New Year Brings New Challenges

Hi, I'm back after a longer break than I expected. I just haven't felt like blogging recently. 

Life has happened since I was working on my last photo challenge. Mum got cancer, had surgery and is now undergoing chemotherapy. She's not in the clear yet but we're keeping positive.

 I kind of never finished my last week of pics in my last challenge. I say kind of because I did take pics for the night theme but hated them all when I went through them later. I deleted them all in a fit of disgust, probably prematurely, and so they were never posted. It's not the first time I've dumped a load of photos or drawings I've thought were beyond help but hopefully I'm learning to be a bit more patient with myself as I grow older, if not wiser. 

Something that Eric Kim wrote in one of his blog posts (click on his name to see the post) resonated with me and I felt that now was the time to re-enter the world of blogging. He said; 

"In life, there are generally 'satisficers' (mix of the word satisfy and suffice) and 'maximizers'. Satisficers do things 80% 'good enough' and move on. Maximizers are perfectionists and try to get things 100% perfect.

Generally satisficers are a lot happier in life, and also more productive. Maximizers are generally 'idea' people and never get anything done, because their obsession with perfection prevents them from finishing anything."

I used to be lot more of the maximizer when I was younger, before I had children. Having children helped me to unclench my grip on the idea of perfection and embrace more of the satisficer's contentment with 'enough' and up until my Mum got sick I thought I'd left the maximizer behind me. I've since discovered though that at times of stress my inner maximizer likes to jump in and try to over-control parts of my life. Next thing you know, I'm throwing out my artwork and photos, and obsessing over the housework and other minor things that I wouldn't even give a second thought about usually. I mean if you come to my house I would think that you've come to see me and not the crumbs on my kitchen floor but maximizer mind sees it differently.

So this brings me to my current 365 challenge. I've fancied doing a black and white challenge for a while as I've never really done much black and white photography and because of recent maximizer issues I decided to go completely against the technically 'perfect' image and embrace the 'noise', the 'grain', the slightly out of focus', the strange composition, and the 'blurred' image. This and black and white seemed the perfect pairing to keep me interested for a year. Something new with something flawed.

So from now on my camera is set to extremely high ISO, with boosted contrast, no sharpening, and I'm also shooting with the camera set to black and white to better help me visualize the light and textures. The RAW files still come out color but it helps that the JPEGS are as I shot them, then I can remember what I was seeing at the time.

The picture above of my daughter was shot early morning, in near darkness with just a bit of daylight/streetlight lighting her face through the window. It wasn't as dark and grainy as I'd hoped so I worked on it a bit in Adobe Photoshop Elements 5, which is all I use (yes I know they are up to version 12 now but why upgrade when I already have something that works ok, right? Satisficer's mind at work here) This was a whole new learning experience for me as I'd never used the dodge and burn tools before and had to use the help menu to find them. It's not perfect but I'm happy and so is she.

Top left- this is the original image. 

Top right-this is the image cropped.

Bottom left-this is the image darkened a little.

Bottom right-this is the finished image after I found the burn tool and tried it out.

I just shot day 6 of the challenge today so I'll post the first week's pics after I shoot day 7 tomorrow. 

Hopefully this challenge will help me to learn more about myself and my photography as it progresses. I can't wait.

Take care :)

Week 10 of 365 Challenge. Ordinary things are beautiful week.

This week I've been experimenting with double exposures in camera and different Instagram filters. My favorite this week has got to be my wooden bowl. It was done using the Gingham filter. Next week is fruit week.

Have a great week :)

Making a watercolor travel kit

Much ingenuity with a little money is vastly more profitable and amusing than much money without ingenuity - Arnold Bennett

Recently I've been pricing up watercolor travel kits and to be honest the ones I've seen here in New Zealand haven't been very cheap. The Winsor and Newton Cotman Sketchers Pocket Box is one set I've been looking at and the price is around the $56 NZ mark. Not very cheap if you are just starting out and have children that would like a set each too. This prompted me to start looking at cheaper alternatives.

