Kat Eye Studio

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The Freedom in Digital

Oregon Coast Kat Sloma iPhone Photography

In or Out, Part 1

Pause for a moment, and contemplate how dramatically digital tools have changed the creation of art.

Once upon a time, there was one piece of art out of each piece of raw material. You started with something blank–a block of clay, a sheet of paper–and then you added or removed or altered it to create something new out of it: The work of art.

If you wanted to create another work of art, you had to either start completely over with another blank sheet, or you took the piece you had already created and continued to change it. That piece of art you started from, the infinite pieces of art created throughout the process, no longer existed in the physical system of creation.

With digital art, every step I choose to save exists as its own piece. So the photograph above can exist as a work of art, while my continued experiments with the same image exist as their own pieces, too.

In or Out, Part 2

In or Out, Part 2

It is up to me as the digital artist to choose, from that infinite possibility, where to stop. What to share.

Is that freedom? Or does it lead to overwhelm?

I see it as freedom. Freedom to experiment. Freedom to develop a new type of creative process, which moves forward, backward, and branches in different directions. Freedom to continue any conversation I might be interested in, to follow where it leads, with the possibility to go back and understand how it developed.

I love the destination of art, the finished piece.

I love the journey of art, the creative process.

And with digital, I love the ability of investigating and understanding the whole of it, the journey and any number of destinations.

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Creating the Sun

It’s summer again, and I’m so glad. For about a week there, it wasn’t summer around here. A lot of rain and grey skies; muddy trails and wet dog. I wanted to wear my summer clothes – not my rain jacket – but didn’t have much of a choice.

I did have a choice in what I created, though, so I created my own personal sunshine through my art. Summer-y flowers and leaves in bright colors filled the bill. I could change my mood with a choice of brilliant oranges and reds, like this one…

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…or lemon yellow and lime green, like this image “Looking Up.” Ahhhh, hello sun.

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My husband complained that some of the colors were too bright. They hurt his eyes.

That sounds just about perfect to me. If they are too bright for you, just put on your sunglasses. I’ve achieved my goal, and created some sun.

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Night into Day

I’m taking a little break from the Lights of Night to share some of my favorite digital paintings from the last week for Paint Party Friday. I continued my exploration with the new process, moving from monochromatic paintings to multiple colors. I love the feeling in this first one, which I call Winter Fire. It does have kind of a fire-and-ice feel to it, doesn’t it? I like how the trees are just barely visible, but you see enough of them to make them out. What do you see in this painting? What is your interpretation of the scene?

Another favorite this week is a study of lines. Nature’s lines. The lines you find in nature often seem chaotic, but there is a pattern to them. I love seeing the pattern in things, whether it’s in nature or in an engineering problem. Just call me goofy!

Finally, in the spirit of the Lights of Night theme that I have going on this week, I thought I would share a digital creation that is not a “painting” but has the feel of night. This one was taken during the middle of the day, but I love that I can give an impression of night through my processing. I call this work “Night into Day.” Hmmm… maybe I should try making a painting out of this one, and see what happens!

If you want to see more of what I’ve been creating you can follow me on Instagram or Flickr. I’ve been posting new work there daily.

Happy Holidays to the Paint Party Friday crowd!

PS – Don’t miss the giveaway of a spot in my upcoming Find Your Eye: Journey of Fascination series over on the Moms Who Click blog. You can still enter!

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It Comes Together

Isn’t it fun when something new comes together in your art? It’s like all of the preparation and experimentation and play lead you to this place where everything just clicks. There is a moment of “a-ha!” and you discover that you have a new process. That happened for me this week!

I think I discovered it on Saturday, when I created this digital painting:

I loved it. Absolutely loved it. And so I tried something similar with the next one:

And, oh my goodness, if I didn’t love that one too! And then I realized that I had discovered a new process. A certain type of photo, a certain sequence of editing, and I could get these gorgeous tree paintings. I’ve been experimenting all week and starting to learn what does and doesn’t work for the aesthetic I want. I’m playing within this process with variations.

I just can’t get enough! I find that after my dark, moody binge a couple of weeks ago I just want this color. And texture. And light. It feels like freedom.

Happy Paint Party Friday!!

I normally don’t post twice in one day but things got away from me with getting new eCourses ready for registration this week! Here’s what’s going on…

  • Fuel Your Creativity, a one-week eCourse to kick off the new year with a creative burst, is open for registration. This is not a photography course. Everyone is invited!
  • An all-new eCourse in the Find Your Eye series, Journey of Fascination, is open for registration too. This series will run January/February.
  • December’s Exploring with a Camera will post tomorrow! Visit Friday and see what we’ll be studying this month.

