Heavy Metal

submitted for PhotoFriday theme "metallic". Part of a series I'm working on of Main Street from a bug's eye view.

a haiku of springwas our assignment todayso here goes nothing...

i can't believe it's
time for a haiku again!
i can't think this hard!

i came up with one,
but i couldn't write it down...
i was driving home

i'll try to get it
back, let's see, i believe it
went something like this:

birdsong calls my heart
to soar free on the wind...much
as butterflies do

wow. that kinda sucked.
it was better in the car.
trust me...i was there.

Self Portrait #4

Submitted for Illustration Friday, topic monster. (I am not a morning person until I've had my first cuppa.)

Macroday: Hands

This week's MacroDay theme is hands. I give you a triptych of hands from the slavery memorial at the state house grounds:

You can see other shots from the memorial in my flickr photostream.

A Day in the Life

This photo was taken as part of a "Day In the Life Of" Flickr group for March 20. The idea was to take pictures of your day. I stopped taking pictures around 4:00 because I got busy and forgot to keep shooting!

The ones I did manage to get are here if you want to check them all out.

The theme for the day was "front door" and it was left up to the individual participants to interpret it, if they chose to do so at all. You know I had to as best I could, although most of my interpretations could be called "loose" at best! For me it was a pretty typical Monday, although this project made me actually stop and look around a bit. It was a fun challenge to try to make as many photos fit the theme as possible!

St Pat's 2005 (or How To Build An Award-Winning Float)

So for the last week or so, all (well most) of my spare time has been spent volunteering for our theatre company turning this unassuming low-boy trailer:


into this award-winning parade float:



Yes, it was my first attempt at designing a float for our city's annual St. Patricks Day Parade and Festival. And what a hoot it was. We were by far the smallest entry I saw as far as trailer size and money spent on fancy store-bought decorations, but what we lacked in size we made up for in spunk!

We actually had about 10 more volunteers and actors dressed up interacting with the crowds and handing out goodies, and we had a live accordion player on the back of the truck providing musical entertainment! I have a few more photos at my flicker page, but I got so caught up in jogging next to the float (this parade moved quickly!), and playing with the crowd as we went along that I didn't get around to taking photos of our participants who were on foot! :(

On the plus side, we were very popular. A lot of people recognized us from our performances (we've only been around for less that a year)...it's pretty cool to hear someone screaming your name out of a crowd of people lined up along the street!

We learned a lot of lessons in this parade. Most importantly, that it's a lot of fun and we can't wait to do our next one!

After the parade we gave two 25-minute performances on a stage outside at the Kids Carnival. Those went well, but were full of enough issues and problems to fill their own entry, so I'll leave them out of this one. We learned a lot about performing in outdoor festivals that day too!

Oh yeah, we were a little bummed at the awards ceremony when other groups won for best company, best non-profit organization, best band, most Irish, best school, etc. So we'd pretty much stopped listening when the last name they called was ours. It wasn't until we got our plaque that we realized what our award was:

Not bad for our first time out! :)

Seeing Red

Submitted for Photo Friday challenge red.

Long Weekend

So we spent the weekend in a little cabin in the woods in the Cheraw State Park. Sounds like more fun than it actually was, by the way, but that's another story. I saw this church when I was driving up Friday night and loved the shadows cast on the facade, so I had to stop and play with my cheap camera to try to get a decent shot. This image represents a little photoshopping, as my camera barely registered an image, but I think you get the idea. Other photos from the trip are in a Flickr set.

Tossing the TV

Well, not actually tossing the TV, but rather tossing at the TV. Not quite the adrenaline rush as throwing my camera around over the pavement, but I think I figured out what I needed to do just as the battery level on my camera started blinking low. So this is what i got for now. It's still kinda fun. 

Macroday: Complex

One of my many unfinished projects: my most recent temari. It's basically an intricate pattern of embroidery on a ball. I'm by far not accomplished, and I've only made a handful. I unfortunately do not have photos of the completed ones I've made as they are living with someone else now, which is as is should be. I'll make more one day though. Maybe I'll even finish this one.

Macroday Reject

This is our barong. His name is Bert. He was not submitted for the Macroday challenge:whacky . I'm having trouble coming up with something for complex, but I hate to skip 2 weeks in a row! 

The Land of Oz has got nothin' on this!

Here are a couple of photos I took, probably the same day i was out tossing my camera, of the tree that was the inspiration for my Friday the 13th project last month. I pass by this tree every weekday, and I really never noticed it had eyes until that day (I really don't think they were there before that). I'm also pretty sure we were in the middle of a full moon phase so that may account for the sudden appearance of the eyes. Anyway, they're still there, and i have a complete sense of awe whenever I see the tree now.

Yesterday, I swear one of them winked at me.

You spin me right round, baby, right round...

On a sunny day last week with about 20 minutes I allowed myself to escape the office, with camera in hand, i set out to have some fun. I decided to expand on the camera tossing experiment and see what would happen outside. It was slightly nervewracking at first given that I did not have the safety of my couch cushions like last time and that I was pretty much throwing my only camera up into the air, spinning it wildly while engaging the shutter, and expecting to catch it, all over pavement. This from someone who never could catch a ball, and in fact has ended up with a broken nose twice from miscalculating the trajectory of a pop-fly. Anyway, it was exhilirating...and I caught it every time! Here are some of the results of the exterior experiment.