I've seen a lot of different kits on the internet made from peppermint tins and using half pans mounted on small magnets to keep them from moving around inside. I priced up this option and buying half pans with paint already in them in the Cotman's range was going to be more expensive than just buying the travel kit. As I already have watercolors in tubes I thought that maybe buying empty half pan cases and filling them with my tube paint might work out cheaper. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find empty half pan cases yet so I decided I needed to put a bit more thought into it. 

What I really needed was a container with a lid and different compartments in it. I had a couple of different ideas. An ice cube tray, but I decided that it was too big, a pill type box with separate days, but I thought the plastic hinges wouldn't last, and finally an eyeshadow box, which is small and thin and has a proper hinge on it. Eureka!

So off to the $2 shop I went, looking for a cheap eyeshadow set that I could convert and they didn't disappoint me. The photo above is of one of the three sets I purchased, I spent $6 in total. The eyeshadows were in little metal containers fitted into the compartments with a tiny bit of glue on the bottom. I prised them out easily with a small screwdriver, you could also use a knife blade. The glue came out easily in a chunk just using my finger nail. Below is the case minus all the eyeshadows.

After I'd emptied the case and scraped off all the glue I gave the case a good wash out in dish washing detergent using a rough woven scouring type cloth pad, just to make sure that any remaining glue or eyeshadow was removed properly. Then I dried it all and added the paints from my tubes. See picture below.

I now need to leave the paints for a couple of days to dry out completely and I'll have a compact watercolor set I can fit in my pocket if I want to. Below is a picture of the container I keep my tubes in contrasted against the compact size of my new travel kit. I can use a much small bag now :)

The only other thing I will do to this kit when the paint is all dry is to paint the inside of the lid white to mix on.

 I'll still probably need to carry something else small to mix on and a water bottle. When I go for long walks especially in the summer time, I always carry a drink bottle with me anyway. While at the $2 shop I also picked up a small telescoping brush tube to keep my brushes in. I'd also like to try out the water brushes with the water tank built in at some stage, these could make my kit even smaller. 

I can't wait for the paint to dry so I can get out and test drive my new kit!

I hope this gives you ideas for your own travel kits. Have a great week! :)

I've found the answer!

The important thing about a problem is not it's solution, but the strength we gain in finding the solution - Seneca

Last time I blogged I was testing out using acrylic paints as watercolors. I'd finished two paintings and although I felt that the finished product was okay I still had an irritating feeling about using acrylics this way. I decided to continue with the experiment to see if I could figure out what it was that I didn't like.

Today I painted three more bird pictures, shown here, using acrylics as watercolors and I think I've figured out what it was that I didn't like compared to real watercolors. It's the finished colors or perhaps more correctly their luminosity or lack of it. The watered down acrylics seem flatter and duller somehow even though the colors used are the same. I'm not talking about the finish, they are both a matt finish. It's more that the colors are somehow less luminous, they have less life in them than the watercolors do. 

Just to make sure that I'm not imagining it I'm going to paint the next couple of birds using the real watercolors and compare the results again. If I'm right I guess I'll have to stop being a scrooge and buy some more watercolor paints ;)

I've also just noticed that the shapes of the birds on the next page are showing through on these scans. One of the pitfalls of working in a book and not scanning each image as I finish it I guess. Note to self, put blank sheets of paper behind the images before I scan them or scan each image before I start the next one.

I'm not too happy with the owl anyway, it's having a bad hair day lol. I suppose that not everything is going to work out how I envision it and I'd better get used to it. On the plus side I discovered that peppy music gets me singing and working quite productively. I guess music and it's effect on my work is something else I should explore a bit more. Perhaps it may help me get in the mood when I really don't feel like painting.

Please let me know if you've discovered something similar with the luminosity of watercolors vs acrylics watered down.

Have a great week! :)

Using acrylics as watercolors

Acrylic is the only painting medium that can be all mediums - it can act like watercolor, it can act like oils, and it has it's own innate properties - Andrew Hamilton

Recently I've been experimenting with using acrylic paints as watercolors mainly because I have lots of acrylic paint lying around and I haven't got much watercolor paint left. The results have been quite interesting.

