Monday, October 31, 2005

Halloween 2005

Halloween 2005

All the phantom's faces were found by selecting them from one of my photographs.

The sunset was today's as seen from our dining room.

(I'm cheating on the time - I want this one to be at the top of today's postings!)

Favourite Halloween postings

24 Halloween themed postings in no particular order. Some were not put up especially for Halloween.

    pumpkin
  1. Carve your own pumpkin!
    I don't know if there is any way to save it apart from a screen grab.


  2. colouring outside the lines: jack-o-lantern art
    Andrea has more links to pumpkin sites


  3. vitriolica webb's ite: how to confuse two small children


  4. Mysterious Poodle Circus: Happy Halloween!


  5. Ice-Cream Monster Toon Cafe: HAPPY HALLOWEEN!


  6. Ice-Cream Monster Toon Cafe: Minty's Halloween!
    Carved apples


  7. c'est chic: hAPpY HaLLoWeEn ...


  8. Back to Living in Paradise: Halloween 2004


  9. Kelly Ink Studio's topical banner


  10. Tony Sarrecchia's gruesome Happy Halloween
    Make sure you have sound on... and then click through...


  11. Creative Blend: Happy Halloween!


  12. Creative Blend: Creative Goodies-Halloween buckets!


  13. Creative Blend: Illustration Friday - Cold


  14. NellyNortay: Trick or Treats


  15. anonyrrie: Illustration Friday - (un)Broken


  16. Urban Nature: spider


  17. Draw a witch competition


  18. Boules de Neige: Remote


  19. Crafty McGee: a halloween story


  20. inkfinger: Bind Contour Friday 13


  21. halloween swap: Halloween Inspiration
    Halloween eggs!


  22. Aimee's Blog: Happy Halloween!!!


  23. Boston and Beyond: Pumpkin
    An uncut pumpkin - beautiful photo.


  24. Screamers: Halloween....
    Some trick or treaters!


Halloween Squash

squah

Today I went out and took some photos with which to make a Halloween picture.

I decided that instead of a pumpkin I'd go for a squash....

Free Lily!

new lily

This is a plant that seeded itself. First bloom opened today 31 Oct 2005.

If its a lily its parent was a Stargazer Lily that came "free" from Thompson & Morgan, in other words I'd spent so much that I'd earnt it. Last year it came up and was just leaves. And I thought the same had happened again for this year until now, rather late in the season, this beautiful bloom has opened.

And this one really is free.

If its not a lily I'm not sure what it is.

A bit pink for Halloween...

Any suggestions for what to name it?

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Giraffe and some strange birds

Giraffe

These are all Painter IX pictures - the giraffe was drawn following instructional diagrams from a book for children!

Raven

And this is a monk shape-shifting into a wise old raven.

Wader

And this is a strange wader that just appeared...

Chocolate and Chilli Tart?

Chocolate & Chilli Oil Tart from Paul Gayler's Vegetarian Cookbook. This has a walnut pastry and a filling with 1 t of chilli oil to spark up the chocolate.

I'm in the middle of making this rich tart (no relation to cheap tart).

So far I've substituted pecans for walnuts but otherwise stuck to the given ingredients.

This is something that I've been planning to make for almost 2 months but then I started blogging...

Raven eyes!

It seems to be the season for quizzes...

raveneyes

I have RAVEN EYES! (picture from the quiz site)

Positive Traits: Intellectual, Wise, Experienced, Honest, Trustworthy

Negative Traits: removed to protect the innocent...


Your eyes are the windows to your soul.
What type of eyes do you have?
brought to you by Quizilla

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Which Peanuts character are you?

Schroeder
You are Schroeder!


Which Peanuts Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla


I can't believe that... which neurosis is that then? Have they been reading my blog and just lurking?

And I'm married to

Woodstock

Playing with colours


illawarra flame tree



This image came from looking at the colours of the Illawarra Flame Tree. Its the nearest I get to doing flower fairy pictures (I loved the flower fairies when I was little). In fact it felt more like a Robin Hood archetype as I was painting it.

My experinence of this plant comes from using the flower essence - its in the Australian Bush range - and the pictures I've seen.

Who do you see here?

Friday, October 28, 2005

Monday, October 17, 2005

Saturday, October 15, 2005

Tagged: 20 random facts


Lyn has tagged me to post 20 random facts about myself and then tag the same amount of people as minutes it takes me to write the facts.

  1. I'm five foot, six and half inches tall
  2. I once won a weekend at the Savoy and then got food poisioning just before going...
  3. I love chocolate; it used to give me migraines, but I got cured!
  4. Once long ago I got a Maths degree from Warwick university - just don't ask me to remember any of it
  5. I drink hot water; no tea or coffee - but I do drink hot chocolate.
  6. I'm recovering from ME
  7. I live a shamanically magical life
  8. I talk to guides
  9. I wear socks with toes
  10. My favourite band is the Macaroni Penguins
  11. I designed their logo
  12. And married their bass player
  13. I'm a Clear Spring
  14. I read cards - and I'm rather good at it!
  15. I like gardening and would like a bigger garden
  16. I'd love to live in the country
  17. I'm qualified in health kinesiology and as a flower essence practitioner.
  18. I don't practice either
  19. I've been using the internet since before the web existed... and was a guinnea pig user of early web browsers when I still worked for HP Labs
  20. There are only 19 random facts about me.
I tag:

Wild Mother Lightning
vit
cream
incurable hippie
cecilia's art

Illustration Friday - Cold



To keep the cold contained I put it in a snowglobe.

