Celebration

My New Year resolution last year was to paint more. I did that! A first. My new New Year resolution will be to continue with a life creative. Every day.



This month's theme for the Self Portrait Challenge is "Celebration".
I celebrate the fact that I see the world in a different way. Each day.
For more takes on the theme...clickonthislink.
The theme this week for InspireMeThursday is "New Year Resolutions". For more opinions on this theme then....clickonthislink.
For some great inspiration to create every day...clickonthislink.

I wear short hair!

I got a hair cut a couple of weeks ago, now. I have a tendency to grow my hair out and then chop it off....this time it was a good 8 inches that went to the floor. I love my new hair cut! My only regret is not thinking of saving it for locks of love. However, I don't think I had 10 inches....I'll have to try to remember that for next time if my hair gets that long again. I'm pretty fortunate in that it grows fast! I love my little felted bobby pins too. I got them from the lovely Julie over at Julie's Creation Nation. Check out all the felted things she has...they are simply gorgeous!

Check out more SPC's here!

I wrote more on my other blog today...please read it if you have the time or inclination!

Fit like a glove...

I've had this pair of Birkenstocks for I don't know how long. They started off the prettiest blue. For awhile you could see the remnants of the original color under the buckle, but no more. They could use a recorking or whatever it is you're supposed to do Birkenstock's, but I've always been immensely lazy about such things and have never bothered. I don't wear them as much as I used to. Or rather, I forget about them in favor of some new thing and then months pass, and then when I'm in a hurry I see them and remember how they fit like a glove and make my tired back feel so good, and I slip them on. And then I wear them a spell. Like the spell I've been in lately.

more self portraits here.

greentomato

I've never eaten fried green tomatoes. I've never seen the movie, either. As I've grown tomatoes over the Summer, I have a last batch abundance of green tomatoes. I'm thinking I will fry them up to see what it's like. We're having a potluck party tomorrow night to celebrate "Dia De Los Muerto's". But I don't know a soul that has eaten fried green tomatoes either. Or if I do I don't know it. Still. This would be a perfect opportunity to eat them! We'll see. I have enchilada's to make too. Yummy. Been doing nothing but cleaning my house in preparation. Now it's time to go to bed. :)


I'm late this week, but check out more self portraits here.

carving the pumpkin

Okay, so this isn't a "self portrait" since my husband took the picture, but I have been in a funk beyond funks lately (that if you really want to know about I would suggest reading this entry, among others, over at my xanga. Which is where I first started blogging so I still tend to write posts there that talk more about my personal life. Whereas I'm always shooting for posting more "artistic" endeavors over here. However, ultimately, I think I'm just being silly, but I haven't come up with a solution yet.) AND figuring out something to do w/ food and a picture of me has not been on the top of my list.
BUT, H. just came and found me and asked me if we could carve the pumpkin into a jack o lantern now, and I had to agree! He was just so sweet in the asking, and this was the first time he came and asked me to carve a pumpkin in his little four year old life. He's watched before, but this was really a special occasion to me having him ask so earnestly and hopeful. And pumpkin is edible...even if it isn't necessarily in this form. But I will be toasting pumpkin seeds later tonight! Perhaps I'll post a pic of that later if I get inspired.
Fall is here, it is gorgeous, and life is better than a hell of lot other people...so I should be eternally grateful for that. I'm hoping the winds of Halloween will pick up my spirits even more and my mood will improve. It's usually in the throes of feeling depressed like this at this time of year, that I suddenly have it pop into my head that, yes indeed, my father passed away on Halloween/All Saints Day seven years ago. No wonder I'm in a funk, on a emotional level at least.
I wish a very happy Halloween to all of you that celebrate it! And a most special All Saints, All Souls, and Dia De Los Muerto's (my father's favorite holiday)!


check out more self portrait challenge's here, please!

An apple a day...

Food has been a hot topic in my home lately, but I am currently sick (cough cough) and so is the rest of the fam...so writing about it right now rather escapes me. Perhaps I will delve into what has been running through our minds in regards to food next week. Suffice it to say, a change is in order. I have a strong feeling that I wouldn't be sick right now if I would just pay better attention to what I put into my body. A change is afoot. We can't keep down the path we've been going.

