A Touch of Blue Video Featuring Botanicals from the UC Botanical Garden

 Photo highlights from multiple day trips to UC Botanical Garden in Berkeley, over several years, with an original soundtrack.

Distressed Fly

 A short video of a fly exploring two landscapes, together with an original soundtrack.  Copyright Lucy Autrey Wilson 2021

Painting Mock-Ups

 

Working on the concept for a series of Flowery Memories of Childhood with small 5x7 oil on canvas paintings of my family (parents and siblings) set against floral backgrounds.  The original concept was to paint the humans with few facial details and in odd skin colors to blend in more artistically with the looser floral backgrounds (once painted).  There has been a suggestion, however, that it would be preferable to paint both the individuals and the flowers with more realistic details.  More opinions welcome!

Option A:  Paint both background and people in realistic colors with facial details included (example Lucy bottom pic)

Option B:  Paint backgrounds and people in bolder colors with fewer details (example Lucy 2nd to bottom pic)

These smaller paintings are companion pieces to my bigger 18x24 oil paintings in process (see below)

I Agree

 Walking around the neighborhood, I spotted this sign.  Couldn't agree more (although not all the time!)

Cacophony

 My younger, super cellist sister, recently gave me our grandfather's violin.  I recorded myself playing it and added some other musical elements.  The sound made me think of the word Cacophony, ie "a harsh discordant mixture of sounds."   That, in turn, reminded me of the mixture of experiences that make up life.  In my case, the approximately 75% of allotted time already lived.  Fortunately I have the thousands of photos my father took over the years, as well as a vast trove of other artworks and photos.  Happy technology has advanced to the point where all of this can be easily put together.  Here is one result. 

Beating Heart

 

Gearing up for Valentine's Day with a beating glass heart GIF

Playing with Photoshop's New Sky Replacement Tool

 

Always in the mood to learn something new, while not wanting the end result to to be like anyone else's, I decided to experiment.  Photoshop's new Sky Replacement tool has a number of nice sky presets.  But when I use them, I'm using elements I didn't create, and that anyone else can use, which is never my first choice.  So, I figured out how to insert another image into one of the Sky Replacement layers to create something that is all original. 

Top to Bottom:

1.  The original, edited photo, of a king tide shot in Bolinas, California in Jan 2018.

2.  That same shot with one of the Photoshop sky replacements.  

3.  A photo of mold growing on one of my lemons.

4.  The original photo with a close up of lemon mold replacing the Photoshop sky.  Looks like the fire sky we experienced for too long this past summer!

Playing Around With Old Photos, Patterns and Neural Filters in Photoshop on a Gray Day

 Top to Bottom

Photo shot in Seattle, September 2011 with Amber, Cole and Wilson - as shot

Same photo with B&W filter and some Photoshop Beta Neural face smoothing

Same photo with a different Neural filter and a pattern overlay of a repeating self portrait painted by my father, the late, great E.A. Autrey

Same photo toned down a bit by re-layering the original photo over the 3rd photo.

Since I am no longer travelling up to Seattle on a regular basis, this makes up for it a little.

The Neighborhood Mannequin Has Gotten Political

 Top photo from September, shot in the Orange Fire Ash Fog.  Vote democratic to save the environment, before the rest of the country looks like the burning down west coast.

Bottom photo from March, when the sun was shining and the sky was Blue in California.  Mannequin Bunny has since seen the light!

Learning New Music Skills Combined with Color Theory

After years of playing piano, by reading the notes but not understanding any of the basics, I've gotten interested in learning about music theory and composition.  Fortunately, I located two very old music publications that my late, great, mother had in her music library (she was a superb pianist and composer) which are quite useful:  Modern Styles and Harmonic Construction for Popular Piano Playing by Marvin Kahn and The Majors and Their Relatives by Eula Ashworth Lindfors.  I'm also trying to wade through the Idiot's Guide to Music Composition and Music Theory for Dummies. 

This new music interest was generated initially by a desire to clean up the poor recordings of much of my mother's music, which led to trying to learn both Cubase and Adobe Audition software.  Playing with the new software enabled me to add musical elements to my mother's compositions (sound efx, loops, bird songs, etc.), which has led to a desire to try my hand at making my own original music.

