Three Muses Challenge- Newspaper

A little play on what newspaper is made of...

Background form Rubyblossom. The tree is a brush.

Take a Word-Time

My inspiration for this piece came from Simon and Garfunkel

Old Friends
Sat on their park bench like bookends
Newspaper blowin' through the grass
Falls on the round toes
Of the high shoes
Of the old friends

Old Friends
Winter companions the old men
Lost in thier overcoats
Waiting for the sunset
The sounds of the city sifting through trees
Settle like dust
On the shoulders of the old friends

Can you imagine us years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be seventy...

Old Friends
Memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fear

A time it was
It was a time
A time of innocence
A time of confidences

Long ago it must be
I have a photograph
Preserve your memories
They're all that's left you

Images from Google and Dover, background from Peggy Gatto.

SPA-The Animal Kingdom

Tigers on Vacation.

Enjoying the sights--and eating out, too!

Tigers from Wikimwdia, background is my own photo. Boots and hat from Google Images and mask from Scrapbook Flair.

Famous paintings. Slightly altered

Apologies to Grant Wood and Winslow Homer, two of my favorite artists.
All additions from Google Images

Three Muses Challenge- Window

peacock window

images from Google Images and Wikimedia Commons

Take a Word-Old Fashioned

just an old-fashioned girl...

credits to Graphics Fairy, Elizabeth Golden, Bocaccino at T4L and Jeannette at Soartful.

SPA--DaVinci

Mona was altered with Fotosketcher, then a gradient was applied and a background frame from Temari09.

4 by 4 Friday--Happiness

Don't you love this face!

It's from Google Images, altered with the Impressionist plug-in in PS3. Background made with text pages from Rubyblossom and textures from Untamed Reflections and Cottage Arts and embellished with brushes.

Three Muses Challenge- -Hats

Have you heard? It's in the stars,
Next July we collide with Mars!
Well, did you evah?
What a swell party this is!

Found this image on the Art Freebies site, and immediately thought of Cole Porter. Background from Songbird Ave, pen flourish from Graphics Fairy, embellishments from Scrapbook Flair, Trine Stecher and Jessica Sprague.

SPA-The Orient

Don't we all love all things Asian! A creative trip to the mysterious East is always welcome.

The geisha is a digital brush I made from a Dover image..in fact all the images are from Dover, except the Painted Silk texture, which is from Cynthia Powell Designs.

some journal pages

One of my favorite poems by e.e.cummings
The image is a vintage perfume advertisement, embellished with brushes I made. The font is Lumos

The Poppies are from Google Images, as is the dancer, which I made into a brush. The background is painted with watercolor and sumi-e digital brushes.

The image was painted with sumi-e photoshop brushes I found on Deviantart.com; the bird brush is part of a new set from Shadowhouse. The quote is from Robert Brault, a journalist and author. He has a blog where he publishes his ramdom thoughts. They are often witty, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, always wise, and a great source of inspiration.

Three Muses Challenge- -Maps

A Map of the World

The brave seamen whose great voyages of exploration opened up the world are iconic figures in European history. Columbus found the New World in 1492; Dias discovered the Cape of Good Hope in 1488; and Magellan set off to circumnavigate the world in 1519. However, there is one difficulty with this confident assertion of European mastery: it may not be true.

It seems more likely that the world and all its continents were discovered by a Chinese admiral named Zheng He, whose fleets roamed the oceans between 1405 and 1435. His exploits, which are well documented in Chinese historical records, were written about in a book which appeared in China around 1418 called “The Marvellous Visions of the Star Raft”.

A map, dated 1418, contains notes that substantially match the descriptions in the book. Six Chinese characters in the upper right-hand corner of the map say this is a “general chart of the integrated world”. In the lower left-hand corner is a note that says the chart was drawn by Mo Yi Tong, imitating a world chart made in 1418.

Take a word--Faces

Faces I Remember

with apologies to the Beatles...

There are faces I'll remember, all my life,
Though some have changed.
Some for ever and for better,
Some have gone and some remain...

You may remember seeing some of these faces in my artwork over the past few years. I find I come back to them, again and again. They inspire me with their eyes, their smiles, their stoic expressions , but most of all with their humanity.
A big thank you to the people in these photos, the photographers who created them, the people who preserved them and the people who share them with all of us.

Thanks also to mbgrigby, spekoral addendun and vintage fingings at Textures for Layers Flickr group, and to Elizabeth Golden of The Last Door Down the Hall blog, for all the bits that are woven into the background and texture.

Thanks for visiting.

SPA-Pirates

Yo Ho Ho...or perhaps Giggle,giggle,giggle! What little girl these days wouldn't want to be a Pirate?

All images from Google, texture layer from Songbird Avenue, brushes, filters and blending modes applied.

Watercolor tutorial first try

There's an abstract watercolor tutorial by Cynthia Powell on the Digital montage Studio blog. (There's a link on my blog list.)

--Cindy, so nice to hear your voice. I didn't hear either the dog or the phone--good job!

Anyway, I tried it, and apart from being a lefhanded person trying to draw with my right hand AND a mouse, it didn't come out too badly, I think. Although I just looked at Carolyn's attempt and I'm almost embarassd to post this.

Here's the original photo, that I took several years ago at a renaissance faire.

Three Muses Challenge- -Angelic

Background is a gradient layer and a piece by Encounter_laura at T4L. The angel image is from Imageafter.