Translucent

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I found these flowers yesterday in the garden, hidden behind some large bushes and weeds. After I had trimmed everything away that was obstructing the view, the most beautiful flowers became visible..... (and invited themselves for some photoshop work :-)

Another attempt at the week 7 challenge, see previous post...

Miniature Garden - The Second

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These miniature gardens will become a calendar for my parents in 2015. So there will be 12 of them, or maybe 13, for a cover page.....

My mum and I had quite large differences in our opinions about the definition and treatment of weeds. Maybe she is going to change her mind once she's seen the new calendar :-) :-) :-)

This was done for the 7th weekly challenge of the photoshop artistry class.
We had to take one photo and just use small squares of it without showing the whole piece, but the small squares should still show the whole. And then each of the small pieces should get its own treatment... and the end result should still be pleasing....

Grounding

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This one is for Karen in Qatar - thoughts are electric, emotions are magnetic.

The trees and the metal rope are symbols for grounding, stability, balance - the colourful elements and swirl of energy are my reminder to be balanced in playfulness. I can look at life with some humour and allow ourselves to add some colours wherever an area seems to be too grey.

Remembering to set my grounding cords, to feel the energy and to see the light.....

Motor-Music

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Ah, here another one for Tim. (It's our 12th anniversary today, all those many years and years of great memories...)

I got such cool photos of the oily motor, and of course, the clutch above, that alone those would keep me busy for weeks.

The eye is from Cameron when he was maybe 5 or 6 years old :-)



Textures from http://www.flickr.com/photos/lenabem-anna - thank you very much!

Take Me Home

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This was created for the 6th weekly challenge of the Photoshop Artistry workshop. I found joy in the simplicity of elements (even though we had to use three different textures) and was really happy when I managed to just get a little bit of colour showing up in all areas.

The bird's path can be looked at from top down... it lands high up and then flies down and further down to look for its home, which it finds on the lowest level.
Or the other way around.... the bird knows it is not at home on that particular tree, even though it got fed there... and now it's on its way up to find its real home...
or maybe all of that is wrong, and I just made it up!

It's a bit like life. Everything can be looked at from different point of view, and depending on from where I look, my interpretation of the situation can be very different.

Isn't it just miraculous!

Steadfast

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I was pondering about stability and all the chaos that everywhere seems to happen and how to not only survive that, but also be happy and grateful.
The statue (Photo taken in Berlin/Germany) is very rigid and seems to try to hold things away from itself... and even though 'steadfast' while in the midst of the storm, it shows some little cracks everywhere, and it can be expected that one day it'll break.

We will need to become like bamboo in the wind - flexible and strong.....

Spiky

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Weekend Challenge 6... I worked all Saturday on this... just to find out that I couldn't apply the last one of the rules, bummer... :-)

But I liked what I got anyway, and that's it.
Back to trying the challenge again now...


This is for Barbara .... the spiky plant photo was taken in her house a few years ago, do you remember? I have been thinking of you sooo much during the last few days... looking forward to your visit soon!!!

The Many Faces of Beauty

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Every day I see so many beautiful things... it is completely impossible to get them all onto one canvas.... so I selected just a few.
Faces, young and old, animals from beloved pets to insects, flowers, beautiful hand writing, the feet of Spirit (the cat :-) ), fractals, snow, water, shells ... ah so many beautiful things in this world.

Wouldn't you think that everybody can be happy?


Here the text of the poem that I used as handwriting background:

Eyes tell, tell me, what you tell me,

Telling something all too sweet,

Making music out of beauty,

With a question hidden deep.

Still I think I know your meaning,

There behind your pupils’ brightness,

Love and truth are your heart’s lightness,

That, instead of its own gleaming,

Would so truly like to greet,

In a world of dullness, blindness,

One true look of human kindness,

Where two kindred spirits meet.

And since I’m lost, in what entrances,

Studying those mysteries,

Eyes, may you be drawn to see,

The intention in my glances!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Tim's Beddy

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Ah, what can I say. Tim's Bedford got taken apart at the weekend, and I have tons of photos to use....

