Beauty in everything

 photos  4 Responses »
Nov 292012
 

star door

I believe that beauty can be found in everything, even in ordinary, mundane, seemingly dull places and objects, even in places we conventionally consider ugly, dirty, uninteresting, even in places we seldom bother to notice such as: old doors and windows, peeling paint, rotten wood, decaying walls, moldy nooks etc. If we choose to pay attention we can discover incredible beauty in every little thing that surrounds us, no matter how unappealing it may seem at first. That’s probably the main reason why I like photographing filthy walls, old, trashy doors and windows and other elements of urban architecture. It reminds me that beauty, harmony and order can be discovered in most unexpected places if only we choose to open our eyes and see it.

pretty decay

bricks and blue

p m

blue door

dark blue and dirty

decay

red and yellow

wood blocks

orange stain

Still experimenting

 photos, work in progress  5 Responses »
Jun 122012
 

page001
Last few weeks I’ve kept myself busy and happy with continuing my experiments with long exposure photos. I also enjoyed editing them by adding textures I’ve created. I’m still not 100% sure where it will take me but for now I’m having fun playing around with this series of images. Here are just a few of them.

What I love the most about there pictures is capturing movement and color and I really like  the feeling that I’m actually making and not just taking these photos.

skica01-horz

Never stop experimenting

 photos  12 Responses »
May 292012
 

red and black

Yesterday I decided to re-shoot an old photo of mine because I liked the concept and wanted to explore it a bit more but I ended up shooting something similar yet completely different. Apparent limitations I encountered during shooting totally defined this mini-series of self-portraits. Unlike the photo I wanted to recreate, these were shot in my smaller space so I couldn’t fit an entire figure into the frame. Light conditions were pretty bad so  I decided to shoot 10sec long exposure and to make photos more interesting  incorporate movement into the images. Pictures I got instantly reminded me of impressionistic sketches and I edited them accordingly, adding texture in post-processing, making photos look like paintings or charcoal sketches.

red and black

red and black

red and black

red and black
This is my favorite in the series even though it’s probably the least attractive one and the head is basically reduced to a black stain. But I love it because I think it definitely looks like a pastel croquis.

 

red and black
This one is my other favorite, it reminds me of a fast painting. One might ask, if I like paintings and sketches so much and put effort into making my photos look like them why don’t I just, uhm, paint? I could, with a little practice create paintings similar to photos I took, but I simply prefer photographing to painting and I’m probably never going to stop experimenting with endless possibilities of the medium.

And, speaking of experimenting (and allowing yourself  freedom to experiment with your art ), I really enjoyed reading this essay called Art and Freedom by Alain Briot. 

I especially liked this part about critics and being critical :

Critics are by nature quite limited in their level of personal intellectual freedom.  I am tempted to say that this “comes with the territory.”  One cannot spend his time criticizing others without becoming extremely critical of themselves.  In turn, this criticism ends up limiting what they think they can and cannot do. Eventually, they get their hands tied so closely behind their back that they are only able to create the most banal and commonplace images. This is precisely why I decided not to be a critic in any shape or form and why I enjoy being an artist first and foremost.  Being a critic comes with a high price when it comes to inspiration, creativity and freedom, a price that I am not willing to pay.
 

Reading this essay helped me remember that I am first and foremost an artist and that I don’t want to be a critic by any means or become too critical of my own work. Instead I want to allow myself a complete freedom of expression and experimentation because that is the only certain way I know to progress and create better work :)

Redecorating frenzy and other things that kept me busy

 DIY, personal, photos  7 Responses »
Jan 142012
 

So far 2012. has been very good to me. I spent December 2011. mostly planning, setting goals and writing so seeing my plans turning into reality so fast feels great! I’ve been very busy last couple of weeks enjoying new work opportunities, setting foundations for personal art project and redecorating my apartment.
I didn’t actually plan to redecorate my place, it happened quite spontaneously. On Monday I had a little incident involving spilled ink and pinkish wall which propelled me into some sort of redecorating frenzy and resulted with repainting walls (and some pieces of furniture) bright white, painting flowers on closets, cleaning like a mad person and rearranging art pieces.

redecorating01
As I mentioned before, on Monday night I spilled some ink on orange/pinkish wall in my computer nook and  naively wanted to wash it out with water making an ever bigger stain. You know how it goes, the more you try to clean it the bigger the stain so I thought well, I might just remove all the paint and repaint the wall.

Removing the paint was pretty tedious and messy but, I believe, totally worth it because white suits my little corner so much better and makes it lot brighter.I also rearranged art pieces and put them above my desk, I have quite an Alkaline collection, 6 original pieces by Alkaline Samurai, photo print by Isidora and two of my own pieces.

redecorating02

Also, I repainted my little cabinet white and painted some pink flowers on it, now I call it  sakura cabinet hehe.

redecorating03

Recently I made a little drawing of a bear on a round piece of wood so I thought it would be appropriate to display it as well.

redecorating bear drawing

Once I refreshed my computer corner I moved on to the living room and repainted my old wooden wall white. The whole room seems bigger, much brighter and more pleasant to be in.

redecorating04

I have a big, really old closet in my living room that I plan on kicking out very soon so I thought it would be fun to paint on it before it gets moved out. Years ago, on one part of the closet my Mom applied some flowery decoupage that I never liked so I decided to remove it. And I learned a valuable lesson, decoupage is hard and messy impossible to remove but also nothing that 4 coats of white paint and strategically painted blue flowers can’t cover up.

redecorating05

The rest of the closet got some new, blue flowers as well.

redecorating06

After that I painted my kitchen cabinets white as well and did A LOT of cleaning and I’m still in the process of cleaning and rearranging stuff just at a slower pace (it’s weekend after all).

Last weekend I felt like doing something fun yet simple so I played a bit with white watercolor and blue, lined paper getting subtle and understated drawings.

blue and white

Before that I experimented with dying plain, white paper with coffee and spices to get interesting textures to scan and use as textures for layers in PS. I found my old high school biology homework and though I might scan it as well to get some “objects” to use as PS layers as well.

making textures

I also made some simple notebooks to fill with photo ideas, I’ve been writing and sketching so much I already have 4 little notebooks overflowing with ideas!

precious ideas notebook

I rediscover how fun it is to paint on brown paper!

it's raining ideas

Other great things happened as well in first 2 weeks of new year. I got great news, my partner in crime art and all things awesome is coming to visit in early February and we’re planning to have amazing time together as always. I started looking for props for my soon-to-happen photo shoots and scouted some very inspiring locations. I went to much needed shopping for clothes as I realized my sartorial choices could be described by this. I started working on a wonderful commission and even though I’ve been seriously sleep deprived I’m having a blast! I have a feeling 2012. will be the BEST YEAR EVER!

How did your year start?

Linocut textures

 work in progress  4 Responses »
Nov 172011
 

linocut
Here is one of my latest work-progress-projects: making colorful textures using lino-cut technique. I made random cuts and scratches on a piece of lino using a sharp knife to get messy texture and them made many different prints using various ink colors. The size of watercolor paper prints were made on is 25×35 cm.

I plan on using those textures as backgrounds for drawings.

linocut textures

linocut backgrounds01

linocut backgrounds03

linocut floor