ACEO and ATC digital Collage Downloads on Etsy

I've been very lax with posting during the last six months. Life has been spinning out of control and I don't like posting anything negative. My 30 yro daughter is moving back in and at the moment I am plagued with a bad case of hives. Don't think the two are related but who knows...LOL
I have FINALLY started doing what I absolutely love and that is offering a unique selection of printable ACEO and ATC backgrounds in PDF format for ease of printing. I'll be adding a jpeg alternative as well in the next 48 hours. If you're a collage artist and would like some unique, ready made backgrounds to spark your creativity, be sure to visit my shop. Just click on the title above and it will magically send you into ACEO background heaven!!

It's been a long time between posts but...

I've been re-thinking my artistic direction and when I do that I hunker down or 'turtle' as I tell my friends. I need to think about what I doing and where I am going. I find that this discourse with myself happens every 9 months or so. Kinda like a pregnancy and birthing or re-birthing as it were.

One of the things that has been much on my mind is copyright infringement. As I've moved further away from my painting and collaging and more into the digital world I find that each time I scan a Vintage photo or even right-click on the work of a grandmaster I ask myself if what I am doing is 'legal'. In today's age of right click & save, it seems that more and more people think it's OK to use the work of others in their own creations.

Needing to take a break from my ruminations I took a look at Twitter to see what some of my cyber friends were up to this New Year. One Tweet in particular caught my eye. Margot "Madge" Potter is someone who always has something to say that needs saying. I've followed her tweets for a long time and today I saw a link to her blog that put into words what I've been thinking about for weeks. Copyright infringement in all its derivations. Click on the title of this post to read what she has to say. I can't say it any better so I won't infringe on her post by saying more!

I've almost birthed what I think will be my new and hopefully lasting direction in 'art'. I was doing this work six months before my diagnosis of breast cancer and left it behind to physically feel the art in my hands. Art is healing and during the last six years it's what I've needed to do almost daily. Now I think I need to return to my photography and my digital collage. I'll post more when the labor pains have subsided and my Wild Gypsy Art shop on Etsy is fully stocked once again.

I THINK in Photographs

Ever since my computer crashed in late August I have been neglectful of blogging. Call it apathy or laziness but it didn't seem important that I express my feelings on a daily basis because what I was mostly feeling was anger and discontent. In the those early days of computing I could turn on the computer, maybe, and nowadays I find myself spending most of my time online or just on the computer working at post-processing my photography.

But not having my 'real' computer has done something to me. The first thing is it has given me a sense of discontent. I'm using my son's laptop and the keyboard is all wrong. I can't get my fingers on the right keys and if I don't keep typing I find that my hands fall on the wrong keys and everything is scrambled. Very disconcerting. I mentioned to him recently about building me a new computer and he said he'd totally forgotten about his promise because I seemed to be getting along just find with his laptop. I think NOT.

Yes, I can still do my post-processing in Adobe PS but I have to hit an error key 53 times before it will actually open the program. Then there's the problem of my printer, scanner, tablet and mouse. There are just not enough USB ports to hold everything and I'm constantly plugging and unplugging things all day long.

So what am I really trying to say? In life, it's the little things that bug you and just really, really get under your skin. But I did do something that I've been putting off ever since that fateful day in August. I've finally put my photography out for all the world to see. In some ways it looks a lot like most of the photography out there. Kinda grainy, textured and antiqued...but I'm working on developing my own unique style. I find that every day the camera finds its way into my hands to record the moments in life that pass by without much notice. The way the new kittens snuggle down next to my husband, the 'cat whisperer'; the late afternoon light as it filters down thru the autumn trees; the full moon that shines so brightly even I can find my way around without the porch light.

Today I read something on a website that fully explained why blogging is so difficult for me. It said: I can't write stories only moments because I think in photographs. So to all my followers please note that sometime soon I may only be photogging, not blogging.

The evolution of an Artist

I can't believe I'm actually blogging again. July 1st the darn computer black screened and refused to be awakened from the dead. Two weeks later I'm back with only minor loss of information. I knew I did a good thing when I sent my son off to college to learn all about electronic film, animation and COMPUTERS. He was able to save my 'soul' (my hard drive) but everything else was fried.

The Lord does work in amazing ways, however. Just that week I had been wondering if I'd made the right decision to go back to photography and hang up my brushes. Two weeks later I can honestly say I never picked up a brush to paint and didn't miss it for a moment but I longed for my Adobe Photoshop and the thousands of photos that were locked in my hard drive. Now I'm POSITIVE that I'm heading in the right direction at last. I thought it might be interesting to share some of the work I've done along the way and so my next posting will be glimpses of the 'art' I've produced during the last 30 years.