3 of Hearts collage

Yes, I admit I have a problem. I really like flamingos! I don't know why exactly. Though the color is wonderful, and the seeming of gawkiness is endearing. They are different, but wonderful in their difference. Do I connect personally to this? Maybe, maybe. Meanwhile, I'll keep making collages with vintage flamingos and enjoying their beautiful gawky graceful differences!

May the Force...Nah, I'm not gonna say it!

Force is a digital collage I made the other night when there was nothing on TV. I started with a picture I had taken with my Optio A20. I had to really zoom in because this particular butterfly was way across the field. I used the camera raw in Photoshop CS3 to deal with all the darkness in the background (that's pine woods back there) and to get the lighting & the sharpness back correctly. Then it was on to adding the little gears which I messed around with in the embossing option. The graph that is on the wing I distorted & warped. That & the one on the thistle I got from an 18th century encyclopedia. The blue arrows & circles are brushes that I distorted. On top of the photo I put a layer of the torn ledger paper and set it to overlay.

Yes, I do Dream in Color!

As evidenced by this rather lively digital 4" X 4" collage I just finished, my dreams can be quite colorful. I have been a birdwatcher for most of my life, & I guess that had some influence one night. This is sort of a representation of the bird I saw in my dream.

I began (in Photoshop CS3) with a vintage B&W English bird drawing/etching. I used the shape tool to make the diamond pattern which I then changed the perspective on & warped. I used masks for the blue & yellow colors. The red "dots" are brushes from the small tribal set from http://www.brushes.obsidiandawn.com, thanks Stephanie, you have some really cool brushes that I enjoy working with. The card is a little piece of ephemera with some math on it, that on which I used the perspective tool & added an inner shadow. The bird I added a double shadow of himself colored & then warped/used perspective & then a B&W version same thing but with a gradient added.

The background is a photo I took last spring of ferns popping up in our woods. I added an ironworks piece from Dover that I warped outward in the middle. I made sure some of the frets line up with the fiddlehead. I brought in an old newspaper in the background & lowered the fill as well as the opacity. I made sure the text went around the bird. And Bob's your Uncle, there you have "Bird Dream".

It's up to you, the viewer to figure out the meaning. Is the Bird caged? Is he outside looking in? Is the newspaper there as another hint at the caged status? Why is he on the card? Is he using that as his flying carpet? These and other questions will only be answered by your own internal dialogue.