"Futuristic..." - urban shot with metallic map applied

"Fire in the sky" - morning sky shot with metallic gold map applied

"Icy rainbow" - urban sunset view with metallic ice map applied

The Thursday “Summer Evenings” series are over (unfortunately – the evenings of good food, wine and music were so popular, the DSBG extended them into September) as are “Something is aflutter” butterfly events. However, there is still plenty to see at the garden, and based on our weather we should expect a spectacular autumn foliage display.

Now get out and enjoy the weekend, but keep that camera handy!

The image I selected for the mural is an illustration to one of my favorite books of all times – Thais of Athens by Ivan Yefremov – created by artists Boiko and Shalito.

While I am generally in love with all the illustrations these two artists did while working on Thais, I chose this particular one, portraying Thais in conversation with her son Leontiscus with her friend and guardian Eris playing syrinx (double-piped flute) in the background, for the sense of peace and serenity it projects.

One of the first changes the image underwent before the serious work even started was a slight rearrangement of the figures. The piece of plywood I was working with was to be placed “horizontally” – or (in printer settings terms) in the landscape position. So, the first challenge was to move Eris a little further away from Thais and Leontiscus to make the entire picture look more “horizontal”.

Another change I have decided on fairly early on was to omit the smoke-like shadowy lines obscuring Eris (she is sitting in the shade in this particular scene in the book) and make Eris herself a bit more defined. Due to the large format of the piece, it was alco necessary to make Thais’ facial features (specifically her eyes) more distinct. The artists could get away with just the basic shapes and shadowing, as the illustration in the book was rather small. But I couldn’t do the same with the image magnified a dozen times.

I do not have access to a plotter, so printing a large image was a bit of a conundrum. I resolved it by inserting the image into a Visio document, which allowed me to size the Visio page to match the sheet of plywood I was working with, but let the program know that I would be printing the image on letter-size paper, which resulted in a kind of a puzzle consisting of nine pieces, which had to be carefully matched up and glued together.

The next (and my least favorite) step was to sand down the wood with two grades of sandpaper. This is the part of the process, where I sorely wished for a random-orbit palm sander, while putting some serious elbow grease into smoothing out the kinks in the wood and covering myself with sanding dust.

Just put the tripod inside your car, open one leg down into the floor board, the other two legs are upon the car seat…the time of day for this shot was around 7:30 pm in May, during a rainstorm..windshield wipers on full blast.  I set the iso to 100,  aperture – f/stop at 25 and let the shutter speed fall where it wants to..this exposure was about 3 -4 seconds…and yes focus is important too, even though the pics are blurry from motion …at f-25 i manually focused not quite on infiniti and let hyper focal distance/depth of field do its thing..the results are unpredictable so shoot a lot of different scenes…the windshield wipers just blurr out of the image from the long exposures.  Shoot at dusk, in the dark or like this shot before dusk..the wet roads make for great reflections…crowded highways – downtown scenes – places like franklin blvd – highway 74 bypass in shelby all make for great experiments with this technique…more of this evenings shots can be seen here —  http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=81411&id=743728545&l=58c9dd7b4e

I’d like to start by the following paragraph woven into a quirky throw sold by www.FemailCreations.com (one of my favorite catalogs by women for women). Ladies, print this out in a poster format and hang it on the wall. Read it whenever you are having thoughts like, “I am not good enough for…” or “God, this makes me look fat…” or “I look like shit this morning.” Here goes…

“Being a Succulent Wild Women. Be delicious, eat mangos naked, lick the juice off your arms. Discover your own goodness. Smile when you feel like it. Be rare, eccentric and original. Describe yourself as marvelous. Paint your soul. Investigate your dark places with a flashlight. Make more mistakes. Tell the truth faster. Celebrate your gorgeous friendships with women. You are enough, you have enough, you do enough.”

My dear goddesses, there is nothing wrong with self-improvement and wanting to be better, smarter, prettier, etc. But I know that all of you are plenty intelligent enough to realize that the standard of goodness, cleverness and beauty fed to us by today’s popular culture (and, sadly, sometimes all too readily eaten up by us and our gentlemen) is PREPOSTEROUS. Why do we all have to look like super-models? And why would we want to?

