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Lakewatch

By Darcy on May 21, 2006 12:45 PM | Permalink

Last weekend while I was on vacation in FL, I went out on Lake Avalon with Mom & Dad to take water samples and stuff for LAKEWATCH. Here are the pix :-)

Chicks with Cameras

By Darcy on May 17, 2006 11:10 AM | Permalink

This is the project that initiated the CATDIP (Completely Amateur Themed Digitial Image Project) phenomenon. Originally known as Chicks with Cameras, historically speaking it is also CATDIP I.

	Theme 1: This is Houston (Louise) Main Street is Houston Lou works those filters to provide a brilliant take on the theme with her "Main Street is Houston" pic. This is the true view of downtown!
	Theme 1: This is Houston (Darcy) Welcome to Houston Weather conditions conspired against a pretty picture of downtown, so I opted for a graphical approach. My "postcard" features a bright-winged denizen of the Butterfly Museum (one of my favorite places in Houston!)
	Theme 2: Herbs and Spices (Louise) Peppered Color This week Lou layers three theme-related pictures: a selection of peppers at the Farmer's Market, a closeup of chives, and a wooden (now psychedelic!) sign.
	Theme 2: Herbs and Spices (Darcy) Oregano in the Round This mandala is made by duplicating and rotating a sliver of the original image, which was a decorative jar containing oregano.
	Theme 3: Chess (Louise) Houser's Chess Match It's Alice in Wonderland time! Tiny Housers play a big game.... Look closely--even Brit and Sal are helping out!
	Theme 3: Chess (Darcy) Garlic to K4 This may be the only time I've actually liked our kitchen floor. I think the implements usually win over the ingredients.
	Theme 4: Self Portrait (Louise) Four Lou Louise "took what would normally be a dorky self-timed portrait and multiplied and changed the image via effects," inspired by Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe.
	Theme 4: Self Portrait (Darcy) In Hand Reflecting a recent addiction to the game Quiddler(tm) (from the fine folks at Set Games) I discover than I'm worth 24 points.
	Theme 5: It's Not the Picture You Take, It's the Picture You Make (Louise) Things Just Keep Getting Better A little fancy cut-n-paste, and voila, Andy's a TV star! We're all hooked on the Fab 5, so this was very appropriate.
	Theme 5: It's Not the Picture You Take, It's the Picture You Make (Darcy) Hot Biscuit Our silly hibiscus plants are still blooming, so I played with layer effects on this snap of a well-formed flower.
	Theme 6: Poster (Louise) Man and the Sea Louise made a collage of the angry sea during the recent storm in Galveston and a sculpture from NYC that sits in front of the Time Life Building (photographed in June.)
	Theme 6: Poster (Darcy) Long Ashes A tribute of sorts to Cigar Dave.... Mark and Liz are the cigar models.
	Theme 7: Oxymoron (Louise) Tropical Pasadena USA Louise says, "I was in Pasadena the other morning for an interview and I thought the contrast spoke volumes on our subject. This is the lovely and scenic Lyondell Plant behind the Palms along Hwy 225. Almost takes your breath away (from the toxins being released)."
	Theme 7: Oxymoron (Darcy) Jumbo Post I just couldn't get rid of "jumbo shrimp" when thinking about oxymorons, so I finally gave up and went with it.