Technique for flower painting






ceilia's art asked how it was done.

Using the standard "Grad Pen" brush in Painter IX and my new tablet, I discovered that I could make marks like these. With my old A6 Graphire I'd found it difficult to get so much variation of pressure in a single brush stroke.


They looked like potential petals to me.

Thursday, October 13, 2005

Happy Birthday to me!


Thanks to vit recommending an A5 intuos3 tablet I can now make much more interesting brush strokes!

And thanks of course to my sweetheart for buying it for me AND getting it delivered today.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Draw a witch


Draw a witch.

The spec is to draw a witch that is 420 x 420 pixels and submit it before Halloween 2005.

This is one of Penelope's contests - she of Illustration Friday - where does she get the time?

Bran man - a tree version


Another design challenge, discovered on:

Steve Musgrave's blog


For the site itself look on Bran.

The challenge is to come up with a design for a bran-man that fits in the template but looks different from all those that have already been accepted.

Mine might not count as I've only kept the template outline and deleted all the inner lines...

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Zero Balanced


I've just had some zero balancing. The first time I've seen this practitioner but not my first ZB.

Over the years I've tried loads of different therapies and trained in a few too... Including ZB... though I am not currently a practitioner of any. I may do an A-Z of them all at some point.

I've read:

John Hamwee's: Zero Balancing

I found Hamwee's book very useful in explaining ZB to me during and after my course.

and

Fritz Smith's: Inner Bridges: Guide to Energy Movement and Body Structure


I found the book by Smith (the designer of the Zero Balancing system) excellent for explaining about bone energy. It really informed my other energy work.

ZB has an excellent model for maintaining boundaries and helps ground other energy work into the physical body.


Zero Balancing doesn't claim to treat anything but it certainly helps!

Monday, October 10, 2005

Multi-hued brushes


Variable coloured brushes are lots of fun - from subtle to garish!

The curse of the were-rabbit?

I was woken up this morning by the smell of burning and the sound of sirens in the distance.

When we got up there were ashes all over our car - could these be the remains of the Wallace and Grommit sets - which went up in flames this morning? Its a couple of miles away...

How sad to lose so much quirky art, lucky no-one died.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

More Painter IX experimenting


This image involves the eraser rake that I made, spiral fills and text. A but of a mess maybe but I had fun with it all the same.

Drawing on a window pane


Here I'm playing with the gradient tool and erasers in layers over a background image created using the gradient tool and the Tubism brush in Artists - not that you can see much of that here...

Scratchboard dancer


Today I decided to make a new brush - I wanted a rake that, in a layer, erased to transparent. So that I could really play with the kind of scraping I've done previously in stained glass painting and enameling.

To get a brush to be an eraser use Brush Creator (Window > Show Brush Creator), in the Stroke Designer Tab, in General, Select Method to be Erase with subcategory Soft Alpha Colorize. Whilst experimenting with it set the brush creator's canvas to have some sort of colour, so that whilst experimenting with erasing there is something to erase.

Saturday, October 08, 2005

Friday, October 07, 2005

Purple storm


Today my copy of Painter IX Creativity by Jeremy Sutton arrived - its very inspiring. This was created mostly using the special brushes that came with it on a CD.

Another doodle


I've seen too many blogs with mentions of Halloween... this is a spirit looking for a Jack-o-lantern to inhabit!

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Another face appears


This face went through all sorts of variations before finishing here. Looks a bit troubled, but then she's been through a lot.

Doodles whilst on the phone


Lotus nozzle


I made a nozzle yesterday from lotus flowers and this was the doodle that then happened. I was playing the marbling feature. So much to play with!

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Image Hoses

The image hose is a great way to play. I wonder if there is a way to feed one's own images in...

Painter IX on ebay

Last night I could hardly sleep, I was so excited by Paiter IX!

This morning I had a look on ebay and bought a copy selling for under £40 including p&p - its an OEM copy so comes without manuals but I'd have bought a book or two anyway...

I'll let you know if this works out okay!

Monday, October 03, 2005

Badger in Painter

Playing with Painter





This afternoon I downloaded a 30 day trial of Painter IX. So I've been playing.

The freedom to just wipe the image clean, or just chuck out a hopeless layer, is great fun.

Years ago I had a copy of Fractal Design Painter at work. I can't really remember it to know how much its changed since then and in becoming Corel Painter IX... but I do remember loving playing with it then and that's true of this too - though its a little intimidating with all the options - but you can just try what's there and see what it does without actually doing any of the fine tuning to begin with.

Sunday, October 02, 2005

Planting up



We got this potting compost which needs water adding. It expands and becomes just like the normal stuff, yet it was very inexpensive, presumably because transport and storage costs are so much less.

I used it to top up my planters which have now got their winter plants in:

Illustration Friday - Float


Digital collage in the gimp