Santa Paula window bars

I loved the 1950s look of the bars on these windows and thought they deserved a 1950s color palette, so I added one but could not stop playing with it. I made dozens of different color combinations. Here are a couple more:

Hibiscus and other bright flowers

Hibiscus blusher, digital photograph 8/27/07 (all rights reserved - I know you want it!)

Have you noticed what's back in style? 1950's-1970's surfing, tiki, and Hawaiian/tiki themes. That means hibiscus floral prints (I put a white hibiscus decal on my car's rear window), surfboard and beach icons, and maybe even tiki paraphernalia. My favorite related color scheme would be aqua blue, leaf green, and buttery yellow or tan -- beach colors. I did my part to stay hip by buying a hibiscus bush (photo above).

I know the one-image-per-day blog rule, but I couldn't wait to post an image I created from cast shadows (below)! I noticed some attractively-shaped shadows on our sidewalk and wanted to use them in art. So I photographed the shadows, uploaded them to Photoshop and applied a couple filters to get the image below.

Lights From the Shadows, Digitally Altered Photograph

Peacock

Peacock, 6x9"

Sometimes I am apologetic when I use bright colors. This paranoia comes from reading one art magazine article a few months ago which said muted colors are mature and bright colors are ... not. I've decided to stop apologizing and use whatever colors I like. :-D

I started this peacock drawing with a loose pen sketch, which I colored with Prismacolor pencils. Then I scanned it and applied a filter called "accented edges" in Photoshop. Wanting to show the detail and texture of the feathers, I decided to crop out about half the image and enlarge it. That worked. I lost a lot of the tail, but at least you can see the details clearly.

All About Flowers Today

I want to say thank you to those of you who have sent such encouraging comments via my blog and personal emails. Blogging isn't as good as face-to-face relations, but in our fast-paced society, it's starting to feel personal.

I've been -- well, all over the place lately. In my blockprinting class, I'm focused on chine-colle prints, like the previous post. But at home it's a different story. Today I'm posting a couple flowers I photographed then passed through a filter in Photoshop Elements. They aren't altered much, really, just enough to make them more artsy.

About the first image, the pink rose: We grow these curly, almost neon-pink-and-orange rose bushes in our back yard which no one can see but us, and I'd bet Joe's not looking much, so that leaves me and the cat. But I really do like them. The black dots came from the filter. The image below it is a Japanese Plum tree twig from the tree in our yard.

This is one of those California ice plant flowers that open at sunrise and close at sunset. This one was just about to open up. I say "California ice plant" because my husband never heard of ice plants until he moved to California. It grows all over the neighborhoods where I grew up, near the south bay beaches, especially around the Playa del Rey dunes. I vividly remember seeing ice plant on my walks to school and the beach as a kid, and outside my old Playa del Rey condo.