This whole camera tossing thing is great...it's somehow liberating and spontaneous...I'm never quite sure what I'm going to get and am quite often pleasantly surprised!

Will this count as an excused absence?

It's been a crazy busy week, and I've really missed our random daily challenges, but I'll hopefully be back in the swing of things here shortly. I've been gone because the two performing arts companies I work with had shows that premiered this weekend, so the week before--tech week, or production week, we call it--is terribly busy. But I did carry my camera so you could see a little of what I've been up to.

In my day job, I'm the Arts Education Coordinator for the state's largest ballet company; last week we had 4 daytime productions that were attended by more than 5,000 students ranging in age from pre-k to high school...it was a full time job working with their teachers and the theatre where we performed to make sure everything went as smoothly as possible. It did, and they all had a great time:

After work each day, I'd spend the evenings in production week for the area's only professional resident theatre company for families and young audiences, getting ready for thats show's opening this weekend. The show was Rapunzel, and it entailed building the set (including a tower that fits 4 actors), hanging lights, rigging special effects, running box office, repairing costumes, last minute publicity...it's a small company, so a lot of us do double and triple duty.

So I have been involved in creative pursuits this week, just not with the regularity and discipline I've been used to so far this month. I did, however manage to keep my camera with me and snuck in some experiments of my own while running errands and being out and about, so the week wasn't a total wash. I will post some of them in the next few days, until things calm down a little and I can get more time freed up for more in-depth creative experimentation.

Late Night Limerick

Michele said, "I don't like to boast,
but the men turn as white as a ghost
when they see all the junk
I got up in my trunk
'cos, baby, I got more than most!"

rub a dub dub

...two in a tub. Today's inspiration came from the box doodle project. My little scene was made from an old binder clip box. I love using office supplies for something other than their original intent! 

down the rabbit hole

This weeks Macroday entry; theme bathroom.

Three Naked Men

Three gestures of the human figure. I don't have anyone who would want to be a nude model, so I opened up my very very dusty copy of Virtual Figure Drawing Studio. I guess in a pinch, it'll do. I spent around 5 minutes on each.

Self Portrait #3

I would have never thought there were so many ways to create a self portrait. I'm guessing we'll discover even more as the year progresses.

So, evidently, there's this group that posts self portraits taken in reflective surfaces, but I can't remember their URL. Here's my attempt:

Its in a puddle next to the sidewalk outside the building where I work. I figure it's pretty appropriate as I'm a Cancer with Pisces rising (both water signs). Even more appropriate as the water in my charts seems to be rather murky!

Here's another shot I took right after the puddle one that I think also speaks volumes...


...ask anyone who knows me! :)

CATSUP

A quick cheesy sketch for Illustration Friday cats. I'm sure this has been done better somewhere else, but what the hell, you get the idea.

Who's HAREBRAINED idea was it anyway...

to create a visual pun?


 

You can toss more than your cookies...

So today's challenge was inspired by cameratossing. After a couple of tries to get my coordination relatively together, I think I got some nice shots of the icicle lights hanging from our mantle:



















If it weren't so late, I'd play around with other light sources, because this is kinda cool and random, but as it is, i'm going to bed.

where...

...is grafxcowgirl?

She in there somewhere. The Inspirational Word of the Day, by the way was where. It was completely picked at random this afternoon, whereby a mildly interested coworker who has nothing to do with this project at all, other than flipping through a book and blindly pointing at a random word on the page where she stopped flipping, flipped through a paperback book about African music, landed on a random page, closed her eyes and pointed to a random word, which turned out to be where. So that was our jumping off point today.

I thought this particular drawing would be a good project where I could come up with different cartoon expressions. Unfortunately, after about 40 or so, I got really really bored, and rushed through the rest. I mean, really really bored. I would never be happy drawing those Where's Waldo books. Unless maybe midnight was not creeping up on me where I had to be up at 6:00 am. Actually, I do think it would where me down eventually, no matter how much sleep I got.

Macroday: Kitchen

Cut-glass champagne flute submitted for Macroday, topic: kitchen.

Before and After

Ok, I know this is gonna seem like a cop-out, but I've decided that this particular project falls under the culinary arts. (so since it's technically an art, it's still allowed). Here then is the before:


Now the after part:


And a close up of what's inside:


mmmm...strawberries and fresh whipped cream. I really like my Betty Crocker Bake 'n' Fill! This is actually the first time I ever used it and I was amazed at how much fun it could be. Next time I'm going to make Flaming Baked Alaska! Or maybe Banana-coco-triple-chocolate-pudding surprise! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

'E' is for...

Submitted for illustration friday.

Friday the 13th

So today we decided to use Friday the 13th as inspiration. I had no idea what I'd do with that, until lunch. I was sitting in a cafe I sit in a couple times a week, looking out the window when I saw it: A tree across the street (that I pass by at least twice every day) had eyes. I swear, I'd never seen them before today. It was so freaky. I was fascinated, grabbed an envelope and made a quick sketch. (some guy thought I was writing him a parking ticket because I was standing next to his car!)

Anyway, there's a full moon tonight (ok, tomorrow officially, but close enough) so I decided to include that as well. And tonight is another first: I actually pulled out the "Artists Kit" I bought at Tuesday Morning a year or so ago, ripped a blank canvas board out of its wrapper and said, "lets see what happens when I dip a brush in acrylic paint!"

And I'm not afraid to admit that grafxcowgirl is much more adept at rendering trees.