Tree House Fun by WebbyGirl2

My daughter WebbyGirl2 (age 8) made this beautiful picture on the computer this morning. I'm not sure which I like better...the sunset or the treehouse.

Did you ever have a tree/club house? When I was 12, my best friend Jan and I scavenged some weather-worn wood and rusty nails from the woods. We battled the hot Texas weather, the snakes, and the scorpions to get what we needed, and then we architected and built our own club house. One large board was our ceiling, propped on one side by a six-foot fence and on the other by a barrel stacked with wooden crates. One wall was the fence of course, and the other was a blanket where we spray painted our club name:

The Acting Outlaws

On the sides, we propped boards up on bricks--the scavenged boards weren't quite long enough. Next year, we even designed a draw bridge entrance, which we never used because it was so annoying to drag the ropes through, so we just slipped in through the gap between the blanket and wall at the corner. For a secret escape route, we removed one of the boards from the fence and put in a hinge and a latch.

We planted flowers outside, which bloomed in spring and withered in the Texas summer. One year we had a garden--we planted radishes and potatoes. We decorated inside with pictures and scraps of cloth. Our club house was our castle, and I still cherish the memory.

Of course, the neighborhood boys snuck in and ransacked our clubhouse and left messages on our chalk board. We never figured out which boys did this. Hmm, I wonder if my brother knows.

What about you? Did you have a club house? Was it as magical for you as ours was to us?

Interview with Regina of Mae I Design & Photography

Eyes. The windows of the soul. That is what I think of when I look at this picture.

With the way Regina Wamba of Mae I Design & Photography emphasizes the eyes in her photographs, I could sit for hours just to study her artwork. I like how she plays with color and brings out the beautiful facial features of her subjects. You can check out her art for yourself at DeviantArt or on her Facebook page.

So enraptured, I asked her for an interview and to share some of her work.

Rita: Do you have a different way of looking at the world since you started creating your artwork?
Regina: Oh absolutely! I see, and hear everything differently. Every word, song, thought, person, picture can spark some sort of imagery for me.. then I write them all down and get to them when I can. It's funny, I'll be driving in the car and I'll see something and have to text myself or email myself just to save the idea.. inspiration can come in a flash.



Rita: What kind of YA books do you want to do the covers for?
Regina: Oh well any really. I love paranormal, romance, teen love, anything that is different, passionate and magical. A fresh breath from reality.. THAT is what I want to portray in a cover.. something that will spark your interest in the book... and in the story behind the cover.



Rita: Who are your favorite authors?
Regina: Well there are so many!! I love Stephanie Meyer, JK Rowling, Charlainne Harris, Jessica Verday, Heather DiRocco, Lauren Kate, Krystal McLaughlin, Amanda Hocking, Libba Bray.. and the list goes on..and on...



Rita: Which picture of yours is your favorite?
Regina: Oh goodness.. well I love the one I haven't titled yet (I am terrible with titles) It's of a girl kind of coming out of the shadows with red/orange eyes, it's suspicious and I feel a little intriguing. I also love the dreamy one with the girl in the clouds.. I named it "A touch of color in life" for me I wanted to portray life simply... happy.. that moment when you feel elated and blissful, that's what came to me when I had the idea for this. It came to me actually when I was putting my youngest daughter to sleep.. and thinking how beautiful she is and how life is really so beautiful that we should just appreciate it and look around and see the beauty in the little things.


Rita: Here's the picture A Touch of Color:

 

Rita: And here's the other picture. I think this one is my favorite.

Rita: Do you use any common themes in your artwork?
Regina: Not really, I am very sporadic.. I have always been that way though.. I guess the only real theme is kind of mystical or fantasy.. just adding a bit of magic to it.



Rita: Where do you get your backgrounds and models?
Regina: Well various places.. with permission of some models, I use DeviantArt.. it's a great community of artists sharing resources and art. Then there is istockphoto.com, sxc.hu a free stock site, and of course my own photography of models and backgrounds that I have taken in the past.



Rita: Do you ever model for your own art?
Regina: Sure! I have referenced a few artworks with my own photo.. it's fun and challenging at the same time!