Recently, I noticed a similarity between The Color Wheel (a circular guide to mixing color) and The Chord Wheel (a circular tool for composing one's own music).  So I associated a different color to 8 chord tracks in a very simple scale exercise, then sought to create a video using those same colors synced up with the underlying chords.  My late, great father's photography has also been accessed with an old photo of me filling in for Mary, in the tune Mary had a Little Lamb which appears towards the end of the video's soundtrack. 

This short 55 second video is perhaps a bit too mathematical, the music too elementary and the whole not very artistic.  But the new learning effort is taking my mind off of negative Corona Virus news and bad behavior societal displays.  Escaping from time to time into nature, music and art are essential for trying to maintain some form of sanity in these trying times.

At Home and Around the Neighborhood During Covid-19 Shelter in Place

Top:  Garden flowers in vase with mask
Middle:  My much younger self, the clown my aunt made about 80 years ago, a lamp, and roses in bloom in the side yard.  Photoshop has much improved photo stacking.  This is a combination of 8 images
Below:  Sam reflected in the window of Brookside, the local elementary school, closed for Corona Virus.  

Project Focusing During Corona Virus Stay At Home Orders

The Attraction to Utility Poles and Lines in Landscape Photography

It's good to have a project, during these days of required social distancing.  I always have too many so am trying to focus on one at a time.  Having recently expanded my interest in making soundtracks, with music recorded by various family members, I'm working on creating more video animations for my YouTube Channel that feature new music scores.  This also requires selecting and editing photos based on a common theme.  By current project is "Utility Lines in the American Landscape."  With over 200 images now selected, it will take some quality time to meld them into something of interest.  Then, more fun, going through reams of recorded music to find a good pairing of sound and image.

Bio Blanket

Since I'm now working on a new quilt, I thought I'd post the last one I finished this past January, after it got delayed a year due to illness.  Above Bio Blanket finished in 2020, based on Frank Miller comic art and biography photos taken by my father, E.A. Autrey, as featured in the Growing Up Autrey book, published with Blurb.  This only goes up to high school.  A great deal happened after that!

The Big Eye Monoprint Plus

Experimenting further with monoprints. 

Top:  The original ghost of my 1st Kala student monoprint study with added Roche pastels

Bottom:  A digital copy of the original monoprint with a photo composite overlay (middle photo) run through a Topaz Labs HDR filter.

Photographing the reflection of the clouds in the sky in Sam's Eye

The reflection is as is - not altered! 

Best Ten 1x1 Cropped Nature Photos of 2019

From the Berkeley Botanical Gardens to the Oregon Coast Beach; from around the Neighborhood in Marin County, California, to the Pt. Reyes National Seashore, with a bonus of a few weeks in Paros, Greece.  We live in a beautiful world!  I hope we can stop wrecking it.

Marilyn Monroe, Floral Fantasy, and Photoshop CC Collide

I've been compulsively editing my best floral photographs, out of the thousands I've taken since I went digital.  This has given me the opportunity to not only go down memory lane, but to experiment with as many digital techniques as I can come up with to try to bring out the essence of each photo. Lately, I discovered a pattern feature in Photoshop CC I was unaware of.  Having done some fabric design previously, it was with excitement I realized I could create offset patterns in Photoshop using my illustrator art.  This has opened a whole new area in which to play.  In these four pictures I started with a beautiful field of flowers shot in Salem, Oregon in 2016 (bottom).  Moving up from there, I've combined the original photo with three alternate patterns based on my Marilyn Monroe vector drawing.

Taking a Walk on the Wild Side

Going to nature on the Estero trail at Limantour Beach in beautiful Point Reyes National Seashore.  More Estero photos up now in my Shutterstock portfolio here:  https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Lucy+Autrey+Wilson/sets

The Cat Who Took Sam and Lucy for a Walk

On a coastal walk in Piso Logaras, Paros, Greece, we were adopted by a cat who herded us along, waiting for the photographer to catch up, sometimes leading, sometimes in the rear to make sure no one got left behind.  It was the best guided tour I've ever been on!