But... this is also the 11th photo of the previous weekly challenge.
I had the composition very much done (I am talking about the inner picture only, not about the larger one).... when suddenly some corruption occurred and I wasn't able to modify the layers anymore, couldn't add any... spent a few hours to repair it, but no luck. Then I spent a few hours to recreate it, but somehow I just couldn't get it looking as I wanted it to.
So I gave up and went back to version 10, which eventually became the result for late week's weekend challenge (a real challenge in many ways, hahaha), I already had posted it here...

WAIT BEHIND THIS LINE

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Whenever I go to town with the train, I have to go over a little bridge and a white fence that stops me from falling into the little river ... while at the same time, somehow it is inviting to just jump in, not sure why. Then I arrive at the railway station and walk on the line where it says in bold letters - WAIT BEHIND THIS LINE.
More and more often I am wondering if I might be listening to instructions like that where they don't make sense..... where do I keep holding myself back, where do I stop myself from enjoying life to the fullest, allowing my grand potential to come out and show off... ? :-)

Those two scenes (the fence of the bridge and the train-station command) became the starting point of this composition.

The background certainly is another fractal...

There is so much 'out there', potentials, possibilities, challenges, unbelievables... a very different world. And what is it that keeps us waiting behind the line? It's just one more step :-)




And funny enough - when I was feeling completed with this, I went back to cleanup the photoshop image from unused layers, and by just switching on one single black layer under maybe 40 other layers.... I got a very different result, which I now like as well... it just proves that even in the night, all those possibilities are available :-) :-) :-)

Terracotta

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It's all about three days of agony over a piece of terracotta pipe... actually - over the photo of a piece of terracotta pipe that's sitting in our garden in front of a flax bush. I played with it in photoshop and decided that I wanted to do 'something' with it. Something for the weekly challenge of the Photoshop Art workshop.

I started 11 times altogether. (Well, the last one didn't contain the terracotta piece, and I really liked it.... but that's a story for another day.). I dreamt about it. I thought about it while doing my chores and while painting my garage/office walls. Obsession?



It's very obvious that this composition doesn't contain any terracotta pipe... but looking at the layers separately... haaaaaa.... THEN there is a terracotta piece somewhere in the middle, and when taking that out, all of the composition is just so different that it is unbelievable.

This shows once more that sometimes the little invisible things can make such a big difference :-)



This is the culprit...

Forkingeristic

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Funny how life goes sometimes - I keep looking at 'simple' objects and 'see' them in many different versions... kind of wondering why they look like thy look. For example, why is a pencil just straight, and exactly as long as it is, and how about making some changes and what would happen if.....

And while this has been going on in my head for a few days..... our weekend challenge was - to take a photo of a simple kitchen utensil and make art.
And that's how it came to 'forkingeristic' all objects on this composition, including the spirals, are parts of the fork that were somehow distorted - detailed explanations  are here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/heideho/10130684295/in/pool-fineartphotoshop/

And I had SUCH a lot of fun!!! :-)



And as it goes, again I wasn't sure about which version to use, as I liked another one as much... here it is:

We Made It!

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Today I am winning :-)

The portal that the rowers row through is actually a gate at Te Papa in Wellington, I like it so much with its colourfulness and crazy shapes and forms.

Cloudy Surprises

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Yesterday I felt as if a steam train had rolled over me.
It took me quite a while to see the sun, the birds and the flowers coming out of the clouds... to hear the music and find playfulness - just to discover that they all were there - patiently waiting for me to be noticed, appreciated, thanked for their existence...

T

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This is a homage to Tim, who is so much down to Earth... always working hard, while at the same time being a dreamer, an entrepreneur, an artist, and so very original. 

He loves his dog Kulta and being at the beach, he finds plenty of reasons to enjoy life, sooo good to see!

Hey Tim, if you ever read this - I am VERY pleased and grateful having you in my space :-)

First version:

The starting point for this composition was the second weekend challenge of the PhotoshopGrunge workshop, with certain rules attached.... two of my own photos (a landscape and a person), several defined creative elements to choose from. The main task was to use the selective black&white teaching of the workshop, and then some extra instructions about using two squares, which I might have interpreted a bit more flexibly than was anticipated....

