A photograph of some holly growing well locally, altered a little in Painter IX. In a style inspired by Joy Eliz.
This week in the Artist's Way is called Integrity and has a big challenge in it - Reading Deprivation. This is the week when one is told not to read - at all! Avoid TV and radio too. Keep other people's words out of your head. Let your own words come through in the silence.
I was wondering how to do this especially as I do not want to stop blogging again, even for a week. Then, when I was answering the comments to yesterday's post, the word verification came up with something that suggested to me to look in one of Julia Cameron's other books - The Vein of Gold. It opened on what she calls a basic tool, I'd call it a basic concept, that of Clusters.
A Cluster is a group of people who support you in your artistic endeavours, and whom in turn you support in theirs whether they are the same sort of artist as you or not. And of course my cluster, the one to which I currently belong, is here with all of you! Which means I will dip into your blogs and comment - but I will restrict myself - I won't go surfing off looking at new blogs and I won't follow many links either.
Joy Eliz tagged me to name 5 favourite Christmas songs. Strangely mine are all carols.
Caroline's Carols, in no particular order:
- Good King Wenceslas
- Ding Dong Merrily on High
- The Holly and the Ivy
- We Three Kings of Orient Are
- Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly
To decorate this posting I decided to play with the idea of being influenced by others and took two photos, one of holly and one of an evergreen tree, and played with them in Painter in a style inspired by Joy Eliz. (I used the Van Gough brush).
It was so much fun (I was singing to myself and that's always a sign that I'm enjoying myself) that rather than tag you for 5 favourite Christmas songs I suggest you pick a blog artist and do something Christmassy in their style!
Some artists with distinctive painting or drawing styles you could get inspiration from:
Andrea, Johnny Norms, Joy Eliz, Janey, Shelia.
Amongst many others of course. I look forward to seeing your results.
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11 comments:
Love the christmas series, very festive!!
Thanks Alina!
Oh!!! I LOVE both pictures!!! I have to laugh though...I once heard that they could tell VanGogh was mentally unstable from his 'swirls' - I'm sure it's all a bunch of nonsense. Maybe he found the swirls soothing!
You mentioned a song I forgot...Ding Dong Merrily on High - Love that one!
Thanks for indulging my tag - now I won't bother you any longer since this is your 'no reading' week:)
The holly picture is so very pretty. I like your idea to do a christmas picture in anothers style. Sounds good to me!
I love the swirls, too - the holly piece almost looks as though it's decorated with whipped cream!
I admire Joy Eliz' style as well - I'll have to look through the links and acquaint myself with the others.
The last theory I remember reading about Van Gogh's swirls is someone's hypothesis they represented the 'auras' seen around things, just prior to an epileptic seizure. Whatever their cause, I've always loved paintings using that technique, as I do these.
Great list of favorite carols, Caro! Of these 5, I think "Deck the Halls" and "We Three Kings" are my favorites. I have to think about which ones would round out the rest of my list - I think "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" would definitely make the list as well.
Thanks for giving me more food for thought!
Joy Eliz - I found making some of the swirls soothing but only when they went the way I wanted them too! I doubt very much that the swirls show mental instability - it strikes me as a good way to make backgrounds less boring and to have them echo the lines from the subject. I think I'll have to get some carols to listen to whilst I make my Christmas cards. (Yes they aren't made yet!)
ldahl - thanks - I hope you have fun if you give it a go.
tinker - I can see what you mean about whipped cream - holly berries and cream with prickles on the side, yum... I wondered about God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman too but it was one I butchered early on... I can still hear out of tune violin scrapings to it...
Like the holly picture, the green and the red and such seasonal colours.
As I said I have found the Canon Ixus to be really good. Mine is the older version 4mp. It is brilliant at close up work. The minor point is in low light with moving objects, but that may have improved as the "film" speeds have been increased up to 1600 asa. The lens quality is very good, and that is still very important in a digital camera.
The Lands End to John O Groats ride took 2 weeks.
Thanks Davem. The IXUS I'm considering has image stablisation which is meant to help in low light.
2 weeks sounds amazing to me - was that about 100 miles a day?
Love the artwork, Caroline, and the great suggestion to have a go in someone else's style - very tempting! I haven't made my cards yet, either! :( Shocking behaviour, eh? Very exciting to be shopping for a new camera - good luck!
I'll be singing 'Ding Dong Merrily on High' all day now! ;) Have a great day yourself, and turn that TV off! ;) lol!
All the Best,
Suze x
Suzie Q - I'm finding it great fun (and maybe I'm learning something too) all this singing one song to the tune of another... (do you listen to Sorry I haven't a clue?) or rather the pictorial equivalent.
I often seem to shop for new cameras at this time of year but buy them rather less often! It does seem to be a recurring pattern... this one would be for me and probably also for Jim, if it could stand the conditions he likes to take photos in!
Thanks for the mention Caro. No-reading week is where I stopped doing Artists Way 4-5 years ago, I'd forgotten.
Those are all very nice Christmas carols, some of the earliest tunes in my experience I think. Part of my musical bedrock. I feel tagged-if-I-want-to-be, and will come up with my 5...still haven't answered your 10 beans yet!
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