Whew. I think that’s all for now…

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Winter Flowers

There has been an interesting development for me lately. After months of not participating in Paint Party Friday, suddenly it’s getting difficult to decide just what to share! Now that I am considering my digital artwork to be “paintings” I find that I am creating too many to share just one day a week. Before, with traditional painting, I was doing good to pick up the brush most weeks. I think I have finally found my painting medium.

I have discovered another thing, the ones I want to share for Paint Party Friday have become the ones where I’d like to share how I created the final piece. It must be the teacher in me, but I get questions on how I did something and I can’t help but want to share with you so you can try it too. So here I go… with this week’s painting: Winter Flowers.

Winter Flowers

The painting starts off, as always for me, with a photograph. This was captured with my iPhone5 using the Slow Shutter Cam app, which allows you to mimic a long shutter speed. You can get some cool blur effects this way. Be forewarned though: You will have to experiment and take a lot of images to get one or two usable ones, but it’s worth it!

This image has some of the softness I was going for, but I wanted to enhance it further. I pulled it into the Glaze app and tried different glazes. This was my favorite:

Do you see the subtle color shifts that happened, along with the painterly edges? It seemed to deepen the shadows and make for a more dimensional image. Very cool. I didn’t like the regular looking brushstrokes that happened along the petals though. Time to pull it into the Iris Photo Studio app, and blend it back with the original photo:

This adds a little bit more structure back into the lines and brightens things up, but it didn’t get rid of the regular looking brustrokes, so there was one more step. I opened the image in Pixlr Express PLUS and applied a texture. The great thing about this app, as opposed to the similar and simpler Pixlr-o-Matic from the same company, is that you can adjust the amount of the effect that is applied. So I toned down the texture a little bit to make it more subtle. Here’s the final image again:

Winter Flowers

I am really happy with how this one turned out! I am going to print it to see how it looks on paper. I hope you are enjoying these and starting to get some ideas for creating digital art this way. The possibilities are endless, and tons of fun!

Oh, and if you don’t have a smartphone to join in with all of this app fun, I’ve run into a couple of options online to play with editing your photos this way. Check out pixlr.com and psykopaint.com. Have fun!

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Finding the Time

It’s been one of those weeks. It’s Wednesday and I’m already tired. Lots of meetings in the evenings, lots of meetings in the mornings. Quite unusual for me. I like to keep my time free, so I’m not rushing around from place to place.

I’m discovering an interesting thing of late though: Even with my busy schedule, I find myself creating every day. More consistently than ever before. Almost every morning these days, you will find me stopping to take a photo or two. I’ve had to start leaving earlier to work, because who knows what I will find between my front door and the door of my workplace? A rainbow! A reflection in a puddle! A bare tree! Everything I see has so much possibility.

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Almost every evening, you will find me sitting down and playing with the new photos I’ve taken, even if only for a few minutes. I’m learning this new medium, exploring the possibilities. I have lots of experiments that no one will ever see. They are hideous. But that’s ok, because I’m also creating quite a few nice images that I love, too.

What’s changed for me? I’ve never been one for 365s or other time-based art projects, since I get too obsessive about meeting the goal and lose sight of the purpose. I know this about myself. Most of my creativity with photography has been in burst mode. All at once, capture a bunch of images, like when I travel. All at once, edit and play when I’m ready. It’s worked and I’ve loved that method of creating.

Somehow, with mobile photography, it’s becoming a daily practice, like my journaling and writing have been for a long time. Nothing I track obsessively to meet a goal, just something I do because I love to do it. Because I’m a happier, more grounded person when I do it.

With mobile photography, it’s always there, always available. It doesn’t take the forethought of bringing the “big” camera or hauling it out of the bag. It doesn’t take the time sitting at the computer to upload, edit, and share. I can do this all from a coffee shop or my comfy chair (even this blog post – from my iPad!). It feels like a daily practice should feel. Accessible. Natural.

I’m excited for this shift. Not only a new medium, but a new approach. A reminder that I can always change my methods as new possibilities come along. It doesn’t have to be painful or dramatic; it can be a natural, comfortable evolution.

It can be as simple as following my joy, and finding the time to create even when my calendar tells me I have none. It’s surprising what I can find when I want to.

Off to get ready for my morning meetings now… Have a great day!

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