Rita: How long does it take you to manipulate a photograph to turn it into one of your artworks?
Regina: It depends on how complex, but I have spent 1 hour to 6, 8, 10 hours on some before..I don't notice the time until everyone is in bed and it's 3am and I just look at the clock and say "Wow.. I just had to finish it..."



Rita: Some of your pictures look more like paintings. Did you do that from a photograph or a drawing? It's absolutely beautiful.
Regina: THANK YOU!! Yes, the images started off as photographs, and then I manipulate them to look like a painting. That style typically takes longer because of the details involved with making it look like a painting and not a photo. :)



Rita: What inspires your color palettes? I loved how you had one picture in green and then the same picture again with purple.
Regina: Well, I love color, so I see color in everything I do.. I think of the meanings behind the color, or how that color makes me feel.. so for blue its a more cold, quiet feeling. With oranges and pinks I feel excited and energized, when I add color it's to add a feeling. How do my pictures make you feel (based on the color or feel of the overall photo)?


Rita: Thank you so much for the interview, Regina, and for letting me share your work with everyone.

Finding Obstacles in Writing

The problem about art is not finding more freedom, it's about finding obstacles.
--Richard Rogers

As a family, we are doing these drawing lessons where each lesson forces you to put a limitation on yourself to learn something new about drawing. Last week, we had to draw cats with our paper on pillows. If we were trying too hard to be perfect, we were supposed to draw left-handed. Today the lesson was to draw giraffes while looking at pictures of giraffes.

Not all that hard, huh?

Except you couldn't look at your own drawing.

After drawing, we decorated, but we actually looked at our pictures for that. Mike and TJ were good sports about the project and even gave me permission to share with you. First is from my husband TJ--The Clydesdale Giraffe; second is from our friend Mike who came over for dinner and got dragged into our project.






In writing, it is the same thing. Challenge yourself with limitations: write a love scene without cliches, describe a scene from the viewpoint of someone who has been blind from birth, experience life through the eyes of someone with autism, create dialog without tags. By doing such, you learn something new.

Over on goodreads.com, I'm a member of the group On Fiction Writing. We have monthly challenges just like this. Come check us out!

Writer's Dream cloud

Here's the cloud for Writer's Dream, one of my short stories that will be published in the Ménage-à-20 anthology.

Okay, I'm having way too much fun with this thing. Go make your own at http://www.wordle.net/, post it on your own web site, and leave a link here for others to check yours out.

wordle

Pretty, isn't it? It's composed of the words from my blog, my own personal cloud.

Just go to http://www.wordle.net/ and you can create your own cloud by copying/pasting text or by entering a web address.

You can use it to make T-shirts, to check your most used words within a story, to decorate your blog, or maybe even make a book cover...

What would you use it for?

Kat with a Sword

This picture is of my friend Kat with a frickin' huge sword, and she has the happiest evil grin I have ever seen.

Makani's Blades

Biting Ladybug

TJ helped with this one. It was his steady hand that moved the mouse; Makani directed him on what she wanted--color, shape, ladybug hilt.

Sparkle Sword

This one was all Makani's own doing. She has watched TJ designing a sword as big as a door, and this was her rendition of it.

Blades

My husband TJ has a strange fascination with blades. He has notebooks full of exotic weaponry, strange and fantastical, and so I wasn't surprised to come home from work to find this on the computer today. He's even got the kids designing swords and drawing them on ArtRage 2.5.

I'll post some of the girls' swords in the next couple days.

Nameless Artwork by Toby Green

I sometimes wonder why it is that some people can draw these amazing things with little or no effort. Toby is one of those people. I watched him at work during meetings, doodling on his paper, creating this ink drawings that were absolutely amazing. I would watch spellbound as line after line would reveal the most amazing face, creature, vehicle, spaceship, animal, I had ever seen. How did he know how to put that line there? Did he see his picture in his mind before he started? Or did he make it up as he went along?

So I asked him to create something that I could share with all of you, and this tron-like motorcycle is what he built for me. It reminds me a bit of Wall-E; I can almost hear the motorcycle's little motor as it zips about.

