Goodthoughts

Pentecost wind and fire

Last Sunday was Pentecost...the birthday of the church.  I'd wanted to create some kind of art in our church sanctuary for several years now and finally got around to doing it.  Here's the story I was trying to illustrate.

It happened after Jesus' resurrection and ascencion back into heaven.  It was a day when Jesus' rag tag disciples, who had been hiding for fear of what might happen to them, suddenly changed.  God's spirit, which Jesus had promised, came like wind and fire and rested on their heads.  They were able to speak boldly about God in languages all the people listening could understand.  Peter preached with such boldness and power that over 3000 people were added to the church that day!  And the disciples lost their fear and began sharing the gospel message of God's love with everyone they met.  Pretty exciting stuff!
So how could we bring that feeling into our church?  I had seen some church art using organza and tulle and decided to start there.  Our lovely old sanctuary was built in 1890 with a choir loft towering above the pulpit area.  It was the perfect place to hang our Pentecost art.

It's 3 layers deep made of organza, tulle ribbon, satin and organza ribbon.  We place a fan off to the side that gave it a little movement...not quite like the first Pentecost...but it gave the idea of God's spirit moving among God's people.  

Red is the traditional color of Pentecost and I used yellows, oranges and blues to suggest  the look of a flame in the center. 

Our congregation dressed in red to celebrate this special day in the life of the church. My friend, Betty, arranged flowers from her garden to beautifully echo our theme.  

You can hear Chuck's Pentecost sermon, Living in the Power of Pentecost, at chuckwarnock.com

"On the day of Pentecost all the believers were meeting together in one place.  Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm, and it filled the house where they were sitting.  Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them.  And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability."  Acts 2:1-4

 

Artful Eggs

It's time to dye the eggs for Easter again this year!  I love doing this annual ritual because I always dye eggs with my friend Charlotte in her kitchen filled with springtime surprises!

This year Charlotte shared her stash of little bantam chicken eggs with me.  We spent a lot of time talking and laughing and drinking homemade lemonade. Not to mention munching the sugar cookies shaped like bunnies!  The truth is I would never do this by myself.  It's way more fun to do this with good friend who hasn't forgotten how to play!  So here's how we did it.  

These eggs are dyed using bits of weeds and flowers we found in the backyard. The design on the egg below came from a dandelion flower.

 Charlotte soaked brown and red onion skins in water.  We pressed the wet flowers and leaves on the egg, covered it with onion skin all the way around and wrapped tightly with thread. Lots of thread!

Then we placed the eggs in a pot of water and boiled for about 30 minutes.  We carefully put the pan in the sink and added cold water. The magic happens when you take off the thread, onion skin and flowers to reveal a beautiful work of art!  The next egg shows a dandelion leaf in a lovely shade of yellow!

 

 

A sprig of rosemary left its mark on the next egg.

Can you pick out the violet leaf? How about that dainty stringy weed that's in everybody's yard?

This last egg was the tiniest.  A mixture of violets and weeds turned it into an abstract beauty!

We oiled the eggs and shined them up with an old washcloth.  After their photo shoot I arranged the eggs in a blue bowl in the hall.   They make me happy every time I walk by...remembering time spent with a good friend enjoying the wonders of God.  Find some wonders of your own this Easter season!

The art of soup

There's an art to making vegetable soup.  It's a slow and deliberate process.  Mindfulness comes in handy when chopping with a sharp knife!!

Being a full steam ahead kind of gal, it's good for me to have to shift into low gear and remind myself of the joy of being slow.  

Onion...chop, chop, chop...brings the familiar burst of pungent fragrance and watery eyes.  

Celery needs washing and stringing before chopping.  Today I cut off all the stalks, washed them and put what I didn't chop for the soup in a zip lock bag.  I looked over at the bottom of the celery plant that remained and noticed its beautiful flower-like pattern.  I'd never taken the time to notice that before. Interesting how God managed to create beauty in the most obscure places.

The onions and celery sauteed with a soft bubbly sound while I chopped the potatoes and breathed their earthy smell.  The finished carrots chopped in tiny orange circles sprawled on the cutting board waiting to join the soup.  

 

 

 

This soup is all veggie and loaded with beans, corn, okra, tomatoes, roasted red pepper, rice, and teeny farfalle pasta and enough paprika and cayenne to give it a little kick. A melange of smells, tastes and colors creating comfort food that nourishes body and soul.

So even though the funeral home clock in our little town says 104 degrees...it's soup day at our house!! And we have two things to be thankful for today...our yummy soup...and our air conditioning!!

Scrambled pansies

Scrambled pansies sounds like a new sidedish Rachael Ray may have cooked up, but these pansies weren't scrambled in a skillet on the stove!  No, they were scrambled on my computer, in my head and with my hands.  And why would I want to scramble pansies?  Aren't pansies beautiful just the way God made them?  

The thing I love about art is the creative process. It's a need to deconstruct reality, rearrange the composition, crank up the color and leave a little bit of yourself and your emotions shining through the work.  It's the hope of endless possibilites.  It's the only way I know to wear myself out and totally pep myself up at the same time!  

