my painting

February 12, 2013 by Kat

Philosophies on Sharing

What is your philoshophy on sharing your work? Do you share ONLY your best images? Do you share only one image on a certain frequency? Or do you share multiple images, whenever inspiration strikes? Do you even have a philosophy you follow for sharing? Where did it come from?

I realized I DO have a philosophy for sharing my work yesterday, when discussing this with another photographer friend. He was talking about the idea of sharing ONLY your best work online, something that I’ve heard many times from different professional photographers. The idea is that you cull the images down to the best of the best and only share those.

There are things I agree with in this philosophy, namely the “culling” of the many to the few. I think one of our best learning opportunities is in the review and selection of our “best” photographs. Being able to distinguish them, and to be able to consciously say why, helps us to grow our vision. The next time we are out photographing we will bring the learning from the previous session’s review, helping us to create even better photographs. It’s a never-ending cycle that builds. I think of it as a spiral: Each time you come around the spiral to photograph again, you are in a slightly different, slightly better (higher) place on the spiral if you work hard to review and select your best.

In general I don’t follow the “share only the best” philosophy, though, and that’s because regular sharing has become part of my personal practice in a different way. It’s not about sharing for feedback or to grow an audience, it’s about a regular practice of creating and what I learn from it. This practice started long ago, while in Italy, when I was being badgered by a friend to update my blog. I didn’t want to write about daily life or activities, but I could get myself interested to share a favorite photograph each day and writing a little bit about it. Holy Moly, did that change everything! I learned about my photographic eye, and myself, in amazing ways. It became an essential part of my creative process. Over time, it became more and more about writing from the heart and choosing the right photograph to complement my words, than choosing the “best” photograph to share that day.

Recently, my daily creative practice has changed, but sharing is still a big part of it. Even though I write almost daily on the blog and this is an important part of my creative practice, my daily “goal” for creating has shifted to creating at least one new, edited image a day from my mobile work. Then I share. Sharing is the completion of the process; the check in the box that says I fulfilled my personal goal. In a way I’m doing sort of a 365 project, but with editing instead of photographing every day, and without strict adherence to the “365” part. Whether it’s photographing, or painting or writing every day, it’s all creating, anyway, regardless of what type it is. It’s all useful for learning and growing.

What I’m sharing every day this way is not necessarily my “best” work. I find it takes some time to tell what’s “best.” Sometimes I look back at the things I’ve shared and am horrified. I liked it, maybe even loved it, at the time, or I wouldn’t have shared it. The ones that are the “best” are the ones I love days, weeks, months later. Sometimes, I know that in the moment I’ve created it, that it’s one of my best. Other times, a “best” image has to grow on me. The history I build through creating and then sharing helps me to learn more about what’s “best,” while also providing a record of my development over time.

I don’t share everything I create, believe me. There is some stuff in the moment of creating I know is awful and leave it on the hard drive. I have lots of failed experiments. They serve their purpose, helping me learn what does NOT work. I also do cull significantly from my original photographs, to get to the images I use for my creations. I can’t imagine trying to creatively edit every photograph I take. Whew. I wouldn’t have the time, or the inspiration.

It was an interesting conversation, yesterday, as we discussed this topic. I was figuring it out on the fly, as I realized I had a different motivation for my sharing than he did. It reminded me that each of us will have different motivations in our art, and I can’t assume yours will be the same as mine. Each person can develop their own personal rules and philosophy for sharing, like anything else. Some may share for feedback, while others share for connection. For me, it’s primarily part of a daily creative practice that keeps me learning and growing.

What is your philosophy on sharing?

February 11, 2013 by Kat

Another take on Apologies

Over the last few days I’ve had a sneaking suspicion. I’ve felt like there is more to this whole apologizing thing, at least for me, than meets the eye. That it is about more than fear of sharing or criticism. I’ve been journaling and am starting to sort out this “other” reason. These ideas I’m sharing with you today are fresh and not completely thought through, so bear with me. I’m hopeful sharing them here will bring commentary and insight from you all, which always helps me distill them to something clearer.

How many of us carry along these little sayings in our head: Don’t brag. Don’t toot your own horn. Don’t hog the spotlight. Be humble. Keep quiet about your accomplishments, the right people will know.

I do. Somewhere, somehow, these sayings have been etched deeply into my psyche. Add to that my introverted and shy nature, which naturally leads me to want to avoid any attention, and you have a recipe for one quiet person. But then you contrast that with my desire to create, my desire to share, my desire (dare I say it) to lead… and you get quite a bit of inner turmoil.

