Mothers Day 2011

I started Mothers Day weekend off with a Mothers Day tea with my Mom and daughter at my Mom's church in Sherwood.  Grace was entranced by the three sisters that provided musical entertainment and sang Our God is an Awesome God right along with them complete with matching hand gestures.  She even wrote them a thank you on her ticket and gave it to them after the tea.

We took pictures in between rain bursts, this one is of my Mom and her hanging fuchsia that my husband and brother picked out for her.  They had to call and text me to ask what a fuchsia looked like but they managed to pick out a very pretty plant. 

 

 I made sure to get one of me and my Mom since I was looking through old photos to do a Mothers Day blog post and realized that the last decent one of just the two of us was taken in 2003 when I graduated college.  David didn't get one of us with my brother, but he was here!

 My kids may look back at family photos one day and wonder why on earth they only saw me on Mothers Day.  Seems like it's the only time of the year that I make it out from behind the camera!  I promise I'm not camera shy, I just need to be better about switching my camera to Auto and handing it over to other people every now and again.

 And while we were at it we got a photo of the three of us and Thor.  Didn't you know I birthed a Norse God three years ago?

A knight and a fairy princess

If you've been around my children for any length of time you know that they often exist in their own little world.  Grace spins elaborate stories about fairy princesses and knights and Ethan happily plays along.  A few days ago the warm spring sunshine got the better of me and I asked the kids if they wanted to go play in the field near our house while I practiced with my 85mm a little.  They readily agreed when I told them they could wear dress up to play.  Grace wanted to wear her zebra shirt because it matched her new tutu we made last week perfectly.  I suggested the boots over Grace's choice of purple sandals because I knew there would still be mud.  Ethan was ecstatic to wear his Batman getup in addition to his knight's helmet and sword.  It's really impossible not to have a sword if you're a knight afterall.

We hung out for almost an hour in the field behind our house laughing and playing in the sunshine.  I didn't really pose the kids since all I wanted to do was practice nailing focus with the 85mm which is very different from my 50mm.  With a camera pointed at them so often I don't like to force them to pose for me every time.  I told them to play and do whatever they wanted to do and just have fun.  Every now and again I'd ask them to look my direction, but otherwise I got my practice in and we all had fun. 

My kids are so used to my camera that they don't even pay attention to it anymore.  And with the 85mm I am far enough back that I can capture them doing their thing without their getting their attention which makes for fun candid shots.

By the way, the capes were made by my inlaws for the kids for Christmas.  The Batman cape is worn pretty much every day.  He wore it to Safeway yesterday twice (I went three times for 6 bags of cheap sugar!).  I made Grace's new tutu last week with some friends as I showed them how easy they are to make.  She picked the colors out for this one because apparently I picked the wrong pink for the one I made her 4 years ago. 

Practice Makes Perfect

What a difference a year makes!  While I've downgraded from my ambitious Project 365 to a much more reasonable Project 52 I still find myself picking my camera up pretty often.  Almost every day, but not quite.  I'm mostly inspired by light so when the lighting is perfect I get itchy fingers and run outside with my camera without paying attention to what I'm wearing or the fact that everybody else is eating dinner.  I see the way the light is falling on some leaves or tree blossoms and I am out the door!  But since my yard and daily activities are pretty regular I find myself taking similar photos as last year and it's interesting to compare them and see my growth.  Turns out that practicing something every day does indeed bring improvement.

Take today for example.  Remember this photo from last year's Project 365?  I know a lot of people really liked it.  It was taken on April 5th last year, just a little over a year ago.

I just took this one 30 minutes ago while my kids ate hotdogs and were watching Mulan.  I see improvement. 

Here's another one from last year.  I took this last March of the lilies on our side yard with the setting sun as backlighting.

And here's one from two weeks ago with a similar subject and lighting.  You may confuse this with a jungle or large shrub but it's actually our backyard grass.

Here's one of Boo I took last March:

And here she is again last month:

 Here's a photo of both my kids I took at the end of last April:

And here's one I did of the two of them last week:

 

I'm excited to see where I am a year from now, progress is always exciting!  

