Mendocino Ocean in Rusty Fish Frame

Finally figured out how to use masks in Photoshop CS5!

Mendocino Sky

Just playing around in Photoshop after the weekend workshop taught by Amy Melious in Mendocino.  Don't believe what you see.  The pelicans are from Florida.  The orange ball is a computerized 3D original.

Self Portrait with Bird Lungs

I don't smoke anymore but I feel like I do since I have bronchitis - hopefully a mild case.  My hurting lungs prompted me to create this digital self portrait using a recent oil painting of a bird in a green lung shape.  It's also raining today so I used another painting that has a blue cloud and red raindrops.  A fun way to spend a rainy, coughing day.

Alien Skin Lizard Treatment and Lung Bird Original Abstracts

Connecting The Dots

My latest oil painting is another abstract.  My friend Janet Ashford recently gave me some advice on how to take better photographs - which is to focus on any one of 4 intersecting points based on a grid composed of 2 vertical and 2 horizontal lines that break up the image into 9 equal squares.  So, my abstract painting is one of connecting these 4 intersecting points.  Meanwhile, I discovered some new software I want to buy from the creative folks at Alien Skin.  It's called Exposure 3.  But since all I'm doing is playing with art and not making much money at it I'm trying to control myself.  Instead of buying more software, I thought I'd see what my Alien Skin Eye Candy software could do with my new abstract painting and created a marbleized version and a version using lizard skin (both above).  I could play all day!!

Circles With Bugs

It's raining tears.  The alarms are going off.  Bugs, (and unseen here) birds and bees are dying.  Hence my abstract attempt to depict global warming & other human induced earthly disasters.

Carrots in Art

 I recently finished a new 5x7 oil painting of two carrots so thought I'd compare it to some other carrot paintings I've done over the years including the image on top (to the left) which I did for a series called "Farmer Autrey Counts to Ten" and a pen & ink drawing of my rabbit sculpture named Sherman - seen here holding a carrot.

After noticing how many interesting wasp nest collections there are on the internet (see "Politics and Wasps" posting below), I googled to see what other interesting carrot art is out there and found the two images below at this interesting carrot museum web site.  The Rene Magritte picture, in particular, is quite fine and reminds me of how much I enjoy his art.  Amazon has some good books on him including this one:  Magritte