You get someone who wants to do something really well, with all her heart, and have other people see it and join in. Without her having to say anything.

Yeah, right.

I’ve learned that doesn’t happen. To grow anything, relationships online, a following for your art, a business, you have to get the word out there. You have to share your message with confidence and heart. You have be able to say, “Here I am, and I have something GOOD to share with you.” You have to willing to talk and talk and talk about the good stuff you are doing, so the message is heard. It’s called marketing.

All the while, the inner voice is quietly reprimanding, “Don’t brag. Don’t toot your own horn. Don’t hog the spotlight. Be humble. Keep quiet about your accomplishments, the right people will know.” But they don’t always know, do they? Sometimes you have to tell them.

Hence, the apologies. The apologies sometimes come along to quiet that inner voice, I’m thinking. When I’m talking about what I create and do and have to offer others, if I apologize, I can keep that voice at bay. Sort of. I still feel it, deep down. I know this, because when I get any sort of feedback that validates this voice, even if it’s as simple as one person marking my newsletter as spam, it’s deeply felt. The voice comes back with a vengeance, “See? I told you so! Stop talking about this stuff!”

*Sigh*

I’m sorting this out. It’s a bit new and raw right now, this realization of why I might be apologizing. But like all of the things I’ve sorted through in the past that led to some sort of personal growth, it has to start this way. It starts with an inkling; some sort of clue to follow. We’ll see where it leads next.

February 7, 2013 by Kat

Liberate your Art 2013 & Watercolory Goodness

It’s time! It’s time! If you haven’t heard the news yet, it’s time to sign up for the Liberate Your Art 2013 postcard swap. The postcard receipt deadline is April 6 so you have plenty of time to create your postcards and get them mailed. Visit the swap page and sign up to get all of the details and helpful resources via email.

We are going to have a fantastic time this year! There are already 232 artists signed up. Yay! If the previous year’s participation rate holds true, I’m going to need more than 350 signed up to meet my goal of beating last year. I could use your help! Join us, and help me get the word out. Blog it, share the Facebook event, whatever the best way to contact your creative peeps.

For my Paint Party Friday post this week, I wanted to share a bit about a new app I’ve been playing with the last couple of weeks: Aquarella HD. This is a very cool watercolor app and I’m loving it!

First off, here’s a quick example of what the app can do… Original photo at left, painted version at right:

This app has lots of options. You can “paint” with the colors of your photo, or you can use two-tone effects as I’ve used for this one. It is amazingly customizable… you can change the colors used in the tones, the intensity of the color and the watercolor edge effects, the paper texture, the wash and background bloom. I love all of that control, as it allows me to create something I really love.

As always, I’ve been experimenting with combining it with other layers and apps to create an original piece. I’ve found I use the Aquarella HD app slightly differently than the other painting apps I have. For most other apps, I shift colors prior to adding the painterly effects. For this app, I’ve been creating the layers without worrying about color, because I’ll pick colors in the Aquarella HD app itself at the end.

Let me show you what I mean, with this finished piece, Moonrise:

I started with a photograph from several weeks ago, captured on a foggy morning:

I wanted the evergreen tree alone, so I used TouchRetouch to remove the tree and ground to the right:

I was also playing with the ArcMachines app last week, which is free app that creates circular geometric patterns. I had captured a couple of different images off of that:

Next, I played around with blending the circles with the tree image in Image Blender. When you are blending black and white images, the blending modes do interesting things. In this case, I think I was using either the Difference or Exclusion blending modes, which I don’t use with color. I moved the arrangement of the circle layer around until I liked where the circles were in relation to the tree:

The three circles weren’t packing the visual punch I wanted, so I added the large circle over the top one in Image Blender. I will note that for both of these steps, I needed to mask out the branches of the tree, so that the circles would appear to be behind the tree branches:

I played around with painting this version in Aquarella HD for a while, and while I got the colors and effect I liked painting-wise, the composition was not working out. So I went back to Image Blender and played with enlarging the layers. After several tries, I got a composition I liked:

Since I already had the painting effects set in Aquarella HD from my previous experimentation, I pulled this image in and processed it. As long as you don’t close out the app, your settings will stay the same when you pull in a new image. Very nice!

