A Little Red Book (part 3)

 

Two more pages from the little Red Book that I use like an art journal. I made the pages completely random, and kept it quite simple. Often it is no more than one sentence and some colour.

It is nice to work without overthinking the page. Normally I don't start with an idea of how the page will end, in this little book the words are often more important. And I tend to work quickly here, which is very nice for a change! Sometimes I come back to a page and don't like it at all. Then out comes the gesso and paint and I just start over again. Kind of free-style journaling!

The not so Nice and Neat part

For the ABEurope Group I taped 2 movies about different techniques I like to use. One of the members commented on my box of water soluble crayons: neatly organised and not one of them was broken. She uploaded a picture of her broken crayons to the group's website. To give her, and the other member who watched the video, a real and honest view of my workspace, I took this picture. My box of crayons was definitly Nice and Neat, but that is just to counter balance the Not So Nice And Neat Worktable. LOL!

The video is zoomed in on a part of my table which I clear before taping. To make a good impression. Well, so far for this good impression. This is the real deal, girl!

A Little Red Book (part 2)

As promised, a few more pages from the Little Red Book, a small altered art journal. In this little book I work occasionally, pages are made in random order. Because of the size I like to work quick, don't overthink and just paint, stamp and collage my thoughts and ideas.

The butterfly effect: when one butterfly moves his wings, the air is set in motion and in the end would be able to cause a storm somewhere else on earth. This theory was stated by Edward Lorenz in 1961. I am not sure that butterflies can do that - the air that we move would be causing storms everywhere on the earth!
I do believe though that small acts, can change the world we live in. For better or for worse...

Things change when you say 'yes' instead of 'no'. When you do one thing, instead of the opposite.
I may doubt the theory, but understand that one little thing can change everything.

Winner of the One World One Heart Blog Give Away

There were 269 comments left on my blog for the post of the Give Away for the One World One Heart action. I had the Random Generator at Random.org calculate a winner for the two little books. The number that was generated was 146. Trying to count down the list, the number was matched with Marie S. She posted this:

Congratulations Marie! I will email you (found the email address already) and ask you for your snail mail address. Thanks to all the bloggers that participated in this event! Can you believe that over a thousand bloggers joined in? Wow, very impressive!

The Kuler Game of Colours

I can't believe that many creatives don't know this colourful website yet! I am talking about the Kuler website.
In case you want to jump over right away, here is the link:
http://kuler.adobe.com
Since mentioning the website in one of my earlier posts ( http://exploringart.blogspot.com/2010/01/colour-combinations-from-photographs.html ) I received a few questions about how the site works.

First of all, it is free for anyone to use: no restrictions, no hidden costs, no nagging for contributions! This is a website for creative people where you can browse colour combinations, save the ones you like, create combinations according to the colour wheel rules, or, and this is the best part: create colour combinations from your own pictures (stored on your PC) or from the best photographs on Flickr.
I think I have your attention now!

To get an idea of how the website works, this video will show you some of the many possibilities:


To help you understand how you can bring the Kuler colours into your own Photoshop or Photoshop Elements program, I have written a short guide. You can download this guide in PDF format for free from this link:
http://www.4shared.com/file/193547437/67e3d493/Kuler_to_Photoshop.html

In this guide I also refer to the template that I made as a sort of inspiration reminder. It looks like this when you fill it up with the colours from the Kuler site:

The photograph is the image that I used on the Kuler site to extract a colour combintaion from. It is a photograph of hand dyed yarn from Scotland that I weaved in a little swatch. I loved these warm colours so much and wondered which colours would be found by Kuler.

If you want to make inspiration cards like this, you can download my template for free from this link:
http://www.4shared.com/file/193369666/22510360/5SwatchTempEmpty.html
It is a psd file (photoshop file) that you can open in Photoshop (Elements) and fill with the colours and pictures that you have found with Kuler.

If you want to save the colour combinations, you will have to sign up - again, for free. If you already have an Adobe ID, use this login name and password. You can browse the collection of colour combinations and save them in your own account. There are so many of them, that you will never find them again a few days later.

Here is the one I made today from a picture of three little books that I made for a swap.
OK, don't say that I did not warn you, but believe me, Kuler is highly addictive... So don't blame me for any burnt dinners, forgotten tasks, and missing kids! :D