 

So, here's how the pansies got scrambled.  I started with a photo looking straight down at the pansies and forget-me-nots growing in front of our fence. See that yellow pansy on the far left side?  See if you can find him on the finished version. I cropped a portion of this picture and opened it in Photoshop.  I then filtered the image to look like a drybrush painting.

I generated about 40 random patterns on the pattern maker.  Look how the elements in the original photo are scrambled up. The white fence is "growing" in slivers in the ground with the flowers.  The combinations are infinite, but I chose the one I like best and moved on.

 

 

 

 

Now, the fun part begins.  With Photoshop's large selection of brushes and my Wacom pad and stylus I can paint with almost the same feel I have with real paints and brushes. So I started choosing brushes and colors and just got lost in painting for a while.  But unlike, real paint, I can use different color overlays and light sources to scramble things up even more!  I painted all sorts of shapes (a triangle, my symbol for God's serendipitous guidance, seems to have crept in!) and colors over the patterned photograph. I cropped it to more of a square shape and thought I was finished.  I love the colors and the movement in it.  Can you find the pansies?

Today I decided to see if I could take it a step further with a new version.  I wanted it to look even more springy and happy.  I used some special effects with some gradient changes that focused it into a circle and a vivid light source that made it scream "happy" for me.

I noticed when I got through that one of the shapes looks like a question mark, not something I intended, but I like the idea! Questions and triangles...inspired by the springtime pansies...as they sing their happy love song to God.

Spring is back and so am I!!

Spring is my most favorite season of the year!!!  I love the freshness and colors of life beginning.  I love seeing the daffodils share their smiling faces once again after a year of waiting. Like the daffodils, I've been taking some time off to live and think at a slower pace for a while.  It's been a time well spent for me, but I'm ready to get back again to sharing my art, gardening and dreams with all of you!  Stay tuned.

Fun with digital painting

I've been playing with my new Christmas toy this week.  It's called ArtRage...a digital painting, drawing, collage program by Ambient Design. 

I had my eye on Corel Paint, but it's a little expensive.  One day while searching for paint programs I found ArtRage and downloaded the free trial version for Macs. After a few minutes...I was in love!!

I painted this zinnia with ArtRage and it's almost as much fun as painting in oils...only without the fumes!  The brushes wiggle back and forth like real brushes and the paint has visible brushstrokes if you want them.  If you don't you can turn the strokes off. The program is very intuitive with more settings and preferences than you'll ever use. 

You can paint in oil or watercolor, use pencil or inkpen,  felt markers, crayon, airbrush, paint tube, glitter tube, chalk, paint roller, palette knife, or gloop pen. 

ArtRage works in layers like Photoshop.This feature allowed me to paint the background, blossom and stem each on separate layers.  It really comes in handy when you want to erase or change something without disturbing the whole picture.  You can also turn layers off and on with a mouse click.  This give you the freedom to try something completely different without losing what you've already done.  It makes it a lot easier to forget about the finished product and just play! 

If you've always wanted to get into digital art... check out the ArtRage website to discover the infinite possibilities.  You'll also need one more thing...a Wacom tablet to make drawing and painting easier.  The new Wacom Bamboo Fun has the touch features of an iPhone as well as a pen for drawing and painting. 

There are so many fun ways be creative!  Whether your choice is hi-tech or simply pencil and paper...try adding a little art to your life each day!

Some Questions for Angels

 

Chuck and I started talking about angels a few weeks ago.  For some reason, neither of us can remember exactly what got us started.  It seems that I asked him a question about angels and he started googling on his laptop and we were off and running!

Several years ago, I wrote in my journal that I wanted to paint pictures of the unseen world.  I had no idea how I was going to do that at the time.  Or even what I meant by it.  But after Christmas, I felt compelled to try my hand at angels. 

My bluebird paintings usually have an angel somewhere in them, but I think I'm at a different place now...where the angels are going to be center stage. 

This painting is a cropped version of a digital painting I've been working on since Christmas.  It's about the story of Jacob's ladder in the Bible with a little twist...at least in the staircase!  I have a lot more work to do on it, but thought you might enjoy seeing it.

Here's a little late night journal entry from Sunday while pondering  my guardian angels.

I've been reading angel stories today.  It makes me wonder about my guardian angels.  Like where are they while I'm writing this...looking over my shoulder?...smiling at each other?...hovering above me near the ceiling?...or sitting beside me on the bed?

If I talk to them would they feel better?  Have I been ignoring them my entire life after all they've done for me?  Should I ask questions or their opinion about things?  Should I ask them to come enjoy the sunset or watch the clouds shifting in the wind?

Should I talk to them like I talk to God?  Should I ask them for ideas for paintings or  for directions when there is a fork in the road?

Would they like to discuss ideas for the garden?  I think angels like gardens.  It probably made them sad to guard the Garden of Eden from Adam and Eve.

