Uncategorized – Page 13 – Mixy's Art Blog

reinvention

My first lesson in silk screen printing at college (a few years ago now) had us making monochrome collages to transfer to screens.

I recently updated my fav image I made for this project, and even after all this time, I love it still. This was one of those precious times when the muse was with me and together we generated something I really don’t tire of looking at.

If you read my post on digital editing you’ll recognise it as the image I used to demonstrate the technique.

Here it is full size. counterbalance_penngregory_s

If you love it like I do you might be interested to know you can get a print here, or find it printed on a T-shirt, or a cushion, or a bunch of other stuff

seemingly seamless

Since I relaunched my website a little while ago, some folks have commented on the loop of images scrolling round at the top of the home page.

homescroll300hFullW

Loads of sites use scrolling images, and there are umpteen plugins and gizmos to magic up some kind of animated doodad like this. I used Electric Carousel, but there are many others out there.

Like everything, it’s easy if you know how. So I’ve put together this thing on how to prepare the pictures for a seemingly seamless picture-roundy-thing. It will assume a working knowledge of Photoshop.

So here’s how:

Starting out with one of the images you want to include, open it up in Pshop.
Now go Image>Canvas Size… [Alt+Ctrl+C]

What we’re going to do is put all the images together as a super wide picture like mine up there, then slice them up into separate images again. This’ll make sense again in a few steps time.

In order to do this we want a much wider canvas to work on. For the sake of the screenshots I’ve done 300% width, but in reality I think I did about 1000%. Eyeball it. Use your best judgment. Or actual pixel numbers, if you’re that way inclined.

endlessLoopSC02

*Be sure to do these things:

Uncheck ‘Relative’. Otherwise it’ll make it taller as well as wider. We don’t want that.
Move the anchor point to Mid-Left. We want all our new canvas area on the RHS

endlessLoopSC03

Using the Rectangular Marquee tool you can select the LHS half of this image and copy to a new layer Layer>New…>Layer via copy [Ctrl+J]
Drag this new layer over to the RHS.
Shuffle your original layer to the left until the raw edges meet up and just touch, so you can’t see the join. Zoom right in. You wanna get this bit pixel-perfect. There will be an annoying hiccup if it isn’t bang on.

endlessLoopSC04

From here you can bring in your other images as new layers and arrange them as you wish. (I haven’t done this, pretend there are more images in the middle of this)

Now to chop it back up into separate images set vertical guides at regular distances across the width of the image. View>New Guide…

Grab the Slice tool and hit Slice From Guides.

endlessLoopSC05

And finally, File>Save For Web & Devices [Shift+Alt+Ctrl+S]

endlessLoopSC06

Set your settings where you want them and hit Save

endlessLoopSC07

Give it a great name like scrolly_thing.jpg or RoundAndRoundAndRound.jpg or whatever…
Be sure it’s showing Format: Images Only & Slices: All Slices in the options
By the magic of Photoshop you’ll now have a set of lovely images, neatly numbered in a file called ‘images’, ready to load into the whizzy-roundy-thing of your choice.

I hope this is of some use to someone out there – drop me a comment if it is/n’t, or if there’s anything I haven’t explained clearly.

Ramping up 32/52

Life is flooding along.

I measure out every one of these weeks and I see it unfurl new aspects, new intrigues.

I don’t always tell you them – are they interesting to anyone but me?
Well, here you go:
These are three new facets of life which entered my world this week …..

The Speakeasy videos from the Wanderlust Festi.
The words are from Danielle Laporte’s talk ‘The Soul of Ambition’

IMG_5440a — *This weeks page is powered by left-overs from another project. (Too many to throw away)*

Tulsi Tea – I’m taking a rest from coffee in the interests of resting my adrenals and settling my cortisol levels. I’ve switched to Tulsi. It’s really grown on me. Yes, I kinda do miss coffee, but as a temporary substitute I’m glad it’s part of my world.

and finally:

Sauerkraut – from my ongoing fascination with all things prebiotic, probiotic & gut biome related.

An eclectic mix. Meanwhile, amid the above the following page took shape thus-ly:

a sunday finding

The treasure of hidden art.

No going back

Sometimes the biggest reason not to go someplace,
the only reason I can conjure up,
is the sure and certain knowledge i won’t want to go back after.

Crazy, huh?

Wanting to go and not going.

Wanting and not wanting.

Wondering where the path will lead.
Denying the scenery to open up in front of the next step.

Letting a little uncertainty take centre stage in your mind in place of the stars and the sparkles that your Imagination can whip together.

Chapter Next: The Letter

Another week, another page in the altered book to show you.

I notice sometimes when I’m working on a project, just how little control I have. It’s not that I don’t know where it’s going, I’m not even steering the way. It’s going its own course and I’m simply wielding the brush or the pen or the whatever-it-is.

