Tidings for a new year!

I hope everyone has a Happy New Year!

I invite you to check out my interview here at mizkatie.com
http://www.mizkatie.com/2010/01/04/interview-with-sarah-from-sarahkdesigns/

This is my latest composition: summer hummingbirds

I was actually laying in bed on the night before Christmas Eve when I was imagining this piece. I was trying to think of what I was going to give my mother for Christmas. I knew it was going to be a print; I had already purchased the picture frame. I had already given my mother a framed print of "violet night" — which is my Mother's favorite piece of all my current work. I wanted to make something that would be a companion piece.

And, I was thinking it might be possible to assemble it before Christmas... well, that didn't pan out. I finished it last week. But as far as gifts are concerned, there's always Mother's Day or her birthday. Anyway, my mother was perfectly with her "firefly sky" print.

Anyway, I wanted the picture to mirror aspects of "violet night". I wanted flowers, some animal flying through the air, to use a painting for the background, and some celestial element. Very basic compositional stuff. So, I settled on the lilies (which I composed for "a summer day"). And since I just spent what seemed like an eternity rendering them, I wanted to use the hummingbirds that I drew for "nectar" and "hummingbirds & hollyhocks".

So, I had my flowers and my birds. The next step was to pick one of my paintings to manipulate for the background. I played around with its color a bit. I then picked out one of my photos of clouds to superimpose over the painting, and spent some time tinkering with layers and levels until I was satisfied with the result.

I decided I wanted some sun. Perhaps it's the cold and winter here getting to me. Anyway, I've been working on suns lately for another project I have in the works. So, I changed up the sun I used on penguin pals so that there would be less rays, and that they would be larger. And then I set about making them splay over the elements in the picture, so that they were indeed over, but not obscuring the pictorial elements. It involved a lot of erasing at a low opacity...

Anyway, for fun I decided to play with the lens flare, and add a few imitation sun spots of my own. I think it adds a playful dash to the composition. And, eventually, when some gift giving holiday rolls around, I'm sure my mom will love it.