Maybe my guardian angels sit outside in the garden when things are slow here with me.  Maybe they're the ones calling me out to play on the first warm day of spring...and every day after that! 

Maybe they like the garden for the same reason I do...there is so much to remind them of God there.  The color.  The beauty.  The mystery and magic of life.

Chuck is preaching a series of sermons on angels. You can read the first one,  Entertaining Angels: Who are Angels and Why Do We Need Them? at chuckwarnock.com

 

Visual storytelling

I love stories...don't you?  When it's all said and done...life is about stories.   Stories shape our lives...they form our identity.  Stories have the power to make us feel impoverished or empowered.  They tell us where we came from and where we're going.  They tell us who we are.  We all need a story...a story of hope...of dreams...of joy...of making a difference in our world each day.

Art has power to shape our stories in ways that inspire and give us courage to walk along our God given path with joy and purpose...unafraid of the obstacles along the way.  Why not tell those stories of our lives with pictures as well as words?  Instead of having photos and family momentos in the back of a drawer somewhere...wouldn't it be better to arrange them into a visual story told from your hearts point of view?  Which brings me to my collage...

I went back to Tennessee a few weeks ago to visit our daughter, Amy, son-in-law, Randy and grandson, Wesley.  Amy and Randy have a farm in the rolling hills south of Nashville.  They raise milk goats, chickens, ducks, cows and horses.  I took some pictures on the way to the goat barn one sunny fall morning. The old abandoned farmhouse behind their vegetable garden looked stunning against the bright morning sun.  The picture turned out so well, I wanted to use it as a centerpiece for a collage.

When Amy was about 6 years old, I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up.  She said, "A singer by day and a farmer by night!"  Chuck and I thought that was so funny.  We said, "Wouldn't it be better to be a farmer by day and a singer by night?"  She stuck with her first choice. 

Today, Amy sings every morning to her goats, Nannette, Georgette, Maisy, Polly and the new Billy Goat, Jean Paul.   At dusk, she and Randy round up the chickens and put them in their coop.  Singer by day...farmer by night.  It seems to be working out! 

The collage is just one thread of Amy's story...told from the heart. 

Don't worry, Laurie, your story's next!!

My collage was inspired by a magazine I bought last week called Somerset Digital Studio. It had some great ideas for digital collage with understandable instructions.  My collage was created in Photoshop CS3 and is made up of over 34 layers. I made several other versions but liked the above one best.  But, one of the best things I learned was about a website...obsidiandawn.com which has tons of free brushes and patterns you can download to use with Photoshop or Elements.   I could not have made this collage without the cool brushes and patterns from Obsidian Dawn.  Thanks, Stephanie, for sharing your talent with the rest of us!   Note to artists:  If you work in Photoshop you owe it to yourself to check out Obsidian Dawn!!  Here's just a sampling of some of the brushes I downloaded free!

Creative play

Today was a great day!  I've been dragging all week with a tired, fever, headache, coughing sort of virus.  I perked up enough today to feel like doing something again, so I thought I'd work on an unfinished watercolor painting.  I decided to just play and see what happened.

This painting is about the ukulele band I want to start at our church...it's a little obsession of mine...a longtime dream I can't get out of my head!  I can see it all happening as plain as day...a group of all ages...all musical abilities...talented...mediocre...and no sense of rhythm whatsoever (I fall in the last group) getting together to learn to play the ukulele.  We'll play old silly songs that we sang as kids and old gospel tunes and whatever else we want to.  I'm getting excited just thinking about it!!!  More about that later...back to painting!

I'm painting in watercolors on a stretched canvas...mainly because I didn't have any watercolor paper and I wanted to see how the canvas accepted the watercolor pigment.  It seems to work just fine.  But I had quit before I finished and it's just been sitting around in my studio gathering dust.  The neat thing about watercolors is that they come back alive and workable again with just a little water.

Here's how it looks so far.  This is more suggestive and loose than most of my bluebird paintings.  I added the girl with the ukulele looking up at the bird and the big triangle above it.

The triangles are symbols of the ways God guides us and intervenes in our lives.  I love the way watercolor puddles and gets darker in certain spots. I raise the canvas up and let the puddles drip down the canvas all the way to the bottom.  I like the way it looks.  When all 4 triangles were done...they reminded me of giant flowers  reaching for the sunshine.

The top triangle looks like it has a sideways heart in the center.  I didn't try to paint that.  I was painting a red triangle inside the yellow one and the watercolor was really wet and just sort of rolled around into that shape...so I left it.

I gave all the 3 ukulele players' shoes an ever so faint touch of red for their journey...you've just gotta have the red shoes!

Maybe it's finished...maybe not...we'll see how it feels after a few days.  But just squeezing out the paint...playing and watching the colorful drips made me feel so much better...now... if we could just get our band organized... :-)

  

Your Mind has Wings...the end

This is the end of the story...let's see if Oakley will finally find his dream!  Scroll down to read parts 1, 2 and 3.

The End

copyright Debbie Warnock 2007