I’m really tempted to write about the sky actually being all water, but it seems not many want to hear about that, so perhaps another time?

This post is mostly about what is now a little nostalgia, the beginning of my art endeavors in earnest and in play . . . especially in light of the circumstances . . . now that would be an interesting title for book, and not a science fiction one either!

That beginning was almost a decade ago now, and part of what got me going included some trial and error with various things around the home. While I’ve mentioned several times how I do various things with leaves, there was one particular image of an orange that really had me going. You can see it here, with the peels, the fruit, and the white fleshy stuff:

Now I mention this picture for a couple of reasons. One concerns the 3-D aspect that I was playing with at the time. I’ve always been terrible with a camera but had some success with my scanner . . . this is a scanned image. The pieces of the orange were loosely composed on the scanner glass but because of the bulkiness of the pieces (compared to a flat sheet of paper), I couldn’t close the lid down for scanning.

So I improvised. I made shells out of boxes to block out the surrounding light, much like the scanner cover would if I could close it. I lined the inside of these boxes with white paper or aluminum foil or other materials for different effects. It was quite amazing, and still is, and the basis for so much of my art. By the way, I often used the same technique with the leaves.

To kind of show you a bit of where this led, shown below are two more pictures. The first is shows the details of what I saw in this orange picture, and so I drew that into the scan . . . between the two images there are several more variations, too many to post. So here is where this orange picture took me . . . this is far from a finished piece . . . quite blurry, but it gives you an idea of the process:

To give you an idea of where this picture sits now – and it’s still not complete – here it is shown in more detail and with some leaves layered in as well:

Finally, now for the second reason for my bout of nostalgia.

A few days ago a very kind and helpful lady suggested that I take a look at Etsy. I’ve done that and while I thought it was more for crafts than art, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by some of the artists on there. One in particular caught my attention. She does this amazing thing with photography . . . in a mini-theater. It’s kind of like what I’ve done with some scanning, but so much better. You really have to see her work to appreciate her technique.

She is becoming more and more popular and I think you will quickly see why by taking a look at some of her art. As a picture is worth a thousand words, here is a link to her Etsy shop – it’s called “Theaterclouds”. Her name is Elly MacKay and if you’re interested she explains her technique really well . . . just follow the link.