Kat Eye Studio

Archives for June 2012

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Lettere

Sometimes I marvel how the human brain works. I wanted a mail-related photo for today’s Liberate Your Art Swap update post and I thought of this photo. I remembered taking this picture in Venice, although I had never done any editing on it. I thought I took it when we were there with my husband’s parents. So, with nothing other than that to go on, I went into Lightroom and went directly to the November 2010 folder, the month we visited with his parents. Yep, there it was! Pretty darn cool the way the brain works, isn’t it? And the way Lightroom works too. Even though my photos are still not keyworded (although getting better – this folder now has keywords for Venice!), I can find things relatively quickly.

So with that… on to the update! As of this morning, there are 255 artists signed up for the swap! Yeah! If the participation rate is the same or better as last year, I should meet my goal for increasing participation this year. And, there are still a couple more weeks to sign up! I’m going to keep sign up open through July 15. After that, I figure it’s getting to late to get everything together with creating and mailing postcards. Thanks to everyone who has been sharing about the swap – there is still time to share!

A few more envelopes trickled in this week, doubling my total of envelopes to 8. I’m also keep track of where they are coming from, so that will be fun to give an update on as I receive more. From the comments in the Facebook event, lots of people are getting ready to send their postcards in, so the rush is on it’s way. How fun!!

If you haven’t ordered your postcards yet, I received a code from Moo this week: Enter the code POSTSTICK at checkout by midnight PST 4th July 2012 and you will receive free shipping (cheapest shipping option only). Order must include at least one pack of Postcards and/or Stickers. I don’t know if that will work in conjunction with my link that gives 10% off for new customers, but it’s worth a try if you haven’t ordered yet and were planning to use Moo.

One more reminder: Photo-Heart Connection link up for June opens this Sunday, July 1! I can’t wait to see what’s connecting with you this month. See you then!

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Arriving

It’s done! It’s done! My latest painting is done. I see it as a wave. A never-ending wave… it’s always swirling around, moving, pulling in and breaking out. There is energy in the motion. I’ve entitled it “Arriving” because that is what I see it doing. Always arriving, never arrived. Just like us. Any time we think we have “arrived” we start on a new journey. Any time our wave breaks on shore, we have but a brief moment before we are pulled back into the swirl of life and creativity. That’s just how it works.

Arriving, Acrylic on Canvas, 16×20″

Getting back into painting has been fun. I’ve enjoyed seeing this image emerge, letting it tell me where I wants to go. I’ve enjoyed getting paint on my hands and under my fingernails. I’ve enjoyed gazing at the end product up on my easel. I’ve also enjoyed what I’ve learned from the contrast of this painting, which I love, and the other one that I was hating last week. Thanks to your advice, I’ve set that painting aside and I will come back to it later. There are some distinct difference between my approach between “Arriving” and the painting-which-shall-remain-nameless. The biggest is in the gestures I used. For Arriving, I was playful and free. I did not try for clean edges or precision. I found interesting things to stamp with. I circled and swirled, layered without trying to be smooth or clean. The interaction of the layered elements is what I like best. In the painting I hate, I got wrapped up in clean edges and even coverage. The gesture, the texture, and the interaction of elements got lost in the precision. So, for my next paintings, I’m going to go with the looseness. Open gestures, stamping shapes, allowing imprecision. See what emerges.

Here’s the painting in it’s process of “Arriving”… Just in time for Paint Party Friday! Starting with shades of blue, lots of fingerpainting and a spray bottle to drip:

Adding more blue and some circles with a foam brush, more dripping:

Adding green and beginning to define the swirl:

The white enters, using various random things to stamp circles:

More white and layering of the circles with other colors to further blend and define the regions:

A few minor additions of light/dark to blend the swirl with the “bubbles” and the work is finished:

Arriving, Acrylic on Canvas, 16×20″

I took a few closeups of my favorite parts:


And a new question for all of you experienced painters this week: How do you sign your work? This painting is, as yet, unsigned. I’ve always had this struggle of wanting the signature to be small, neat and unobtrusive but I am paint-challenged for small details and it never turns out right. I find myself wanting to sign it with a fine point Sharpie and be done. Any advice is appreciated, and thank you so much in advance for sharing your tips! Last week’s comments were so helpful.