The Secret of Life

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For me, "The Secret of Life"  is to love to all that is.

The heart therefore is the main part of this composition, but maybe not that obvious to see.... like it is in life sometimes, where love is there, but might not be obvious to the superficial observer.

The tree stands for life itself.

Certainly I had to include another fractal (which I spiced up with lots of little lights) - here it is literally used as the light, the energy that's coming in, circling around us, spreading out.

Music has a large part when talking 'life' (as well as colours). It's kind of cool that the music-brush that I used had the word "cresc" (crescendo = progressive increase in force or intensity), which fits so very well my viewpoint of what's happening with life.... everything seems to be increasing, speeding up, in wonderful ways.

The map in the top right corner is the symbol that these concepts are valid for the whole world, the whole universe, all universes, all that is.

The funny thing is that I used brushes for all those round symbols without exactly looking what they contained. I was then very happily surprised seeing that I placed the Star-Tetrahedron just in the middle of the photo... and in the middle of the heart..... couldn't have done it any better if I had been thinking about it.

Another proof that it might be a very good idea to think less :-) :-) :-)

(And I really like how the structure of the frame turned out - used two Kim Klassen textures - even though I couldn't really explain how I did it.... it just came together all by itself :-)

And here is the fractal that I used in the composition above:

The Lonely Tree's Dreams

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My freshly renewed fascination with fractals made this day go past in a flash.
I keep pondering about the beauty of the fractals, looking at our trees outside, realising that they are full of fractals just everywhere.

Didn't take long and I knew I had to get a tree and the fractals somehow together - a tree dreaming of his basic particles... a tree dreaming of the fractalness of his being.


The tree reaches out trying to understand where it's coming from, why it is here and what it is made of. Even the consciousness of a tree finds these questions challenging to embrace - there seems to be a blockage that stops it from grasping the complete concept... A bit of confusion is there, too. :-)


For nearly all day the whole composition was black and white, and I realised something was missing. The red splashes of paint seemed to be just right - and I had to add a little more colour, a little bit of music (which certainly has fractals in it too! :-), a little smiley, a curious little cat.... there is some lightness, some playfulness... the pondering of central questions doesn't take over, it's just part of the whole.


And here the fractal result that made the background of this composition

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Spirit's Dance

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On Saturday I found a new iPad app called Frax (http:\\fract.al), which ... as the name says .... deals with fractals.
And in such an amazingly beautiful way that I still can't believe.
I have been playing with fractals-applications since my first PC in the early 80ies, but never anything like this... and on the iPad, of all places. Who would have thought that it is even possible to create anything like basic fractals on a little gadget like this.

Anyway... I had to  save some of the results, they are just too beautiful. And then... I had to try to use them as background for some more PhotoArt.
Above is the first result and I am very happy with it.

It shows Spirit, our very playful cat, in full action. I love watching him and I love how he still surprises me with new ideas on how and where and what to play. This is LIFE.





Here the fractal result that is the background of the composition above, which is certainly A LOT more amazing when seen in full size on a large screen (this one is sized down so that it doesn't take too long to load):

Freedom

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This composition was created due to the first weekend challenge Sebastian has put up in his Photo Artistry workshop. Even though there were very clear restrictions, it didn't feel as if there was a limit to the combinations or possibilities.
The main topic was about painting with coloured light (and other lighting effects)

On a more personal note:
For me, 'Freedom' has a lot to do with the ability of flying - and imagining to fly towards my dream makes me feel very happy... knowing that I am doing that already, that there are no boundaries to my inner experience, and there is only one way to go.... towards the light, towards the glass castle where the light is stored and that's shining wide and far to show the way. Ahhhhhhh........ :-)

Dreaming Safely

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I wanted to express my deep feeling of quiet, ease and peace. It looks as if I couldn't find a more peaceful photo than one of my sleeping cats... :-)

The church, big trees, large flocks of birds and butterflies also are symbols of peace and quietness, and the playful curls are just that... playful...

Not many words today...