And on a "technical" note....I am always interested in clicking on the "auto enhance" feature on PhotoShop to see what the ether deemed needing fixed. It's a pretty handy tool that can actually help quite often with my less than stellar photography skills. However, just now, this is what happened when I did so with the apples. Interesting! It looks like a painting to me. As cool looking as it is though...I don't think it "fixed" the photo. ;)


more visions of sugar plums right here...

"She came in through the bathroom window...."

I came to the realization that I was going about this all wrong.
I concentrate so much on what my feelings are when I'm looking at a picture of myself, and not paying much attention to the shape of things. So to speak.
When you look at things from an actor's point of view, you are looking at them from an emotional standpoint, always. When you look at things from an artist's point of view you can include shape and line and color into that perspective.
They create the drama. The action is here.

more spc's here.

Self Portrait Challenge~Bathroom 3

I admit...I don't like this theme. Or I do because it makes me think?.... Makes me think about how incredibly tiny my bathroom is. There's only one in this old country house and it is small. Makes me think about how I don't go out of the house into public restrooms very much anymore. I've swapped the glamorous night life bathrooms that looked dark and sultry in my drunken haze, for the dark and dirty bathrooms that can only be found next to a playground when your three year old really needs to pee. No thanks. I suppose there is one other bathroom out there that I can think of that I could try and sneak into and take a photo in, at the old restaurant I used to work in...but the thought of trying to figure out a time to go do that without the three year old...or even with the three year old...seems so exhausting and out of my element that it makes me think about how relevant taking pictures of myself really is in the big scheme of things. See, too much thinking....

So every time I walk into the bathroom at home to try and take a picture it seems that I'm always reverting to the lone mirror in the bathroom. My tripod broke (I know, boo hoo....) and I'm forced to either hold the camera or place it precariously somewhere and try to get an angle. That almost never works. I was thinking about what the bathroom means to me...I mean I just can't quite grasp onto some deep meaning for me and my bathroom. It's not my favorite place. I long for a large one. It is so cramped in there that you basically want out as soon as possible. These thoughts took me down memory lane....of how I used to be such a bathroom hog. When I was a teenager I used to get up at the crack of dawn so I could curl my hair just so, and apply concealer all over my acne. It never did much good....no one ever noticed. I wore makeup a lot...it was a real part of me. I was active in drama and was almost always in some play clear through college. (My Bachelor's is in Theatre.) Makeup was a big part of that. Always had to have some sort of facade going on. It shifted as I got older to getting ready to go out at night. I would curl my hair and conceal my acne, and now I would add eyeshadow to the mix and rouge....had to look good going out. And no one noticed. Not in any kind of a way that meant anything. Men, certainly, did not notice. I waited tables for so long and always made my face up for that....that was an area where people didn't notice the makeup...but they did notice the lack of makeup if that was the case. Somewhere along the line I gave up. I didn't like it anyway, and my life became a situation where the bare necessity of makeup was all I needed to "get by". Pretty soon I forgot about that too.

Now I have makeup in a box that I should probably just throw away, it's so old. I hold onto it with that weird sense of when I was a child and how fun it was to have the little boxes of things that I would never dare to wear, really. I used to go play in the bathroom all the time, trying on makeup and hats and what not...participate in "make believe". Almost every Halloween I would dress up like a gypsy. My mom had these great earrings that had gold coins hanging off of them....and this scarf. It was green originally...sheer and beautiful. I've had it since I was probably born. Or my mother had it, and I confiscated it. It was my crowning piece to so many projects involving my beautification. Though of course never worn in public for real...that would have been peer suicide. But for Halloween, perfect. It got shoved in the old umbrella holder for awhile and I rescued it. Buried in a drawer through time, and somehow it would come back to me. In one of my first apartments it hung as a curtain....but the sun faded it greatly, and the age of the thing started to come through as the material became so dry and fragile it would shred. And then a cat most likely got a hold of it at some point. It's almost like a scrap now....torn and tattered. A piece of tangible memory I don't want to let go. It has no home that I can find...particularly...and so it finds itself hanging in my bathroom off the lone window. An afterthought.