I named the piece “Moonrise” because my husband said it looked like the moon rising behind the tree with a couple of extra moons along for the ride.

Moonrise

My favorite thing about this painting is the light-in-dark effect happening within the circles. The watercolor edges really make that contrast pop. I’ve also discovered, or maybe rediscovered, that I really like combining geometric shapes with natural shapes like this, and this new app has created all sorts of possibilities. You can see a few more in my Flickr photostream.

It’s great to add one more painting app to my toolbox, and Aquarella HD is chock full of watercolory goodness. I just love creating art this way!

January 29, 2013 by Kat

Dynamic Balance

I woke up this morning with “balance” on the brain. You can’t have as many things going on as I do without either becoming a master of balance or spectacularly burning out. Over the last year or so, I’ve done a lot of personal work on balance. Between my corporate job, Kat Eye Studio, my family and my art I have to keep my eye on things. Or, I should say, I have to keep my knees bent and roll with things.

You see, I believe balance is a dynamic thing. Balance in life is like standing on top of a teeter-totter, one foot on either side of the fulcrum. If you want to stay balanced, you have to move and adjust. Constantly. You have to stay agile, moving your body as the plank shifts. You have to ride out any imbalance that comes along to gently bring things back to where you want them. If you try to push to hard the opposite way when things are going one direction, you will most likely find yourself tipping wildly back and forth, arms flailing, ultimately ending up face down on the dirt.

Right now I’m riding a wave of imbalance. This week is an intense week for me at my corporate job. I have a deadline on Thursday for the project I’ve been leading for the last 15 months. Things are going great and the project is on track, but there is a lot of work the team and I are wrapping up before the formal review Thursday morning. It’s taken over my brain. Normally I can switch off work when I’m home, shifting over to my creative projects, but occasionally something big like this comes along. My lesson from the teeter-totter: Time to roll with it.

So I’m making some adjustments to keep my balance this week. I won’t be blogging or online much the next couple of days. Just like in a photograph, when an element is placed on the extreme edge or corner, you need to leave space to balance it out. I’m making that space here.

Dynamic balance makes for interesting compositions and for a full and interesting life. But you have to learn to make adjustments and shifts, to make things work. I’ve eaten enough dirt, falling from the teeter-totter, to learn that by now.

A few things to make you aware of…

I’ll be back here on Friday with the January Photo-Heart Connection. Won’t that be a nice way to relax and reconnect to my heart after this busy week! Link up will be open February 1 – 7 for all of you to join in too.

The Liberate Your Art postcard swap is now open for 2013! I’ve moved it earlier in the year this year, to keep it out of the busy summer months. (It will just be in the busy spring months, instead! Hee, hee.) Join us!

Registration is open for the Las Vegas workshop at Selah, which adds you to the Kat Eye Studio weekend of activities. Visit here to see why I’m really excited to teach A Sense of Place this year.

January 24, 2013 by Kat

My Blank Canvas

Winters in Oregon can wear on you. Depending on the year, you can have weeks upon weeks without direct sunlight. It can wear on you after a while. Through my creative explorations I’ve discovered an amazing thing this winter, though. The flat, grey skies of Oregon winter are a wonderful blank canvas, when captured with my camera. I can paint any color I want onto them!

With that in mind, I’ll share with you how I created this week’s digital painting for Paint Party Friday:

Even in the winter, there is still light

It started with this photograph. It has interesting branches but is a bit underexposed. See what I mean about the flat, grey sky? Bleah.

Next into Snapseed, for some color shifting. I don’t even bother to try and adjust exposure before I start this process. I’ll do that later if needed. The final image out of snapseed was shifted to blue with a bit of a vignetting around the edges, creating a brighter region in the middle. Do you see it? I liked how the branches seemed to be framing this lighter spot.

Next into a new app I got this week, PhotoCopier. This app creates some interesting color shifts and textures based on famous works of art. I liked the added texture it gave to the image, along with some more color shift.

I wanted to add variation at this point. The sky was still too flat! I used Pixlr Express PLUS to add this inked frame. I was playing around with frames in the app earlier this week, which I almost never use, and discovered these cool watercolor-y frames. Perfect to add some more dimension here, along with a little bit of color as well.