I’ve read a legend once about women who died while defending their tribe. To honor them, the shaman of the tribe asked the gods to turn the women’s souls into flowers – orchids. And when the orchids blossomed, they were all different – just like the women, whose souls they embodied. DIFFERENT! Not 5′ 10″, 105 pounds size 2 with an IQ of 160, three PhD’s and a wardrobe consisting exclusively of Versace and Chanel. Give me a break!

My other favorite power read is the two What Not to Wear books by Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine – the gals who host the British version of the show of the same title. Those books are NOT your standard fashion advice – in fact, there are some fashion choices in there that I could never possibly make myself wear. However… Well, just listen to this (this is from What Not to Wear 1 introduction),

“Our figures are tall and, in Trinny’s case, thin, but any semblance of ‘nice bod’ boils down to clever disguise. Trinny has always been passionate about clothes, devouring glossy mags from a tender age, but it took a good two decades to rid her of her theatrical passion for filching the look of the latest pop group. … This sounds vile and indeed it was, but her figure was always spoken of in the revered tones reserved for the extraordinary. The truth as you will see is very different. Trinny is thin, but thin with very short legs, no tits and a disproportionately large and succulent bum. But because she has learnt to disguise these defects all the onlooker sees are endlessly long limbs and a sculpted arse, and because she dresses so well for her shape you don’t even notice she’s as flat as a prairie.

“First impressions of Susannah many not be as favourable as Trinny, but some could think ooh… sexy, curvy figure. What a joke. Behind the neat waisted jackets and three-quarter-length sleeves lies a body that is out of control and, after two kids, stretched beyond redemption. Her stomach needs stapling, her underarms hang as dramatically as the Gardens of Babylon and her tits are way too large for human handling. Nevertheless, she has been educated well in the art of camouflage…”

Because both these gals are tall, some of their advice doesn’t apply to me (at my whopping 5′). However, some of it works, AND in any case both books were well worth the money just for the empowerment factor. I own every single one of What Not to Wear books and I read them regularly – especially when I start feeling like nothing more than a housework machine or a corporate number-crunching dweeb.

Now that we have discussed the outward standards, let us talk of other things. Look around you carefully, guys. No, don’t turn away like you’ve seen it all – LOOK! Look at these amazing women! They don’t look like Cindy Crawford, they don’t have Jessica Simpson’s legs and teeth, Angelina Jolie’s hair or Scarlett Johanssen’s boobs. But they ARE amazing. They are intelligent, they are talented, they are well-spoken, they are multi-faceted. A young mom, an artist, an actress, a bi-lingual thrill-seeker, a tiny martial artist – that’s my pantheon, and Hera and Aphrodite can eat their hearts out. My mom is in there too – not because she was perfect (she had her own issues) but because despite her issues and imperfections she was an amazing unique person who was in love with life, people and beautiful things.

Please, my dear goddesses, please never forget who you are. You are all amazing, you are tough, you can swim across any ocean and fly over any mountain range. I believe that about you because you yourself have told me about the incredible things you have already accomplished.

And you, gentlemen, don’t go looking for Helen of Troy, or Cleopatra – they are right here beside you, all you need to do is take a moment to stop, notice, fall madly in love and stay that way. Give it a shot – you’d be amazed how well it works!

Rearranging your closet and finding new ways to combine your long-time favorite key pieces can be as rewarding as shopping… but only if you approach this process with a fresh outlook.

First and foremost, let us get rid of a few persistent color-matching myths. Revelation number one: black and white do not go with everything nor do they always look good when worn together. In fact, black looks much too heavy and harsh next to most colors – especially next to lovely fresh pastels that are so popular in spring, and takes all the subtlety out of them. You may love your trusty black pants to pieces and may have worn them to work with everything in your closet, but this might be a good time to reconsider.

Revelation number two: there are many shades within each color and not every one of them will suit you. For example, you might be dark-eyed and dark-haired – a combination traditionally considered suitable for red. Not so fast! Which red? Fire-engine red? Orangey-red? Brownish-red? Bluish or purplish red? Pink-red? Coral-red? While one of these reds might make you look vibrant and sexy, the rest very well could bring out the yellow or blue skintones you didn’t even know were there and make you look as if you are recovering from a long illness. The way to find out, which shades suit you best is to separate all your garments into piles by color and then hold up each one separately to your face in front of a mirror in good natural light. If it makes you look washed out, sickly, blotchy, or too dark, get rid of it regardless of how much it may have cost you. Sell it on eBay or give it to a friend who might look better in it than you do.