Last night I thought I might try to dress up like a gypsy again. I pulled out the make up and put it on....found an old earring that my older sister mysteriously gave me last Christmas that immediately reminded me of those days in an odd sort of way. I took as many as I could and then I heard my husband come in. I suddenly felt shy about the whole thing...though God knows he's used to me taking pictures of myself now. I shed the scarf and the earring....wiped off the makeup and came out of the bathroom.

more spc's here.




p.s. It did all make me think about how maybe it wouldn't hurt to wear a little makeup every now and then. ;)

sparkle

I love happy accidents.
Been lamenting the fact that my husband took the camera with him on his trip, so I had no camera for playing with selfportraitchallenge this week. But I thought to buy some polaroid one step film for the one we found in the garage...but it doesn't work because apparently the one we found is older than the prototype. And then my son found his fisher price camera that his aunt had given him. (His aunt gives him all the cool stuff.) Some new batteries and voila'! Does anyone have one of these? It takes these not so great pictures, but that make me think of the Woolworth's photo booth from my childhood or something. For one thing it has a flash that I can't seem to figure out how to turn off...so it flashes at unsuspecting moments. H. and I have been having fun playing with it. This was my favorite one today. I didn't do a thing to it... I just like the light and the happy little head of my son bouncing up and down and trying to get the camera from me. (Only you can't see that part because it's just a photograph...) :)

Am I hiding? Or facing the world full front?

I get tired of taking pictures of myself.

In that regard, I'm not sure what it is about the Self Portrait Challenge that I am so driven by to engage in. I think, in the beginning, that it was because I was having a real block about painting and I could hear my first "real" art teacher...(you know, the one that challenges you to really think about what you're doing?) saying that if one is stumped in the creative process, it is always good to paint a self portrait. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It's been over a year now, and have I discovered anything? I suppose I would of had to, right? I do know that I have definitely picked up the brush again...and the glue...and the tissue paper....and whatever else has struck my fancy. And I have doggedly tried to take self portraits.

I don't credit myself with being a photographer, so it had definitely helped in my understanding and thinking about taking a shot. I don't always succeed, but it's worth the effort. I have learned how to use Photoshop, and it in turn has been kind of a catalyst into really thinking about how I can approach photography. I sense a blurry line between the words digital photography and digital art. I like that blurry line. It's right up my alley. It's a lot like painting with a brush and oils...you just keep dabbling and futzing....as my father would say: "jickeyjockeypookyingaround". Taking a picture of myself definitely helps to take me down a road that I would not normally go down, because it gives me a sense of purpose. Something to do using that camera. Sometimes I branch out and decide to play around w/ photo's that I have taken of something else...mixing them in some new way. I'm sure these ideas are all old hat to a photographer, or a graphic artist, but for me it is all a brand new world. It is hard to remember that feeling about painting because I have done it all my life, it seems. (Though I do remember setting about the purpose of painting Iris flowers over and over again in watercolor when I was a teenager.) It just seems, for some reason, that when I start fooling around with pictures that aren't self portraits that I start to feel as if I'm using time that would be better spent painting. Conundrum. Why don't I feel that way when it's a self portrait?

And then when I"m really into the trying to figure out what to do with a particular theme of spc I start to wish I could just take one good photo of myself. I'll try and what happens is that I am then forced to look into the eyes of something that I wasn't really planning on looking into. I suppose that would be myself. What's the first thing you see when you look at that photo of yourself? I see tired. I can rarely muster a smile, not because I don't want to, but because I'm concentrating on taking a photo. But that frown translates into the word "tired" for me. And all I can see are those frown lines that are burrowing into my cheeks. Then I see the long thin vertical line that is dividing my forehead and I feel serious. Too serious. The hair, always a mess. What I'm seeing is old. Though I suppose I should say "older". I can feel how my skin is on the verge and teetering over that line finally of youth and age. I'm not happy about it. I'm not the woman that will ever do anything about it...meaning surgery or crap injected in my face. No, that wouldn't be me. I am the woman that will have to keep pondering on it and come to a place where she accepts it instead of just seeing tired. I think I am happier than my self portraits would lend one to believe. But then again, maybe I'm not? I can take the Photoshop and make myself look young again...but it's not really me. Am I being honest then? I swim in these thoughts. Is my art honest? Can art be honest? The same way a photo is? Is my photo artistic? Can it be artistic, the way a painting is? Around and around we go and it all seems to end up with the same answer that effects one as per how the day is that day...never the same. "It is what it is." I can only remember taking one photo for this spc thing in the past that I felt was truly "honest".