Time to try some more texture, pulling it into Distressed FX. This is one of my go to texture apps. I love some of the effects! The two textures I liked best shifted the color to green. If all my paintings come out green these days, it’s this app’s fault! I need to play around with shifting the colors back. Here are the two textured ones I liked:

Looking at these I realized the Aquarell filter in Autopainter HD would go well. I like the watercolor effect of this app, it’s the best I’ve tried, but I don’t always like how it leaves such a wide unpainted border around the edges. In this case, because I had darkened the edges so much with the border, I thought it would blend really well.

Finally, it was time to blend it all up! Using Image Blender, I blended variations of the different images I’ve shown you. Here’s the part I can never quite remember… which images, blending modes and opacities I used to get the final place. It’s a lot of experimentation. Suffice it to say that I try out all sorts of blending modes and opacities with each of the layers I’m blending to get a look that I like.

Here’s the final painting, again:

Even in the winter, there is still light

While I’ve found a great use for the grey skies this winter, can I have some sun now, please?

January 17, 2013 by Kat

A Lesson in Simplicity

Hello and happy Thursday! It’s been a busy week for me. Lots of little loose ends to tie up, much of it has seemed to center around prep for exhibitions and framing. Someday, when I get framing all figured out to my liking, I’ll share what I’ve learned. I’ve got creating and printing under my belt now, but framing! Ugh!

For this week’s Paint Party Friday post I wanted to share one of my favorite recent paintings, Reaching Toward the Sun, and the little lesson I learned from it. This one is a lesson in simplicity.

Reaching Toward the Sun

It all started on a crisp and sunny Saturday afternoon. Walking back from a relaxing visit to the local coffee shop with my son, I noticed these wonderful dead plants along the path. They were so lacy and delicate, standing tall in the sun even after they had lived their life, I had to play. I spent a while trying to capture their beauty, sending my son on home ahead of me because he was getting bored waiting. It’s nice to have an older kid now. 🙂

Composition was challenging with a fence and convenience store right behind the plants, but isn’t that always the way of photography? Sometimes you have to work for that perfect shot. Of the bunch, I loved the gently curving lines of the stalks and the way the sun highlighted the details in this one:

OK, so now it’s time to play. I’ll walk you through some of the different options I tried:

The blue sky in the original was pretty but a little too blue. I wanted to soften up the color but still keep that glowing sun. I played around with several options in Snapseed (top row). When I come across an effect I think I like as I play, I always save the image to the camera roll. I have no idea if I will use it later, but I want to remember as I’m playing what came before. You never know what you might want later!

Next it was time to play with effects. The first two in the second row were from the original photo processed through decim8, a really cool app that creates interesting modern/digital effects, but it was not what I was going for with this piece. I needed soft!

So then it was into the painting apps. All of those shown are from Autopainter HD or Autopainter II. I tried painting with both the original photograph and the edited blue-green photograph. I liked the blue-green ones the best. (There are more painting experiments in my camera roll, I could only fit a few here.)

Now that I had some good options and ideas for direction, I pulled the blue-green image into Image Blender and started to play.

It quickly became obvious that the seed head at the bottom of the frame, which hadn’t bothered me in the original photo, was just going to be a distraction in the final painting. So I pulled the blue-green image into TouchRetouch and quickly edited out. This is a super simple app that works great for quick corrections like this. Doesn’t that look better?

Now that I had a new photo, I needed to go back through and recreate the painted layers. Since I had already narrowed down my direction through earlier experimentation, I only recreated a few of the layers that I thought I might want to use, and started blending.

The first blend I did was the blue-green image with this watercolor layer:

And guess what? That first blend became my final image:

Reaching toward the Sun

After playing some more I realized that first blend captured exactly what I wanted, the soft colors, the sun on the stalks, with the gentle, painterly feel. It was a lesson in simplicity. After spending the last few weeks blending many, many layers to finish a piece, I realized sometimes you don’t need that. Something simple will do. Just like every photograph doesn’t need to become a digital painting, every digital painting doesn’t need to be complex. The experimentation was all good though, it helped me refine my artistic vision and really be clear about what I want to communicate in the final piece so I could make choices accordingly.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s lesson in simplicity! It’s also this week’s “mobile tutorial.” I’ve created a page on the blog sidebar under the Resources heading called “Mobile Apps, Tutorials and Resources” and you can find a link to all of these little tutorials there, along with some web resources and (eventually) a list of apps I recommend. I’ve gotten a lot of questions from readers as I’ve explored this new medium and I want to make it easy for you to find the information I’m sharing as I learn. Let me know if you have any questions. Maybe the answers will pop up in one of these posts!

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