Japanese Maple Leaf

Posted on December 20, 2012 by Victoria

Beauty is in all parts of life, not just the bloom of spring

A year or so ago, I found myself taking a week of vacation in the Seattle area.  I was partly visiting friends, but also just throwing myself out there and being a tourist.  A quirky, idiosyncratic tourist, but nonetheless a tourist.

On an earlier spontaneous “so, I’m a tourist, now what” trip, I had discovered botanical gardens.  Some folks might think that September or so is a bad time to be visiting gardens … they’re best in the spring and summer when everything is blooming yadda yadda.  I disagree.

There’s beauty to be had there any time of year, whether it’s in an enclosed tropical greenhouse, seeing nesting bald eagles, native plants that stay green later in the year, or, well, fallen leaves in the fall:

A red leaf from a Japanese maple has landed on some green bushes

Taken in the Seattle metro area

I swear to you, I found it like this.  This photo is neither staged nor ‘shopped.

There’s a bigger image if you click on it, and a full size one at Red Bubble.

Email, RSS Follow
Email
Share on Tumblr
Posted in About the Me, I Made An Art | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

What Happened After

Posted on December 18, 2012 by Victoria

A funny thing happened on the way to the POD …

Let me be the first to say that the tree sketches I post here aren’t exactly Amazing Art With A Capital A.  I’m getting a bit better as I practice, but by and large, what comes out of my hands is a pale shadow of what is in my head.

And yet, I’ve been posting things to Red Bubble, the print on demand site for Artists Who Make Art.

That doesn’t seem to make sense, eh?

The secret is  … before I do post them on the Bubble, I clean them up with the power of vectors.

For example, here’s a before-and-after comparison of the Early October Tree I posted here a while ago:

A black tree of few, leaf-less, swirling branches.

Something’s not quite right about this tree.

A sparse, leafless tree with branches ending in spirals

This is a cut-down version of the vector image

 

I didn’t really like the way that small branch in the middle was all wibbly, so I’ve fixed it. I also wasn’t happy with the thickness of the big top branch, so I thickened it up.  Hooray vectors!  :)

Also, this is a cut-down version – Red Bubble has the Really Big Version.

Email, RSS Follow
Email
Share on Tumblr
Posted in About the Me, I Made An Art | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on What Happened After

Fall on the Mountain

Posted on December 13, 2012 by Victoria

And now for something completely different …

Thursdays have been for trees for several months now, and will be for trees again in the future, I’m sure.  I’ve been working on doing digital cleanup/vectorification of some of my existing trees, but not had time to work on new ones to share with you all.

In the meantime, I’ve got some other art to share with you, ready-made.

In the distance, a mountain peak with snow rises above foothills and a foreground of bare trees

Taken in Longmont, Colorado.

A larger image is available if you click on it.  An even larger image is available over on Red Bubble.

Email, RSS Follow
Email
Share on Tumblr
Posted in I Made An Art | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Fall on the Mountain

Postcard Project, Part 2

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Victoria

99 postcards in my desk, 99 postcards …

As I mentioned a while ago … I have a lot of postcards and I’d like to do something about that.  I’d thought about doing something with postcards and trees, but the more I thought about it, the less it made sense to do with my existing postcards.  I’d thought about doing a straight up “send you a postcard like we’re friends and I’m sending you a postcard” project (I wouldn’t be the first person on Kickstarter to do so), but the more I thought about it, the more awkward it seemed, since most people to back it would likely be …. my friends.  I can send my friends some postcards without a Kickstarter project.

Then I started talking with a friend about the postcards.  I was reminded that some of them are in themed packs (Key West, M. C. Escher, etc.), and that I’d had some idea of doing larger rewards as multiples in the themed packs.

Suddenly, I was talking about writing a story, on postcards.  A few sentences at a time would add up to a larger story.  Different themes might be larger chunks of the story or … all the point-of-view parts from one character in the story.  The story, in its tiny bits and pieces, would be posted here (password protected) so that everyone backing the story knows what’s happening.

Suddenly, I’m excited about this idea again.

Now all I need is a plot.

Email, RSS Follow
Email
Share on Tumblr
Posted in About the Me, Projects | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Return of Tentacle Tree

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Victoria

Tentacles?  Why does it always have to be tentacles?

What can I say – I’ve had tentacles on my mind of late.

A leafless tree with few, thick branches ending in spirals looms over a smaller tree

Variations on a theme

This is a somewhat rough draft done mostly with a brush pen – as you can see, the varying thicknesses haven’t been smoothed out like usual.

Email, RSS Follow
Email
Share on Tumblr
Posted in I Made An Art | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Return of Tentacle Tree

Early October Tree

Posted on November 8, 2012 by Victoria

I’ve got a soft spot for spirals

When I first started doodling trees (let’s not say how many years ago that was, eh?), I would start by sketching out the main branches and then fill in all the intermediate space with little curling, spiralling branches.  In retrospect, they looked like little brains.

Lately, my style has gone more towards big spiralling branches and leaving a lot more white space.  Like this one, from early in October:

A black tree of few, leaf-less, swirling branches.

Something’s not quite right about this tree.

Email, RSS Follow
Email
Share on Tumblr
Posted in I Made An Art | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Early October Tree