It's Not Complicated

 Things might look confusing, but it's not complicated to tell reality from fiction.

Trees in an Artificial Sunset

Scanned Japanese washi paper and a B&W treatment of trees shot in Seattle make for a happy marriage. 

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

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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.

Seattle Pink Poppies

Sadly I no longer have a reason to travel up to Seattle a few times a year to take photos and visit family (since they moved to Portland).  But it's now fun to see how many ways I can edit the thousands of photos I' took in Seattle over the years.  The four above are from a Queen Anne poppies garden shot I photographed in 2014, starting with one unadulterated version.  The editing fun is almost as endless as the complexities of the original as created by Mother nature.

An Interview with the Author of Little Cloud

The children's book Little Cloud is now available in print and as an e-book on Amazon.com  First published as an e-book in 2014, and a print edition on Blurb, it has now been made available as a print edition on Amazon.  Here's more information about the book, in the form of an interview:

Interviewer:  What is the story behind the story of Little Cloud?

Lucy Autrey Wilson:  I wrote and illustrated Little Cloud in 2014, at the peak of California’s driest period since record-keeping began, between late 2011 and 2014.  I was wishing for more rain so thought a story about a rain cloud might be nice.

Interviewer:  Is there a reason your other main character is a blue jay named Jack?

Lucy Autrey Wilson:  Since I made the cloud feminine, I thought it would be good to make the bird male.  I have twin grandsons who were four years old at the time, the age target of my story, and by making one of the characters male I hoped to appeal to them.  Neither of the twins is named Jack, but that name seemed to fit. I was also inspired by my backyard blue jays.

Interviewer:  Can you tell the reader a little bit about your illustration process.  It looks like your illustrations were drawn using vector software, is that correct?

Lucy Autrey Wilson:  Yes.  I wanted to make both a digital and a print book.  The requirements for an e-book meant getting the file size as small as possible.  I needed to create the art using vector software, instead of raster images.   A raster image is artwork created in a non digital medium, then scanned in to the computer becoming a digital file made up of pixels.  When these raster images are enlarged, the image quality diminishes significantly and the file sizes are much bigger.  Vector artwork, on the other hand, is composed of mathematical lines and curves.  Not only does vector art take up a lot less digital space, it can be scaled to any size without losing quality. 

Interviewer:  How did you come up with your book title?

Lucy Autrey Wilson:  The title Little Cloud just fit the story.  After I first published the e-book in 2014, I realized it was the same title as a book by Eric Carle, one of my favorite children’s book author/illustrators.  That was certainly not intentional.

Interviewer:  What source material did you use for your illustrations?

Lucy Autrey Wilson:  I am a photographer and am always looking for new ways to use the tens of thousands of photos I’ve taken over the years.  At the time I wrote Little Cloud, I was also travelling up to Seattle a couple times a year to visit my daughter’s family, including the aforementioned twins.  So the photo reference in the beginning of Little Cloud was shot in Washington State.  Where Little Cloud travels south to, is Marin County, California, where I live.

The tall mountains in my story are based on the Olympic mountains, as seen from the top of Mount Walker, in Washington State.  The tallest of the Olympic mountains is Mount Olympus at 7,965 ft.

The body of water Little Cloud and Jack fly over is Puget Sound, as seen from Seattle.

Small Mountain is based on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County.  Although the biggest mountain around where I live, its peak is 2,572 ft.  much shorter than the Olympic mountains.

The various flower drawings are based on photographs taken at the Botanical Gardens in Fort Bragg, California in 2013.

Interviewer:  What do you hope your readers take away from the book?

Lucy Autrey Wilson:  First and foremost, I hope the reader is entertained.  Secondly, I hope the message of friendship, and the benefits of helping others, resonates.  And finally, I hope there is a little more awareness of the beautiful world we live in and a desire to help combat climate change to keep it that way.

#8 of 31 best photos of 2018

Texture and pattern of a retaining wall shot in Seattle combined with an Apophysis software rendered fractal.

Reflections on my Visit to Seattle

Very cool, modern house in Seattle, reflects the fun had with the Taylor family at Discovery Park, the beach, at home, and on the super, slick slide in the freezing month of February.

Having Fun with Seattle Art and Photography

My trips to Seattle generally result in at least one attempt at a portrait of grandson Wilson.  Unlike his twin Cole, he is more amenable to posing.  However, like any normal 8 year old, posing doesn't last very long (which I can blame for the my inability to capture his likeness).  The result this time is "Wilson and his Toys," a 10 x 14 pen and ink and watercolor painting.  To try to improve on the original, I tweaked the resulting watercolor by doing a bit of over painting in Photoshop, then added a background that was a blurred version of a Home Depot product shot.  All of the elements are shown above, including a refreshingly more appealing photo of Wilson, walking the dog Riley, while wearing a T shirt in 30+ degree weather.

Bird on a Wire

The crows in Seattle must have had nests near to be so set on getting me out of the neighborhood. But not before I photographed this bird harassing me!  The shot that got away was a vision of two crows chasing a bald eagle over Puget Sound.  Obviously the eagle got too close to the nest too.

Recent Seattle Art

One of the best parts of visiting my nearly 7-year-old twin grandsons is doing art with them.
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1.  Wilson's picture, done while I was drawing the bird, flower and flying bug below it.  I think his flying bugs were influenced by my drawing, but he is a very independent artist and tends to go his own way.
2.  My pencil drawing of a bird, flower and bug.
3.  Cole's tree painting, done while I was painting a watercolor memory of the view of Puget Sound, and the Olympic Mountains from Discovery Park.
4.  My watercolor painting, using the twins' somewhat inferior paint.
5.  A photo of the view of Puget Sound, the Olympic Mountains and the light house in Discovery Park.

Moving the Twins to Marin County

I wish!  But, if they can't move physically, at least they can be moved digitally.  Here, Wilson and Cole Taylor, in Seattle, July 2013, amazingly show up at North Beach, December 2011.  Added benefits:  a cool fractal from Apophysis, and some great effects from Alien Skin's Exposure 5.

Airplanes!

More fun with Alien Skin software, including this Technicolor overlay on photo composites from Seattle (top) and Solana Beach (bottom)

Latest Oil Painting

Seattle in April was swimming in a sea of colorful tulips.  This one flower, on its own in front of a white fence, caught my fancy so I painted it in oil on a 20"x16" canvas and added glitter.