Some sort of external force does all the decision making. It took my inner control freak a long while to learn to rest back and let this happen. (Sometimes she worries so. I distract her with thoughts of cheese and music and cushions. She chills, we move on)

This page was a bit of a hotch-potch til the latter stages when it seemed to start coming together.

See what I mean?

I mean it’s not lost it’s hotch-potchery vibe, but I feel like it’s crossed the line from uncoordinated chaos to cohesive vision. Although you aren’t seeing what will be the finally finished thing, it’s a large part of the way there. More again soon.

Chapter Next: Mirage

Some the pages in my altered book are already conveniently titled. The book began as an orphaned volume of short stories, and some of the tales’ titles just appealed too much to cover up.

Doesn’t Mirage just conjure such magic?

I haven’t embarked on any of these pages with a plan. Planning just isn’t in my spirit. I didn’t get that gene.

So to begin I just do something, and let that define where it wanders next. The first something that happened on this page took the form of sprinkles of Brusho swept about in circles with a wet brush.

Oh my how I love how these dusty crystals explode with colour. This stuff is the definition of less is more. More than a wee bit makes for a super rich gravy of an ink, which is gorgeous, but when you use an imperceptibly itsy amount each tiny trace of this magic erupts into zingy pigment on contact with moisture.

It is more than gorgeous. It is actual magic.

Another early layer was gesso scraped through a stencil, then extra messy gesso scraped haphazardly. If you’re a fellow scraper of gesso you’ll recognise those characteristic windshield wiper patterns of clearing excess off the scraper 😉

In the years preceding this project I accumulated a shed load of design magazines, rich full of the most gorgeous graphics and illustration. Just lately I embarked on transforming the knee high heap into 4 boxes of delicious collage ingredients, and a small mountain of recycling.

Thing is, I don’t know who this half a face belonged to, and as an artist I’d like to credit the creator. Any reference to the inventor got lost in the snippings. If it was you – thank you – and I hope that you like the new other half I made. In the spirit of self-portraiture I’ve mismatched the eyes for a familiar wonkiness!

Hope you’ve enjoyed this little trip through the putting together stages. Here’s how the page developed as a whole………

https://vimeo.com/128248696

Chapter Next: Unity & Variety

I’m having so much fun with this altered book.

As it develops more meanings are attaching themselves. For instance, it has 42 pages, and as we all know 42 is the meaning of life, the universe and everything. So suddenly it has a theme attached… it’s a book with elements of life, the universe and everything. Reckon those are parameters I can keep within!

Plus I’ve brought in elements of Somerset Maugham’s writing. Seemed only fair as I’d already obliterated so many of his words in paint and collage and whatnots.

This page is titled from his quote:

“The Essence of the Beautiful is Unity and Variety.”

Here is how the page developed …………..

Get Rid Of The Corrupt Government and Corporate Powers Overnight

Out David and Goliath moment is approaching. We CAN DO this.

Jamie's Blog

OK, I’ve never been political but here are a few things that I’m sure we can collectively agree on:

1. The current Power and Money system doesn’t work. It’s almost banal to say ‘it’s destroying the planet’ because it’s just stating the obvious. Even if we accept that some people are going to be financially richer than others, the current gap between rich and poor, and the amount of money and resources held by a tiny amount of companies and individuals is OUT OF CONTROL. When you add to that the biggest companies wield so much control over governments by leveraging the economy that they can avoid contributing anything like their fair share of taxes, and that the fixation on making more and more money has resulted in nearly all current wars, dispossessed cultures, no regulations on hurting creatures or the environment, and while there are billions and billions of…

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Today is April 8th. Today I remember.

Today is April 8th.

Today is marks the point, exactly three quarters of of my life ago. The day my dad died.

I was sitting on the rocking chair, the chair I still have today. It used to face the front door. I was sat there when my mum walked in and told me the news.

He’d been in and out of hospital for almost a year. This was one of those few times I’d waited at home when she went to see him. Usually I’d be farmed out to someone else’s house, a friends or neighbour. Maybe this time there wasn’t time to make arrangements, I don’t remember. I know she got there too late. I guess the hospital had called and she’d had to rush out.

I was sat facing the front door waiting for her to get back.

I knew from her face. Hot tears ran instinctually. Incessantly.

I kept thinking over, I don’t understand. How can a person stop being? I don’t understand.

She told me not to be sad. He had been so ill. To want him to carry on living was to want him to go on suffering. It was a release. A great release. He was in a better place now.

Such an overwhelm. Yes, he wasn’t ill now. And he wasn’t here. And he wasn’t angry and shouting and so full of fury. He wasn’t drunk and dangerous. He wasn’t threatening, he wasn’t all the excuses why. All the reasons. He wasn’t my dad. He just wasn’t.

He wasn’t here. And he wasn’t coming back.

And I didn’t understand how someone could just stop being. Stop being at all, forever. How does this happen?

I still don’t know.