jonrenee

My wife Renee (The Beauty) and Me (The Beast).

Rock-Paper-Scissors

Some of you have played the game Rock-Paper-Scissors. Just about all of us have heard of it.  Here is a literal expression of the term.  I used two photos that were taken of a book page and a pile of rocks. I also used a portion of a drawing that was taken from a previous project. The photos and the drawing were blended together using GIMP.

Book page image provided by: Thirty Years War-Europe's Tragedy, Peter H. Wilson.

Endangered, But Not Out.

 One of the world's most endangered birds, the magnificent California Condor, is making a painstaking recovery.  God's speed to it's continued survival.  This image was compiled from three separate photographs. Two are my own and one (the bird of course) was downloaded from the internet.  If I ever actually saw one of the birds, I would drop-kick my bucket list and walk away more overjoyed than I could possibly imagine.

Image for bird provided by dfg.ca.gov

Georgia On My Mind

It is time to start marching through Georgia!  Please forgive my use of these tired cliches. I know my writing imagination isn't very original.  My main goals in writing are spelling everything correctly and using complete sentences.  Hopefully, with time, my writing will become more polished and original. 

Anyway, the representative bird for Georgia is the Brown Thrasher. This bird is a close cousin of the Mockingbird and is commonly seen throughout the eastern half of the country. I remember seeing it on occasion during my time in Texas.

My tentative plan for this project is to draw the bird with pencil and marking pens. and then download a photo or photos for the background. After that I am un-decided on whether to draw the background digitally from the source photos or just do alterations. It will depend on time and degree of difficulties encountered along the way.  Digital drawing is a much longer investment of time which is inconvenient without your own computer. Stay tuned!  Oops!  There goes another tired cliche.

Self Portrait

Well, this is me.  It is a rather disturbing image I have to admit. It is an honest portrayal of what life has been like for me for much of the last three years. There has been a sense of being stepped on into the bricks. Loss of loved ones and financial upheaval have been the major contributing factors. My wife died in 2010. I then lost my mother the following year. This past year, I have come very close to being homeless. eleventh hour salvation from family members of whom I am eternally grateful have kept this from happening.  Life on life's terms is agonizingly difficult at times. This past three year period has been especially so. Faith in God and fellowship with others with similar beliefs have kept me from going over the deep end. My new-found participation in art has also been a saving grace as well. When I am involved with art, my mind is almost always in a very good place. It does save!

  I am not going to advertise this post on social media like I usually do. For those who come across this randomly, I apologize if it is disturbing to you. It is honest expression for me, however. Being human, expression, artistically or otherwise is ugly at times, as well as, beautiful.

This project is the combination of a pencil sketch (my face) and two cell-phone photos. I used GIMP for alterations.

Moody

This effort is more of an abstract art project.  In general, I believe my artistic imagination is hopelessly linear.  However, I have a great fascination with, and admiration of, abstract art. I love artwork that is multi-layered and multi-dimensional, especially artwork that has randomness to the layering.  When I look at this type of art, I often get the feeling that I am looking into different windows of the universe at the same time in a dream-like state of existence.  It can be quite a buzz!   My effort at layering here is quite simple.  I took a couple of cell phone images and merged them together.  I then wrote the text in.  Hopefully with time and experience, my grasp of layering and abstract arrangement will improve.  It is definitely a goal. 

Florida Finished

Well, it's finally done!  This is the first state bird project I have completed since I moved to Reno last October.  I am very happy to get the series going again.  This was done differently than last projects. The project combined elements of conventional drawing, digital drawing, and altered imagery.  I drew a sketch of the bird with a pencil and markers.  I then took a photo of the sketch with my cell phone and downloaded it to the computer.  The next step was to download an image of the Florida flag from the internet.  When this was completed, I took the bird and flag elements and created separate layers from them with the GIMP application. GIMP was then used to merge the bird and flag layers together.  Finally, the GIMP pencil tool was used to create the text and purple heart logo. This is the first time that I used GIMP exclusively for all the digital artwork.  In the past, I used Jpeg, as well as GIMP.  I prefer Jpeg in all honesty, because, the tools are far more familiar to me.  However, these tools aren't available to me right now.  I will have to wait to get my own computer shipped to me from Texas.  There was quite a learning curve using GIMP, and there will be a steep curve for sure on future projects.  All in all, I am pleased with the way it turned out, though, considering all the frustrating trial and error that took place.

Source for sketch:  National Geographic's Birds of North America.
Source for flag image: www.aafordableart.com