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The Missing Piece

I’ve discovered a missing piece to my photography practice. A piece I didn’t even realize was missing until I began to explore it. But now that I’ve found this piece, it’s clicked into place with such perfection I can’t even begin to describe the sense of completion. That missing piece is print.

The journey of print has been a winding one over the last year. I returned from living in Italy last summer with a desire to figure out how to get some of my newly-created portfolio of images printed. At the start of this journey, I thought I wanted nothing to do with the printing process. I just wanted to find a place to upload my images and have them come to me. None of the fussing with printers and papers. More time for creating with my camera, I thought. At first, seeing my prints this way was fantastic. Just seeing a physical, tangible version of my images was amazing.

Over time though, I began to get a niggling feeling that the prints and the process were not all they could be.

First off, the process of uploading and sharing online was not fitting with me. That someone random could order a print from my RedBubble shop and I had no clue who they were, no way to say “hey, what did you like about that image?” or “thank you for your order” or to even sign the work and connect personally left me a little cold.

Next, I took a portfolio class in March and the instructor had wonderful things to say about my images. But, she said, I needed to learn about print. My black and whites, she said, could “sing” if printed well. I had no idea. So I started looking closer, more critically. And then, around the same time, I received my exhibition print order and was disappointed. They didn’t look as I envisioned in my head. Even though I did test prints prior to the full order and they looked fine, things didn’t translate to all of the images I had chosen. Either that or my internal quality level had changed. There was no time to revisit before I had to drop off the prints so I went with it. But the exhibition prints weren’t as good as they could have been. Lesson learned.

I was at a turning point… I realized I either needed to make a serious effort to find a professional lab and learn how to calibrate with them to get the prints I wanted, or I needed to learn how to print myself. It was an investment of time and energy either way, and it was clearly the next step for my artistic journey with photography. I decided I would learn to print myself.

It’s funny how the right resources came my way once I had made my decision to print. Craft & Vision had released an e-book in January called Making the Print by Martin Bailey. I had it sitting on my computer, ready to read. And then, a few weeks later, a workshop in Portland on fine art inkjet printing for photographers with Tyler Bowley, a photographer and professional fine art printer from Seattle, and Lauren Henkin, a Portland photographer and bookmaker, came to my attention. What timing! I signed up immediately. Both of the resources were exactly what I needed to give me the confidence to begin printing my work. I ordered a new printer* and started on this adventure of print about a month ago.

And what a wonderful adventure it has been…

Where I had struggled with any sort of home printing in the past, now that I had the right information I slid into it with ease. It took very little time to get beautiful prints, so much better than I had been getting. My images jump off the paper! I could make them look exactly as I envisioned. My first experiment (Remember I am an engineer, so there is going to be a methodical approach to this!) has been to try out all sorts of fine art papers with different images to see what I might want to use. Wow! What a difference the paper makes to the print as well.

I’ve tried to capture an example to compare between my online-ordered prints and one of my first home prints in the image below. On the left is the print I ordered online, on the right is the print I made. It was hard to capture the differences with the camera, but suffice it to say my own print was more to my vision. It’s less muddy and has clearer depth and detail. If I don’t like how it comes out, I can tweak it a little and try again.

This weekend I did my first larger print – 11×14″ – to submit to a community art exhibit. While it didn’t come out exactly perfect, it was pretty amazing to see my image large like this, and to know I was involved with the creation of it every step of the way. It’s my image, from concept to print. I set it across from my reading chair and couldn’t stop gazing at it, similar to what I do when I’m working on a painting. I can see a few minor things I would like to tweak with the print in the future, and I definitely would have preferred an off-white mat, but once again I was short on time before the exhibit. It’s all a process of learning. Every step of the way.