About a week ago when we were still doing "patterns" as a theme, I got fed with the fact that I felt I never really let people "see" those photo's that I deem to look "the most like me" for all of these various reasons. That the only way to take a photo of just me, was to do just that. No tricks, no worrying about the angle. I decided to take a photo in the bathroom since the light is always the truest, and there's a mirror so I can take it myself without a tripod (mine broke). I held the camera at my chest and took it pointing up to the mirror. Those photo's prompted me to dig out the old mirror that I used in my photo's for the last week of patterns. The natural light was too dark, really, and I hate using a flash...so this is what I got. I thought a lot about how I could write a post to go along with it about being "real". Myself, that is. Of introducing myself of sorts. I did some other photo's last night that I played around with Photoshop with...thinking I'd do that instead...but this morning I have come back to this. And seeing as I thought of it before I even knew that the challenge this month was going to be bathrooms....well, I guess I'd better just get it out of my system.

It is what it is.

Self Portrait Challenge~Patterns~4

All I was really trying to do was take a photo of my new dress that my mom made for me (as I can't sew a lick)....It's pattern reminds me of all the green in my backyard. But then it became something different when I started playing w/ this old mirror I have.

more spc's here....

Self Portrait Challenge~Patterns~3

more SPC's can be seen here.

Self Portrait Challenge~Patterns~2

I'm sorry I don't have much to say on the subject...I just thought it was a pretty photograph I took...
more SPC's here.

Self Portrait Challenge~Patterns~1

This just makes me giggle. I was having fun in my garden taking pics of various things, and was trying to get a shot of a couple of my tomatoes. I had already "seen" a face in my flowers, so it got me in the mood w/ these two big tomato eyes staring up at me.

I'm guessing that even though it's still July that people are going to go with the patterns theme for August, now. But feel free to consider this as a representation of earth for July's theme of the elements, if you want. I know I'm going to have fun w/ the patterns theme.

Check out more SPC's here.

Self Portrait Challenge~Elements~Water

Outside looking in.
Heh. I feel like that often. I told an old friend that at the pool the other day and they told me that everyone feels like that. We all come late to the party. Or at least that's the way it feels. An interesting observation from a man that I secretly wonder if he ever thinks anything deep. I guess I've got my answer. Funny how you can know someone for years and still not know too much about them.
I probably looked like a fool taking this shot. It was pouring outside and I set my camera up on a tripod on the inside of the back porch and then would set the timer and run outside and look in...or dance....or generally be silly. This one ended up being my favorite. I was shielding my face from the rain w/ my hand, but it turned out to look more like a salute, I thought.
What I discovered being out there was something I already knew. I could stand in the rain all day.
My son helps me rediscover that....
It reminds me of a poem that I have written down in my handwriting from when I was a kid. It's one of those old pieces of memorabilia that makes me wonder if I wrote the poem or if I simply copied it to practice handwriting:

"April's a month of rain and sun.
Wading in puddles is so much fun!"

The rain makes me think of childhood. Of not having fear. When you're little you just want to go play in the rain...sink your feet in the puddles. You don't care about the lightning and the thunder. You don't care about catching a cold. Your thoughts and actions are free as the wind. Rejuvenating as the rain. Fresh as the sun. You(th) are on fire!

So here I am outside looking in. The rain pouring on me. I am in my element and as happy as can be.






Writing this makes me want to share this photo...my husband took these of me and H. playing in the rain a week or so ago. If it's raining where you are right now...I suggest you go outside. :)

Check out more SPC's right here!