One of the best and most detailed guides to finding your color palette is provided by Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine of BBC’S What Not to Wear in their book What You Wear Can Change Your Life. The colors are first divided into three major groups: pastels (self-explanatory), cold colors (including some deep bluish-purples and reds, emerald greens, etc.) and natural (think autumn leaves and earth tones). Once you find your best group, you can

use it as a foundation for building your outfits. Do not be disappointed if you suddenly discover that the palette you have worn all your life is not quite right for you – 90% of the population have the same problem.

Once you have culled the unsuitable colors and the ill-fitting garments out of your closet, it is matching time! Have fun with it. Throw together a skirt and a top that you would have never thought of wearing together before – you might be surprised how well they go together.

Give a new life to that dress you never wear because you feel it is too short by pairing it up with pants. Worn with heels the dress-over-pants combination is a life saver for those of us not blessed with long legs because it hides where the butt ends and where the legs begin, giving an illusion of endless stems. Hang clothes by outfit (instead of the usual shirts-with-shirts, pants-with-pants and skirts-with-skirts way). Find garments in solid colors that pick up one of the tones of a patterned piece. For example, burgundy pants with a cream-and-burgundy patterned blouse. Look for unexpected combinations. Did you know, for instance, that an enamel brooch in pale pink tones goes beautifully with a royal blue suit and a seafoam green blouse? Who could have thought!

Speaking of brooches… Do not discount the importance your jewelry and accessories. If you have enough room on your closet doors, add a bar for your scarves and belts and some small hooks for your necklaces so that they would always hang next to your clothes and remind you to wear them. Do you always go to work with the same huge “kitchen sink” black bag? Maybe it’s time to go over the contents, minimize what you can and invest in more than one work bag in something other than black. Nobody says that you should donate a kidney in exchange for the latest Marc Jacobs, but you could peruse Target or Ross for some fantastic choices. Having several work bags might seem like a hassle at first, but if you set out your clothes, shoes and accessories in advance, you will discover that you actually carry less junk, because you are forced to empty your bag completely and re-organize it every few days. You would be surprised, how much sharper your entire outfit looks with something slicker and more elegant in deep red, chocolate brown or purple, as opposed to your horrid black backpack only suitable for trekking in the Humalayas.

As you clean out and reorganize your closet, you may discover that you need to purchase a couple of pieces after all. However, doing it after identifying our palette, getting rid of all things unsuitable and finding new ways to match old favorites, may prove to be much more economical than flying off to the store and stuffing your closet with more items you will end up not wearing.

Jump and Shout

Painting, … As a child i was intrigued with the arts…Painting and drawing, i assumed just either came natural or you just didnt do it…i have no talents in drawing or painting but i’m drawn to them. It is difficult to think painters have to disipline themselves to get their desired results, but i guess they do..i always asumed it was just a natural extension of the painter to just be able to ‘do it’…i reckin for some it does come natural, i sure wish it did for me…i cant draw so therefore i cant paint?..i have no mind visuals as to light, shape,or shadow..and cant imagine them in my eye or even begin to paint them. there are those that say the techniques can be learned and anyone can do it…but i dunno about that..those say all you need is the internal desire and you can learn…i for one have to learn from ‘just doing it’..i make for a terrible student, even with the desires. so wish me luck….it may just be a wasted hour or two in the evening along with a piece of paper and watercolors..i admire you, those with talent..

Happy Mother's Day!

Washington Irving -

A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine, desert us when troubles thicken around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.

These two images on the top left , as bad as they are made for an interesting self portrait study..
I know i’m no beauty to look at, so i accentuate the obvious “out of shape” body and personal oddness of myself in the image…i think it was a success!

 Comments welcome….

As a clarification…i kinda meant my ‘oddness’ in personna is portraied by the oddness of the composition…my physical bod, i guess is pretty midlife average out of shape male – but as you get to know me, you may discover some of my more delusional qualities about life…