In some ways, this adventure into printing takes me back. My father owned a print shop. I grew up in and around printing and paper for as long as I can remember. I’ve always love the feel of paper, the smell of the chemicals. I understood Pantone colors, the difference between serif and sans serif fonts and phrases like “out of register” before they ever slipped into the mainstream consciousness. I knew how to tell good quality print from bad. I always had reams of different types of paper to create with. I loved to play the paper… different textures, colors, weights. I rediscovered a love of design and playing with paper when I started scrapbooking years ago. I’m discovering paper all over again, with my photography.

I think my history and love of paper explains how this is the missing piece of the photography process for me. It completes the circle of the creative process – from seeing, to capture, to edit, to print. Something tangible and beautiful in my hands. Something I can share with others that I’ve created and touched. It takes an image from an idea or a concept to something more real to me. This is my art.

*Before you ask “What printer did you get? How did you print?” I want to be clear that I am not going to make any specific comments on printer hardware or brands here on my website, nor am I planning to give specific technical instructions on the printing process. There is plenty of information available online on inkjet printing for photography.

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Head on the Table

Do you ever have moments of weariness, where you just want to put your head down on the table? Where you just can’t do anything else… you don’t have the capacity for more activity, more engagement, more anything. You just need rest. These moments come from many places… it could be relationship or job stress, or situations outside of our control. They don’t happen often to me, but they do happen.

Friday night was one of those moments for me. We’ve got a couple of big issues going on at my corporate job and Thursday and Friday of last week were long, intense days. They were the kind of days where I come home completely drained because I’ve used up all of my creative energy on managing work. Believe me, it takes a lot for that to happen. By Friday night, I couldn’t do anything more than sit and read a book. And not any book, but a light romance because I couldn’t read anything that took concentration. The feeling quickly passed and I’m back to normal, even though the issues continue and there is more work to do. I’m pretty resilient and adaptable when it comes to this kind of stuff.

When I saw the {in the picture} theme, Facedown, I scratched my head quizzically. I wasn’t really into the idea of lying facedown on the ground for a self-portrait. So here’s my version of “facedown” for this month. That bone-weary, lots going on, head on the table kind of facedown that I was feeling at the end of last week. We all feel this way, once in a while.

In The Picture

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Dreams of Travel, Connection and YOU!

Do you believe dreams can come true? I do. It’s been a long time dream of mine to combine my love of travel, photography of place and teaching together. I can’t imagine anything better than being able to explore a new place with my camera, talking photography with new friends along the way.

This dream is coming true for me, as I’m announcing my first on-location workshops! Yay! I’ll be offering 1-day workshops incorporating some of the key ideas from my online course, A Sense of Place, in small group settings in Oregon and in England this fall.

I’ll kick off the workshops at my home studio in Corvallis, Oregon on Sunday, September 9. After participating in the Corvallis Fall Festival September 22 and 23, our area’s largest arts festival, I’ll be heading to England (woohoo!!) to teach two workshops.

You’ll find me in Hebden Bridge on Saturday, September 29, exploring the beautiful Yorkshire countryside and in Hampstead (near London) on Saturday, October 6, exploring the city scenes.

You can find all the details about these workshops and registration information here. I’m so excited to take this next step. This is just the beginning, I can feel it.

I hope there is a chance to connect with you in person sometime very, very soon!

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A Final Perspective

We wrap up Exploring with a Camera: Linear Perspective today! I’ve been enjoying looking into the distance with you all as you explore this topic. To wrap things up, here’s a simple architectural abstract from Chicago. It’s all about the perspective… diminishing lines and a tilted point of view create an image of space and building that fill the frame.

How has your exploration of linear perspective gone? Do share! Visit the links below for some great examples too. The more you see and analyze, the more you learn!

And, oh yes, don’t forget to vote for me today so that I can win a Vespa!


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