I am prone to whims...

In the grand scheme of things, I am not a meticulous planner. In fact, in the entire span of my lifetime, I have only ever purchased one "day planner." The only reason for the purchase was because it was 75% off, and because it had Salvador Dali graphics. I never wrote, much less planned anything in it...

The world is large and full of possibilities, so, I really don't see how anyone really thinks they can plan anything down to the letter, or why you would want to.

That being said, I was sitting in front of the computer yesterday, and happened to notice the light change from the window. There were clouds meandering through the sky. So, I grabbed my camera, put my shoes on, and wandered all the way out to the back of the yard and took pictures of the cloud.

Life is full of moments, and serendipity.

That and I take a lot of photos of the sky anyway. They always come in handy for digital collage illustrations of landscapes...

Anyway, between painting trees and sky washes on bowls, watching television, photographing bowls for listings, watching more television, messing around on the internet, and enjoying a summer of strawberry shortcake, I have been working up some of my sky photos. Like in virtually all areas of life, I'm not a photography purist, so I have no qualms about editing or calibrating color to my liking.
These are some of the images I have finished so far...

sunlit wisps

cotton candy clouds


epiphany

On a completely unrelated note, whilst hammering tacks on which to attach picture frame wire to some of the many paintings I have painted this summer — I watched the documentary "Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage." I highly recommend it. Rush were one of my first favorite bands, and Geddy Lee was my first rock-star crush. If you are a Rush fan, then you must own this documentary! And if you're not, then go buy it anyway, and become a Rush fan.
: )

Picture Story: black-capped chickadee song — sarahkdesigns

black-capped chickadee song

I have a romanticized notion of birdsongs. Truth be told, I can very seldom actually tell what song belongs to what bird. I grew up the child of birdwatchers, so, this irritates my mother to no end. The only birdsong I can ever discern is robins (well, okay, and crows, and well, red-winged blackbirds), but that’s because they don’t sing so much as they scream…



Anyhow, this picture is the end result of some random comment from a forum thread.
It started with my etsy banner. As you may know, I have an etsy shop: sarahkdesigns. There I sell prints of my illustrations and digital collages, and the occasional watercolor. My work tends to be very colorful and usually incorporates flowers or birds, or both, or some aspect of nature…

So, I made myself a summer banner: something vivid, colorful, and with some summer birds and plants:



To make a long story short, I know the banner is obnoxiously full of bright saturated color, and is visually busy. Graphically, it is literally made out of a scan of one of my paintings and birds & flowers from a scan of another of my paintings. And every once in a while, I’m in need of some attention and post in those critique me threads in the critique forums — and the only thing that ever got any comments was, of course, my banner. I believe someone told me that it didn’t match the items in my shop (to which I thought, hey: click on page 2).

I’m not thin-skinned, or easily swayed, but eventually, as the days get shorter and slightly colder (we refer to that as free air conditioning) — it was time for a new banner.

And so, I sat down at the computer and pulled the chickadee layer out of chickadee love song, and the musical notes from bluebird song and played around until I had something that was whimsical and end of summery looking.



And then I thought, hey, that would look cool as a square print with a shadow border… And so, I sat down at the computer again and opened up all the files, and went searching for just the right photo of the sky… did some editing, added some layering effects, toggled some color, and voila: new print!

(Actually, new print series… check out sarahkdesigns this week for other birdsongs)