Neglect

I am still working on processing pictures that I took from our last trip in November to Scotland. Because I shoot in RAW, it leaves a lot of room to play with the picture before the final result is achieved. That is a lot of fun, but also a lot of wondering what I should do with the image. Which parts of the image should be a bit darker, which parts need more light, how do I crop the image, is this composition boring... etc...
Loads of thinking is involved and a lot of decisions have to be made. After all, I want to get the best of the picture that I took.

I really like to get involved so deeply in an image, but so now and then I just need to play! This is what I often do with the digital collages that I make. Often there is just a word, a mood, a sentence from a book that triggers an idea that I want to translate into an image.
So with some photographs that I took while we were in France a few years ago, I made this collage with the concept of Neglect.

This boat symbolises for me what happens when we neglect important things in life - whether it is about feelings, relations or important events. When we ignore them, we tend to not take care of them and often the results are like this boat. It gets broken, the paint peels away and the wood rots away. In true life neglect can result in loss and wounds. Sometimes even beyond repair...

New Digital Collages

The last couple of weeks I have spent most of the time in the garden, enjoying the weather, the sound of birds and sometimes even fighting the weeds - a battle that I always loose...
Not much time is spent behind the PC during these quiet weeks. Still I wanted to do something with the photographs that I had taken over the last few months.
I wanted to work quickly, trying not to 'overthink' the piece. Just using a thought, a phrase or a mood for the collage.
This is the first one: Fly Away.
The seagull is one of many that I tried to capture while on holiday in St. Abbs, Scotland. The sky images ( I combined several) are from my own stock, and so are the textures.
It was relaxing, working this way, and I even liked the result!

More pages in altered books

While browsing through the folders on my hard drive, I discovered some pictures of altered book pages which I never uploaded in this blog. So here are some of them.
This page was in a book about 'Elements' from a French member of our group. The text says:

FEEL
the currents
the warmth
your destiny
the strength
life


A year ago I took some photographs on a falconry demonstrations. Somehow I was attracted to this owl. For me they are the symbol of wisdom - something I would love to have more - but this fellow was also a very funny character. He was also so nice as to pose for me by turning his head and opening his beak.
Often this owl shows up on pages that I made for Round Robins. The picture above was for the book 'Bestiary' from an English member.
The owl in the picture below was used in an altered book for Maarit from Norway in a book about a little bear that starts his journey to find a place of his own.


It says: If you need advice, listen to the owl. A very wise piece of advice indeed, not just for little bears! So now and then we all need to find the wise one to guide us, don't we?

Page for Textile book 'Symbols and Signs'

For the True Colours Round Robin (textile book) on ABEurope group, I started with the theme 'Symbols and Signs' in the colours reds and purples.
The theme of symbols seems to pop up regurlarly in my life.
Two years ago, when we were on holiday in France and went to Honfleur, I bought a beautiful book of the artist Luciano Di Concetto. His work consists of calligraphy and his own designed symbols. This has already inspired me to make a little book with my own symbols in it.
You can find a photograph in this blog in the archive under the entry 'Signs and Symbols' in october 2005.
And then there is my fascination for the ancient Egyptian art, especially the murals, filled with little drawings depicting words. This began when I was 15 years old and did a project about the Egyptian kings for school.
Just recently I read 'Rosetta' , written by Barbara Ewing (a wonderful writer, I have now read all her books) in which the main character is fascinated by the Egyptian hieroglyphs as well.

I hope to use my own symbols in this textile book, but will use symbols from all around the world as well.
This first page is a very simple symbol: a X. The X symbol is filled with fibers, trapped between two layers of organza. The stitching around the symbol helps to make it more visible.
I intend to make loose pages in different techniques and then bind them together.