Artist Trading Cards

By Darcy on May 17, 2006 10:09 AM | Permalink

	Carving Consortium ATC Swap May 2002 (card 1) My very first ATC! The frame is a carved stamp (also one of my first carvings) and I only made a set of 4--one for each of the participants in my Carving Consortium ATC Swap group. The bird is a stamp from Mars Tokyo (now defunct). I stamped directly on pages from a foreign-text book, and colored the background a different color for each card with Prismacolor pencils.
	Carving Consortium ATC Swap May 2002 (card 2) This is using the same carved frame stamp, but the background this time is alternating strips of text and pictures from an old seashell identification guide. I used watercolor pencils to color the shells, then cut strips and pasted them on a backing. Then I lined up my frame so it looked good, and made four different cards.
	Carving Consortium ATC Swap June 2002 (card 1) I chose "frames" as a personal theme for my first CC ATC swap. These swap periods last for four months--this is the frame I used for the second month (June 2002). It is actually reversible. I printed one side in mustard and the other side in magenta, which made a nice orange where the prints overlap. The tulip is from Eichstatt's "Garden" and is an inkjet image transfer using matte gel medium. The transfer technique is kind of iffy, so I kept the worst one (but scanned the best one before I mailed it!) Again, I only made four of these.
	Carving Consortium ATC Swap June 2002 (card 2) This is the second card from the June swap. I don't like it nearly as much--too blah. And of course this flower was a much bigger pain in the butt to cut out.
	Carving Consortium ATC Swap July 2002 (card 1) All I have to say about the July cards is that I'm glad I only made four of each. I think they're horrible. BUT it was a true learning experience. I learned to hold my carving tool correctly and also to carve "shallow." In this one, I left the carving lines in, thinking it added interest. Now I think it just added mayhem....
	Carving Consortium ATC Swap July 2002 (card 2) This is the same frame, with the carving lines cleaned up. This time I printed over a commercial stamp--a Flower Fairie ((c) the estate of Cicely Mary Barker) from Stamps Happen, Inc.--which worked marginally better than the posterized photoshop background I used in the first card. But basically I still hate it. On to August....
	Carving Consortium ATC Swap August 2002 (card 1) The two August cards are among my favorites. There are a lot of pieces here. The background includes a traditional setting of the Kyrie from a hymnal and a floral wallpaper pattern from one of Shambhala's collections. I combined those in PhotoShop. The tree is a piece of an anotomical drawing by Eustachio, upside down (the armpit is in the lower left corner). I carved the birdie (I call him SwirlyBird) from an image in a collection of old Mexican design motifs (Jorge Enciso/Dover Publications) and the upper left swirl is a commercial stamp from Hot Potatoes. I printed out the background and stamped the images directly on it. I scanned the anatomical drawing and printed the sections I wanted, cut those out, and glued them on the background. Then I covered the whole thing with acrylic varnish. I love the look and texture of the varnish, especially over layers.
	Carving Consortium ATC Swap August 2002 (card 2) This uses all the same elements as the previous August card, and the same techniques. I liked these cards so much, I made a larger edition based on the same ideas later on.
	xwave @C perpetual swap (Hot Biscuit, version 1) This is the first card I made with the intention of sending a set of 20 off to a perpetual swap. (In this case, it went to the xwave @C community swap.) I woke up one morning thinking I could draw, and this hibiscus (hot biscuit ;-) is the result. The background is made up of various torn book pages, and the whole thing is watercolored. I have since decided that I draw more proficiently than I watercolor, which is not saying a whole lot ;-)
	xwave @C perpetual swap (Hot Biscuit, version 2) Same picture on a different cardstock. I ran out of the beige....
	copy-left perpetual swap (Kyrie, card 1) The next five cards are a rework and expansion of the idea in the August CC cards. Same techniques and materials--PhotoShop background, cut and paste drawings on top, but no stamps on these. I made 25 altogether--five each of five colors/patterns. This set I sent to the copy-left perpetual swap.
	copy-left perpetual swap (Kyrie, card 2) 2/5--This is my favorite of the series. I like the colors and the shapes.
	copy-left perpetual swap (Kyrie, card 3) 3/5--I think this one looks like curtains on a stage.
	copy-left perpetual swap (Kyrie, card 4) 4/5
	copy-left perpetual swap (Kyrie, card 5) 5/5 -- For this one, I mirrored and layered a piece of the image in PhotoShop to generate a symmetrical torso.
	Carving Consortium ATC Swap September 2002 (Eeronauta Blue) Now we are back to carved images. I used a dingbat from a Blue Vinyl font called Eeronauts as the basis for the carving. I started the series embossing with interference blue, but got quick feedback from my live-in art critic (it's okay, I ask for it, and he's usually right) that there wasn't a lot of contrast going on. (Interference stuff looks better in person than scans, of course, but it's true that this is fairly boring.)
	Carving Consortium ATC Swap September 2002 (Eeronauta Black) So I used black embossing powder for the other half of the series.
	Carving Consortium ATC Swap September 2002 and xwave @C perpetual swap (Evidence Manga) This is the second card for the September CC ATC swap. I decided it was time to try carving a word. I used the Dinc font On Your Bike as a pattern. I made thirty of these cards, all unique, as each background is an original page cut out of a Japanese anime magazine. I sent these to the xwave @C community perpetual swap.

CATDIP IV

By Darcy on November 23, 2005 10:27 PM | Permalink

CATDIP IV: No Boyz Allowed

This round is much less structured--just a theme. Starting with the 3rd theme, we've decided to go physical, incorporating our images into books that we pass around.