From the Ridiculous to the Sublime?

I went from this hideous pattern painting (Below) to the design above in just a few easy steps!

 

Dorje No. 3 Howl Quilt

Did you feel that SuperMoon last night? I couldn't sleep so I worked on the computer for a while and came up with what I call my "Howl Quilt" from a third dorje array of quarter dots. I started with this:

And then turned shapes and replaced colors. My objective was to establish contrast. I knew that I would be manipulating the colors again once the basic design was set so I didn't stress about the unattractiveness of my first combination:

I repeated in a block of nine and inverted it:

Then I played around with various filters, replaced colors, and applied gradients to alter the colors some more:

I like the results from the blur filter, especially the motion blur example in the center of the array above. Here's one final array of "third generation" repeats.

I think I like this one second best:

Another Venus Star Cross

I had fun adding all the little dots. I couldn't make up my mind which version I liked better so I combined them. The purple one is more popular on my tumblr.

Masquerade Thumbnail

This morning I started playing around with a thumbnail detail from one of my first collages called Masquerade. Rotating and recombining causes a nice pinwheel effect. The array features the original square surrounded by various modifications achieved with photoshop gradients and artistic filters.

There's a Primary version and a Gray version over on my tumblr. I've had a very productive month--102 posts if you check my tumblr archive--and I still have five days to go!

Star Cross Triangle Blocks

 

I'm not sure if either of these will become fabric but I had fun playing with the colors today.

Star Cross

Star Cross-Blue Flame Quilt (above) and a couple of Star Cross elements (below).

I scanned in this blue outline drawing and manipulated it in photoshop.

Cross Obsession

I'm staying up too late working on this but I can't make myself stop. The drawing for this happened almost by accident. I used it to illustrate my YouTube for Dummys post over on The Temporary Blog. I decided to give it a bigger border and suddenly I worked up the diagonal version shown above. I really like the colors on white. Then I thought to invert it and look what happened:

These definitely make the cut for fabric. I am so amazed by the inverted version I have to keep going to look at it on my tumblr where it can be blown up larger than here on the blog. Kind of batik-y and Aboriginal.

Cross No. 70 with Dots

Here's another new cross. I was working in a smaller format than usual, 4.75x4.75 inch square, which is greeting card size. I have some beautiful heavy Italian folded greeting card stock called Medioevalis by Fabriano which I have been hording.

The orange "wings" were added to fill up the corners of the square, and they create an interesting shape for repeating.

I added some dots in photoshop and then inverted the design to get the darker version.

The Magic Carpet

Funny how I don't usually like some things right after I do them, but then later I do. Today's drawing is in that category.

Darkening the background in photoshop changes the feel of it. Reminds me of batik in a way. And here it is repeated, just because I can.

Happy Cross

It pays to de-clutter once and a while. I found this along with a few others that I will post by and by. What a happy find from back in June when my old computer died. The photoshop version on dark gray looks like a chalk drawing.

Today's Crosss

Too nice out today to spend much time at the computer. The weather is perfect to celebrate the first day of fall. I have spent most of the day trying to de-clutter my collage work area. I recently had a huge stuffed chair removed from the room so the chi is really moving. Tonight I will sit on the porch and smudge, as I found a box of my favorite incense herbs. I used to love making incense.

Thoughts of You on Gray

This is from a sketchbook page dated July something, cropped and given the Photoshop treatment.


I liked this next one on just black the best until I tried it on gray.


When I went over to my Tumblr site to post it I encountered this marvelous quotation. My goal is to bear it in mind all day!

Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that the mere fact of our existence should keep us all in a state of contented dazzlement. ( - Lewis Thomas)

(So dazzled that I can't even spell.)

Dorje 2 Quilt

Here's a Photoshop manipulation of a sketch book drawing that I posted recently on Future Dead Artists. Do I have too many blogs? Is there a 12-step program for this?

Wouldn't these be cool as scarves?