of the lecture Alice Oswald gives called "Interview with Water" she says, "What fascinates me about the surface of water is that it isn't just surface, you can see through it."

Water, and I would add, glass. 

A surface you can see through. 

Glass made with fire. 

Glass that is liquid at high temperatures.

Two soil/ochre pigments that I worked with today. Using water and gum from the cherry tree.The darker pigment is from my garden and the more yellow from California, soil that nurtures redwood trees. 

Ochre will change color with heat.

 

Thinking about the importance of place for me.

How color is a part of place.

How memory alters.

I love how my hand, reflected in the window, becomes more visible in this layered image.