MixedMediaShop.com

When to stop work.

A bed of brown daisies or black-eyed susans.

Photoscape filters and framing detail helped to set the mood and added some depth to this image.

When to stop work on any piece of artwork is always a big question. Not when to stop for a coffee break of course, but when is something finished?
How do you know it’s done?

I have to admit that earlier on, and not much earlier on because on a bad day it still happens to me, I often knew when a drawing or painting was finished after I tried to do just one more thing to it and ruined it. Most of the time those pieces ended up in the garbage.

There is no hard and fast rule here. It’s entirely up to the artist and that’s what makes it difficult. If you are working with digital images of any kind the possibilities are endless because as long as you are careful to save your original file you can always go back and make changes, corrections or endless variations of the same image.

The undo feature on most image manipulation programs is wonderful but if you save your image without saving layers or in the case of programs like Photoscape where I haven’t found any options for saving layers, what you see is what you get. ( Or maybe a new starting point?) To return to an earlier version of your manipulations you will likely need to go back to the original file and retrace your steps.

Programs like Photoshop and the Gimp give you the option to save your layers so make sure you know how to save your image so you can still make changes if you don’t want to lose the work you’ve done so far.

When working with acrylic on canvas I like to keep a moist sponge on hand in case I’ve gone too far. As long as I decide quickly those last few additions to a painting will wash off easily enough.

This doesn’t work in all cases or with many other types of drawing or painting materials though, so the best way I’ve found to make that big decision is to stop (Believe me I know it’s not as easy as it sounds!) and give it a day or two. Put the image away out of sight if you can and come back with a fresh perspective and often you’ll just know when your image is complete.

Working on more than one image at a time also helps me to break away from my work before I do too much. It forces me to change gears and just move away from that painting before I add one brush stroke too many.

If I could make myself stop for a coffee break, maybe one of those would work too. Who knows?

WordPress changes again. . .

WordPress Logo By now most WordPress users know about WordPress 3.0 and the new features that have turned it into an even better content management system.

For anyone who is not familiar with WordPress this software, which started out as a blogging platform, can now be used to set up a network of blogs or websites which can run on just one WordPress installation. One ‘superadmin’ controls the whole system, while each separate blog/site on the network is managed within it’s own admin panel. Each individual administrator can choose from any themes that have been installed by the ‘super’ on the network ‘superadmin’ panel.

3.0 has a much more flexible menu system too. There is the option of creating custom menus and linking to pages outside of the wordpress installation, even to a page on another site in any menu including the main one. Best of all though, WordPress is an open source project so the software is free.

That’s 3.0 in a nutshell. If you have a website and you are not familiar with WordPress check out ‘wordpress.org’ to find out more.

What WordPress has done for me though is create a never ending learning curve. There are so many plugins to try out, so many design features to tweek. Every time I change something it leads to another change and then I want more.

This system can be dead easy to work with if you let it, or it can get incredibly difficult if you get compulsive about it like me and have to try out every new idea or feature that comes along.

This time I really wanted to set up the network out of one wordpress installation to save some administration time but my hosting provider doesn’t support it. That was a disappointment, but what I realized afterwards is that I don’t need every new toy that comes out just so I can have it.

There had always been another way to move my site in the direction I want it to go and all this trying out new things is only holding me up. That’s when I realized that I’ve been a little stuck and haven’t been nearly as creative with this very useful tool as I could be.

Now I can let go of a few other things I’ve been clinging to as well. And one of them is being way too serious all the time. That’s not me. Not just WordPress, but this whole digital world is constantly changing and in a kind of weird way, because of it, so have I.

Look out. There’s more to come.

P.S. – Thanks to all you kind, generous and hard working software developers out there. You sure have been keeping me busy! :)

A summer photo

Well summer is not over yet and all I want now is for the month of August to last longer than our rainy spring did.

I am back at work now after taking July off to enjoy visitor season here on the Island. So on that note here’s a summer photo that I enjoyed ‘photoshopping’ and playing with.

A butterfly lands and rests on one of our tomato plants.

A butterfly cooperates for a photo session.

I always feel a sense of wonder when I discover a little bit of nature that I haven’t come across before and felt positively blessed when this butterfly rested on our tomato plant until I managed to find the time to get back with my camera.

I found that the ‘posterize’ filter (under adjustments) in my Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 program let me play with how strongly the number of colors in a photo are ‘posterized’ or reduced and by using this filter to a smaller degree than its default setting I was able to keep much of the detail in my butterfly while the background ‘posterized’ into flatter areas of color.

It saved me the time it takes to use selection tools to separate the foreground and background. I expect it won’t work exactly the same way for every photo, but it can be a quick way to lose some possibly distracting detail in the background of an image.

I still can’t stop myself from playing endlessly with my photoshop (or Gimp or Helicon filter or whatever other image manipulation program I can get my hands on). Hours dissolve as soon I open my photo files and start to play. There must be another purpose to these programs but for me they can be far more addicting than computer games.