I first tried mixing up a few test paints to see how well they would flow and whether the colors would change when they dried. The test was done on a scrap of watercolor paper and was just some rough markings and a few test patches to try blending the colors. The first paint I mixed up had bubbles in it which I didn't think much about until I actually painted the bubbles onto the paper and they dried as bubbly marks. That was unexpected and I'm not sure why there were bubbles at all, I guess acrylics need more mixing in the water than the watercolor paint and this causes the bubbles.

I found the acrylic paint stayed very vibrant when watered down and I didn't notice much of a color shift when they dried either.

For some reason though, and I can't put my finger on exactly why, I prefer using the watercolor paint.The two paintings done here were both done using watered down acrylics and I'm happy enough with the results, but I just have this niggling feeling that I would have made a better job using watercolor.

I've decided to keep using the acrylics for now though. I want to explore layering washes more and I'm hoping that whatever it is that I don't like about using the acrylics this way will become clearer with more practice.

On a positive note, I bought some .1 sized pens and I'm very happy with how fine they are compared to the .4 that I used on the Thrush and Kingfisher.

Have a great week! :)

Watercolor experiment part 2

All art is but imitation of nature.

- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Since yesterday's watercolor experiment worked out better than I'd hoped I decided to retry an earlier attempt at painting a kingfisher. The photo above is used with the permission of my Mum. Thanks Mum :)

The image below was painted the day I bought my first set of tube watercolor paints, on the 2nd of May this year. I didn't water them down enough and tried to use them like acrylics, rather unsuccessfully.

I wasn't very happy with the results from my first attempt but I figured it was a first attempt after all. So we learn and move on.

This was today's result without any pen detail. (above)

This is today's result after the pen detail was added. (below)

I still think the pen is way too thick, I'll have to buy a .1 or .2 pen sooner than I planned but I definitely think the second painting is a vast improvement on the first though I'm glad I took a scan copy before I added the ink. I forgot to do that on the thrush yesterday.

So what do you think?

Experiments in watercolor part 1

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better

 - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I've been in and out the last two weeks on holiday with hubby and the kids. We've had lots of fun but I'd have to say that my favorite day of the holidays was a trip we took to Tauranga and Mt Maunganui. Hubby and Master 13 wanted to check out model shops, they're working on a project together and needed supplies. Miss 7 just loves exploring and I really wanted to check out an art supply store I found online called "The Red Studio". It turned out to be a great store with a very helpful salesman that introduced me to my new favorite art journal. A Daler Rowney Ebony A6 hardcover sketchbook. 150gsm off white paper, delicious and not badly priced either. 

Today was the first day of the new school term so I took advantage of the peace and quiet to try out the new sketchbook. The picture above is the result. It's in watercolor and ink.

I'm still fairly new to watercolor, I usually paint in acrylic, so I thought I'd use this new sketchbook for my watercolor experiments. My old journal only has 100gsm paper and buckles quite badly when it gets wet. I'm happyish with the end results. The paper stayed flat and was lovely to paint on. But it's going to take me a while to get used to working with watercolor paints though. They flow very freely in places I don't want them to at the moment lol. Still, I'm okay with the look of this painting but I think the pen work is too thick though for the size of the image. So I'm going to have to invest in some different sized pens, a .1 or .2 would have been better than the .4 that I used. I'd even have preferred a dark brown pen to the black but I have no idea if I can get different colors. That's something else I need to explore. Overall though I'm quite happy, I broke the first page jitters without too much hassle even though halfway through I wished I was painting a penguin or something easier instead. All up I think I spent about 45 minutes to 1 hour total on it. So it was a pretty quick job.

I'm really looking forward to filling this little book with more watercolor experiments and if they work out okay I think I'll invest in some better quality paints too to see what difference that will make. 

So what did I learn?

1. Practice, practice, practice. I need to build up my experience using watercolor paints. There are lots of tutorials on youtube to help with learning the different techniques so I have no excuse not to try.
2. The type and quality of the paper makes a huge difference! I need to use the right materials to do the job well.
3. Small images require finer tipped pens to really make a positive difference.
4. Shopping in new art supply stores is lots of fun! :)

Have a great week everyone!  :)