Self Portrait Challenge~Elements~Fire

Time is the fire in which we burn. ~Delmore Schwartz

Self Portrait Challenge~Elements~Air

click on the pic for best resolution....

It's been a bit over a year since I started doing these self portraits. I had a black period (when I thought I needed to go back to work) where I didn't post anything for three or four months...which when I write that down seems like such a long time, but when I look back on it, it seems like such a speck of time really. It's been an interesting endeavor that I still feel I'm right in the thick of without quite getting a grasp on something that I feel I should be grasping. Seeing as what the main subject is...myself...I'm not surprised that I still feel like I don't know what's going on! I feel like that so...all of the time!

I was really thinking about the word "air" and what I could do with that. I think, even more so than the other elements, it is the most wide open to interpretation. I liked the idea of trying to portray how I think my thoughts just float away from me, or how once they are thought they are given to the air. It seemed sort of a natural to think of balloons, as the wind is a tricky thing to represent. I mean, air is a tricky thing to represent. Always on my quest to master my Photoshop that I don't spend nearly enough time on...I went in search of balloons or how to make them. In this instance I found one in the cookie cutter tool. (Though I would have actually been happier w/ a little string trailing behind the balloon.) And when I came to figuring out what to fill the balloon(s) with...I discovered that I've been doing these self portraits for about a year. It was kind of odd to go back and look at some of them. I had forgotten about many of them. I suppose everyone who participates in SPC has several more photo's than what they actually pick.

So then it all seemed to fall into place, but still not too many good words are forming describing the "process". I decided to try my best to pick a photo from each month that I had actually participated in this, which I think is twelve, but I started to get confused by all those bloody pictures of myself, and in various stages of Photoshop or, as they say, "undress". If I'm off on the number it's only by one or two.

I thought that seemed appropriate...twelve different little representations of me. Time to let these balloons go off into the air and beyond. Each little thought that I was thinking when I took them has long since dissipated into the sky.

Life is the air we breathe.

What will the next twelve bring?





for more self portraits...go here!

Self Portrait Challenge~Elements~Earth

The Self Portrait Challenge for the month of July is "Elements". My first thought went to doing one element each week. Especially if I'm to portray the element I relate to the most. I've never been so quick to define myself into just one. I would assume I am supposed to relate to water the most, being a Pisces and all. I certainly have a certain affinity for it. But when the air is thick and summer like, and the sky is open and wide...I feel very much at home. And when the night has cooled a bit and all is dark, I love a fire. I hear songs in the flames and memories dance before me. I am bound to the earth and have discovered a renewed pleasure at drinking in the smells of the country as the soil mixes with the warmth of each new day and life sprouts and grows.

Let me arise and open the gate,
to breathe the wild warm air of the heath,
And to let in Love, and to let out Hate,
And anger at living and scorn of Fate,
To let in Life, and to let out Death.
- Violet Fane

Self Portrait Challenge makes me think. Perhaps you would like to think too? Check more people's take on life here.

SPC Environment #4

I wish I was a hollyhock,
growing to the sky.
Reaching for the clouds,
Reaching for the blue,
Startling the atmosphere
with my beautiful hues...







Check out more Self Portrait's right here!

P.S. Why can't I figure out the SPC button? I would gladly add it to my site, but whenever I copy and paste it into my site it doesn't show up. Is it me? Or the button? Anyone? Anyone?

SPC Environment #3

I spend a lot of time in my house. We live in the country in a small township, and going to town is always for a reason or an excursion... For that reason I would say that most of my "entries" into these self portrait challenges of late have been in and around my house. My favorite spot right now is the back porch. It's a "three season" porch, so we are taking advantage of the summer season in full force out there. I managed to squeeze an old couch I bought for a dollar at the local annual auction in there...and a card table...and a little TV....and many plants...and, and, and.... We eat a lot of our meals out there right now, take naps, R. tends to fall asleep out there at night. It's kind of like camping....insects and birds chirping away. Warm and cool breezes floating through. Very peaceful. We are in love with our new house and visiting it's many incarnations as the season's change for us for the very first time here. I wish I could have everyone over for tea.

more spc's here...