I’m going to put a few of these on canvas soon; some as gel transfers (There are some instructions here. . ) and also take a couple of images to a local printer to have them printed on canvas.

I’ll be posting here more regularly again and a few more changes are on the way with mixedmediashop.com. As well as working with my photography I still plan to paint and explore media of all kinds.

As long as summer is still here though, I think I will have to keep my camera close at hand as the old heart strings will keep pulling me into the garden in the hope that there will be a few more magic moments before the season comes to it’s inevitable end.

Digital image manipulation software

Well the new computer finally moved in and I’ve been busy getting ‘Igor’ up to speed. As usual I’ve been looking for software for working with digitial images of all kinds.

A couple of weeks ago I spotted a sunset that was so breathtaking it literally had me running to the house for my camera, but I couldn’t get a photo fast enough and was dissappointed with the images. Last night I installed the Gimp (Igor didn’t complain even though it was the experimental 64-bit version) and had a little fun with one of those sunset images. It made up for the disappointment of not being able to capture the moment. Here’s the result;

I didn’t worry about noise reduction with this photo as I applied so many filters to it I lost count. The file of the final image was way too big and I’ll have to look at ways of avoiding that in the future, but I was having too much fun to pay any attention this time around. Continue reading Digital image manipulation software

Performance art +

Detail from 'Black Moon Rising' by E.M.Schumacher

Last night anyone south of border with access to Bravo was able to watch the new reality series ‘Work of Art’ which sounds pretty much like ‘Project Runway’ only with visual artists instead of clothing designers this time around.

Online videos and previews from the show are blocked on this side of the border. But now that the first episode has aired there are written reviews online, including this one from Entertainment Weekly which you shouldn’t read if you live in Canada and don’t want to know who gets turfed in the first episode. Me, I won’t worry about it because I’ll forget it by the time the show airs here anyhow. Continue reading Performance art +

Art Competitions

Yesterday was a quiet day at home and I had time to browse a bit. What I ended up doing was looking for art competitions. I found all sorts of things including advice on how to choose which competitions to enter.

As artists we all want recognition for our work and what I came up with after more than an hour of browsing was a warning. Continue reading Art Competitions

Website Development

Last Saturday I drove down to Victoria for my first Wordcamp. Today at our Comox Valley Business Women’s lunch I got teased a little bit about my ‘camping’ experience.

So what was an artist doing at Wordcamp? Well, learning a little bit more about WordPress, open source software that is making it possible for so many of us to manage the content on our websites, and I might add tweak the design and function to our heart’s content. Continue reading Website Development

Paint or digital art?

The walls of my home are covered in paintings, my own for the most part. Some will move on to other people’s homes but it’s way too easy to fill up the available space. On the other hand my computer’s memory will take a lot longer to fill up than those walls did so I’ve been looking at digital art and thinking that maybe here lies the wave of the future. Maybe even my own future as an artist.

Lately I’ve been curious about what other artists are doing with digital art so I’ve been browsing through images in photography, looking at some videogame cover art, and checking out digital art of all kinds. Trying to find a common thread. A style of art that is growing maybe, or some sign that all this digital artwork is leading to a stylistic trend. But I can’t see it. There is just too much there, too many artists, too much variety in the imagery.

When I compare those digital images to each other the only thing I can see that they all have in common is a smooth, cool look. There’s a kind of manufactured perfection about them that is the only common thread I can find. Continue reading Paint or digital art?

How not to buy a new computer?

Well that’s what I’ve been doing lately. Not buying a computer. I don’t think anyone should follow my example when it comes to shopping. Making decisions is always the hardest part for me so mostly I go and wander and look and come home empty handed.

Here are some basic things I should have decided on before I went to the store.

I didn’t know what I really needed. I was looking for a machine that could do everything and anything. Be honest about what you really will be doing with your new computer.
I have two older computers at home. I didn’t look at the possibilities of using the machines I already owned for some things. Sometimes old, or used still works well enough.
Budget. I needed to work that one out and not get sidetracked in the store every single time. ( sigh . . . )

I love computers. I do. Really. And that has been my whole problem. I really like having both a Mac and a PC at home and enjoy working on both systems. But neither one of my old machines can manage the image manipulation and experimenting with different software I want to do so it is time to decide what it will be; Mac or PC. Continue reading How not to buy a new computer?

I'm back blogging. . .

Well I’m back. I lost a few posts in the last re-design of MixedMediaShop.com and no doubt will get religious in my back-up strategies now. Anyway that’s what I’m saying and I’m going to stick to it! ;-)

It’s been a busy time. Andrea Fuller and Ed Homer have come on board as guest contributer’s to this site and I’m looking forward to posting more of their tips as they come in. See Media Tips for more on that. Hopefully there will more experts in a whole great variety of visual media joining them on these pages soon. Continue reading I’m back blogging. . .