Tag: # photoediting

#1528 theoldmortuary ponders

On By Juliet CornellIn PhotographsLeave a comment

Every picture tells a story. Yesterday any pretence that Summer was still with us slipped away. An autumnal greige day with rain and grunginess, marked that a line has finally been crossed. Another line that was crossed, was the image storage provided by my blog hosts. Time for me to take some immediate action. 10 years of images to go through, clearing out duplicates and images that had been stored, but never used. A job much more pleasant than clearing out the garage, that had held a five year archive of 18 years of my arty, but no longer relevant stuff. But clearing the garage taught me that arty clear ups are a good thing. A digital clear up involved no dirt, no trips to the tip and no spiders. Just an hour or so with a cup of coffee and some digestive biscuits, and some lovely memories, not all of them the smiley sort of memories, some were sad as memories can be. But life is a blend of happy and sad which every sentient being has to navigate. Going through the pictures was a record of where I have been, which has put me on the path of where I am now, and ultimately where I am heading off to. Although that of course is somewhat unknown and I like that about life. One picture I retrieved does accurately reflect the end point of all of our journeys.

Clearing out the garage was such a good thing. My whole creative life feels lighter without all the stuff that was, at times, essential to getting a Fine Art degree as a mature student. Sometimes I just go in,look at the empty space, and enjoy the almost nothingness of it. It also attracts envious gentleman callers who would do all sorts of things in there if they had the opportunity.

Nobody is going to stroll into my more spacious digital archive and have fantasies about sprockets, lathes and vices. But I know there is now ample space for more pondering illustration and that feels good.

Sunday’s blog will be a trip through the cleared out archive in no particular order. But if a picture of a pre-paid grave ( not mine) is a low point, then the sign outside a Chicago Church is surely a brightener for a Saturday morning.

#1520 theoldmortuary ponders

On By Juliet CornellIn Meddled Photography X Watercolour, Serendipity1 Comment

Part of the pleasure of swimming with these old wooden boats last week was watching their resting bones change character as the tide rose up around them. The higher the tide the more swimming could be done, considerably closer to them. They looked like lumbering sea creatures suddenly freed by the buoyancy of water

With the help of my travelling art box I was able to transform them.

Although as the setting is my home office at the Tennis Club before a swim in home territory it seemed too good a chance not to relocate a sea creature into Tranquility Bay.

Which would have been quite the shock for my swimming companions, Julia and Tim who can just be seen swimming between the sea creatures tail and spine.

#1519 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By Juliet CornellIn autumn1 Comment

So long September. There was a lot of different arty strands pulling together in September. I just created a quick grid to remind myself of the many ways my head and hands were pushing different ideas. There was also a fiendishly long and ultimately, unsuccessful,proposal to bid for a grant for a year long art project. I suppose I can say my words failed me. Althoug there is every chance my maths failed me as there was also a budget to set.

September was also a holiday and yesterday we bade the month farewell with lunch on a farm, where we ate food that had all the colour of my September paintings and photographs.

September has also set quite the workload for October. There are fantastical sea creatures to be created out of discarded wooden ships.

And, as always in October, pumpkins and probably Storm Maidens and Men. Busy days ahead @theoldmortuary.

Clearly without any common denominator beyond me. September had a colour scheme all of its own.

#1512 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Serendipity3 Comments
June 2026

June is making herself very hard to love this year. Recent mornings she has turned up with a very November look on her face. The word greige and June have no reason to appear in the same sentence.

I thought I would share a local weather explanation.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1HDtV9JwQH/

More of the same today!

Last year our yard was vibrating with heat and colour.

It is hard to think that yesterday the weather stopped any serious yardening and the only time I crossed the yard was to take washing to the tumble dryer.

It did not look this pretty.

The day was not without some colourful excitement. One of my hybrid images from my Meddled Photographs x Watercolour project has been chosen to be printed onto glass to create a unique splash back in a recently renovated kitchen.

The full description of my project is here.

I am sure there will be a splashback reveal soon. Currently there are many blue squares of wall adhesive on the freshly delivered glass.

It is the Meddled Photograph of the same location as the glum picture at the top of this blog.

Then late in the afternoon a conversation starter was posted on one of my arty Whatsapp groups.

My comment is the green one. What I love about this brief, arty exchange of ideas is that it is timeless.

Artists of all types would have had just this type of discussion throughout history.

As someone who has always had to embrace new technology. I am used to the challenges and the.convoluted thinking that these things often require. I would be really interested in what anyone who reads this thinks.

As it turns out,  a greige day was quite the fertile place for creative thinking.

#1504 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, France, SerendipityLeave a comment

There was never a plan to paint yesterday.

#1503 theoldmortuary ponders

Tennis Club admin, rat eradication and emails were my target for the day.

Pest control took a little longer than planned and a Summer rain storm soaked me through. For reasons that I can’t quite put a finger on I decided that a rain storm was exactly the moment to paint a sea pool in a heatwave.

I am physically painting a lot less this year, and yesterday was an absolute joy. This painting is a mixture of traditional water colour and water colour pencils.

Water colour pencils are my quick/ holiday/travel medium of choice. A pencil case and a sketch book take virtually no space in a bag and water is always easy to find.

The other travel tool is my smart phone. Digital manipulation  can sometimes rescue a failing painting. The Sea Pool at Conleau did not need rescuing but I did have a little half hour of tweaking.

To be honest I dont think these digitally tweaked images have a huge amount of value. They give me the slight AI ‘ick’. But looking at them gave me some ideas on how to improve my painting. They offer a different perspective. Just one digital manipulation pleases me.

A much simpler less vivid image. Not at all Conleau in a heatwave. But certainly a nod to the 1930’s history of the emergence of Conleau as a tourist destination.

Digital dabbling is a great learning experience and I can do it on my phone whenever there are a few spare minutes in a day

But nothing beats creating art using my hands and art materials. Who could possibly pass up sharpening pencils. Such a satisfying task.

#1357 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn autumnLeave a comment

Diamonds in the street after a morning deluge, with a bright blue sky reflected on Tarmac.

What a morning of changing weather, one moment serious raincoat weather and the next a walk with no coat is entirely appropriate.

Puddles to stamp in for a three year old and sandals for me.

Other rain induced illusions appear on the road

Pretty funky when double exposed together.

And onward to another week .

#1282 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn anniversary, Plymouth, Serendipity, Words1 Comment
© Jenny Tsang

Oh the loveliness of concatination, and having friends in High Places. This shot from a TV shows my friend Jenny, standing on the outside walkway of the lighthouse on Plymouth Hoe. A T.V crew getting a much better view of the goings on at the Hoe yesterday than I did. She watched the T.V in case she was on, and she snapped this pic.

She and I were chattering because I was suspicious that I had also caught her up a lighthouse in one of my meddled photographs. ( A sentence I never expected to write)

‘I caught my friend up a lighthouse’

©theoldmortuary

It is lovely when serendipity and concatination come together.

Then on my way home nature got all serendipitous. Look at this beautiful pansy making the most of a difficult location. Now just as I went to the Hoe and saw nothing yesterday,my pansy growing is not the most successful, slugs believe I am their artisan food producer. But leave a pansy out of my direct control and they manage very nicely just growing away in a drain.

Serendipity is a wonderful thing.

Concatination equally so.