Antiquity Challenge

To help me learn Photoshop CS5, my sister Sharon challenged me to produce a piece that included "antiquity" images that each of us chose and then used with a background of our own making. I welcomed the challenge in order to learn some new techniques, and I thought I welcomed the theme because I have used antiquities many times in my art (mostly in soulcollage). Interestingly, she and I independently chose images from Central American cultures. Since I wanted to use my own photo graphs for backgrounds, culling through years of my pictures of trips through Mexico, Honduras and Turkey was overwhelming. But I learned a lot about blending modes and adjustment layers. After spending way too many hours struggling with it, I finally decided to call it done so I could move on to my next project. Thanks, Sharon, it was fun!

Alan's Wheelbarrow Birthday

My son Alan is "into" wheelbarrows; I think they represent the real world of labor to him. I think it's pretty cool even though I haven't witnessed him actually wanting to participate that much in the real world of labor. Anyway, he'd been talking about getting a wheelbarrow tattoo. So for his 21st (!!) birthday I got kind of carried away with the theme. I took some photos of a red wheelbarrow we have at Muir Commons. One of the photos had a pretty plain background so that I could use the wheelbarrow for the t-shirt picture. The message on the t-shirt was the first few lines of a poem by William Carlos Williams (which I knew Alan was familiar with) "So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow." The other photo was set into a scene that I played with on Photoshop; this became his birthday card (message inside: Welcome to the world of work). I had decided that his other present was going to be a photo album since I had made several for his sister, but none for him. When I started looking through boxes of photos I found the one of him being wheeled in a red wheelbarrow! Amazing serendipity. The album that I had bought to use had a little window on the front and that's the picture I put in it. Alan liked his presents and was wearing his t-shirt when he left to go back to school. A success story!