Here's some of Toby's words when he sent me the artwork--a little about how he created it:

Your request was for fantasy/sci-fi and I tended more toward sci-fi, in that it's a picture of a tron-looking motorcycle cruising around an O'Neill cylinder, which is pretty solidly science-based, and not real yet. It's what you end up doodling when you spend your high school years playing Extreme G and watching Babylon 5. Almost all of this image was created in a single real, fake 3D scene, except for the headlights and motion blurring. The background is a sort of virtual matte painting, in that I rendered it seperately and dropped it in the background, literally slapped on a wall. Most textures are photosourced.

If you're interested in the software I used, it's all free and you can download it and try it out yourself. The actual rendering was done in Bryce 5.5 which is the free counterpart to 6.0 (the current release client). Post was done in the GIMP, a free Photoshop clone that really works better in Linux than in Windows if you just happen to have Linux installed.

-- Toby Green

Kat's Monkey

It's wonderful having a friend who is an artist. Kat has given me many opportunities to study her work, and she always surprises and delights me. So much personality in her work. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do.

Kat's Wolf

This was given to me by my friend Kat. I love it.

If you have any wolf pictures that you want me to share with everyone, email me at rita@ritajwebb.com

Got any Werewolf Art?

I drew this years ago based on two pictures: one on our living room & one in a calendar. It's actually pretty good, I think. Would you believe I have no talent and no training as an artist? Somedays, my husband looks over my shoulder when I'm doodling and gives me a bit of advice. This picture was born out of one of those times. "Don't try to make it look 3-D," he said. "You are working from a 2-D picture. Just draw what you see."

So I did.

Anybody have pictures to share? Email me at rita@ritajwebb.com and I'll post it for everybody to see.

Erik Johansson performs a magic show

I am mesmerized by Johansson's work, but this picture in particular captures me. First, I study the fish. It is the scales at the top that fascinate me the most. Comparing the scales to the rock on the island, I think the scales seem to match. Are they torn or are they rock, I wonder. Without an answer, I move to what catches me next: the fish's eye.

Is he a real fish? His face looks like stone or marble, exquisitely carved. But the fish's fin is slightly translucent, just as a real fish would.

I look at the rocky walls where the fish is trapped. They line up perfectly with the land above. I study them through the murky water. Every detail is so clear.

Finally I look above the water. What would it be like to live on that island? If the fish should flick its tale, would it knock the pictures from the walls? I hope the fish doesn't get hungry. That poor fisherman might get quite a surprise.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

My eyes are drawn to the folds in the road. No, not quite. Actually, it is the man that fascinates me. What is his mission? How did he come by this task of pulling a road? Will he ever be done? He seems so determined. So strong. As though nothing could deter him from his purpose. Like Atlas holding the world. I think I'd like to write a story about this man, except Johansson has already captured the story. My words would never achieve what I see.

Then my mind moves to figuring out how the magician mastered the trick. Surely there must be a seem where the two pictures are melded. I study the road, the grass, the lake. In all that studying, I almost missed the car in the distance. There goes the theory that it wasn't a real road. I shake my head, giving up, and instead study the man once again. A story I could never write.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Erik Johansson agreed to let me use his pictures and to answer some questions. You can see his other works here at allt eller inget.com

1.) Where do you find your inspiration?


Since most of my work so far is personal projects, I work when I feel like. It begins with an idea that I want to realize. I get the inspiration from everywhere from daily acclivities to magazines and books. Hard to say how I get it, it's just there. When I know what I want to do I usually begin looking for places where I can take the photos that I need, this takes a lot of time and the scene is very important for the final result. When I have find the places and taken the photos I put them together in the computer. I try to make it look as real as possible and the light is everything to make it look good together.


2.) How did you get started in photography?


I have always been drawing since I was a kid. In the year 2000 I got my first digital camera as a birthday present. I discovered that it was fun to change the photos in different ways and it was similar to drawing in a way that you create something more than just the photo. I did some basic manipulations but got tired of it after some time. In the year 2007 I was out in the Swedish countryside with a friend who bought a DSRL-camera a year earlier. I tried his camera a few times before but this day I decided that I would get my own. That was two years ago and since then I have learned a lot.


3.) How much time do you put into each work of art?


It depends. Most of the time, the planning is what takes most of the time. I need to find the perfect place to take all the photos that I need. The work in the computer usually takes 10 hours or more.