Doo Doo Doo Batman

I can't believe it's been a month since I've posted here.  Apologies!  For now I'll just share this fantastic drawing of Batman that Grace made at school today.  It's a little hard to see, but she drew white stars in the blue sky because it is night time.  She made it for her brother which warms my heart.  They really do love each other despite all the usual sibling warfare.  I really wanted to share it so I did some Google searching to figure out how to scan with our behemoth all in one printer and now that I've figured it out I'll be going scanning crazy!  Hope you're looking forward to that :)

Art and Soul

According to my Mom I've been drawn to art ever since I was a child.  In fact if you look in my school records and read the "What I want to be when I grow up" section several years I listed I wanted to be an Artist.  I always knew I was good at art and I have always enjoyed being creative.  I took just about every art class available to me in high school (pottery was the exception...not my forte!) and even took a community ed watercolor class outside of school where I was the only person under 18 let alone under 40.  I have enjoyed batik, lino block carving/printing, watercolors, drafting, drawing, making paper, calligraphy and more.  I even handmade all of my own cards and wrapping paper. Yes, I was that girl.

However when I got to college I learned that talent only gets you so far.  If I wanted to succeed I was going to have to actually put the effort into it.  If you've ever taken a college level art class you'll know what I mean.  At the University of Idaho at the time every BFA major had essentially the same exact schedule the first year as it was mostly a foundation in design principles and was meant to allow students to freely switch art majors without much consequence.  I started off as an Architecture major and switched to Interior Design fairly quickly.  You can't tell me that Building with Steel sounds more interesting then Color Theory. 

My very first semester at school I had two art studio classes, Visual Communication and the Design Process (VCDP) and Drawing.  Both of those classes kicked my booty six ways to Sunday.  In fact I had an easier time learning HVAC systems and super complex 3-D rendering programs than I did with those two 100 level art classes.

I remember my very first Drawing assignment well.  It seemed so simple, just draw a door.  Any door.  I even asked the MFA student who was my section TA how much time I should expect to put into the drawing.  I think I put about 45 minute into the drawing, if that.  It looked perfectly acceptable to me, I mean how much time did he really expect me to draw a door?

Here's the grade I got:

That's right, a D.  I was in shock.  How could I, someone who had always been good at art, get a D on a drawing?  Notice the comment.  Needs LOTS more effort.  Potential is THERE.  So for the next drawing I doubled my efforts and spent almost two hours on it and got a C.  The next one I doubled again and spent 4 hours and got a B.  It wasn't until the very last drawing that I spent 20 hours on that I finally received that coveted A.  I was thrilled to get a B in the class at the end of the semester, I spent the first half just hoping I could pass it at all!

What did I learn from that class?  A lot.  That I can't just skate by with the attitude that "I've always been good at that" because I can always be better.  I learned that I actually enjoyed keeping a sketchbook.  After a year of enforced sketchbook use (i.e. I was graded on doing one for multiple classes that year) I kept the habit up until I graduated.  I'm thinking about taking it back up again. 

VCDP was the other booty kicking class.  I swear the MFA student TA I had was from Mars, the dude was cracked.  But despite his Rastafarian hat loving/doesn't believe in showers attitude he made me grow as an artist and drilled the principles of design into me.  We didn't receive grades on our projects for VCDP, you kept doing an assignment until it was satisfactory and you were given the opportunity to go on to the next one.  Our final grade was determined by how many projects we were able to complete to a satisfactory level.  I can't even count how many times I had to redo some projects.  At the time the projects seemed ridiculous and pointless.  Now that I know better, I can look back and see what the projects were teaching me.  I'm actually really grateful for VCDP because it has been an incredible resource as a photographer.  Having the rules of composition drilled into me and knowing how an eye looks at an image and why the eye moves the way it does across said image is pretty fantastic stuff.

Perhaps you're wondering what prompted this trip down memory lane?  I was cleaning out the office closet and decided to move my portfolio out of the closet to make more space.  While I was at it I consolidated with my other portfolio outside.  Grace really enjoyed looking at all my artwork I had saved.  I had stuff from high school through college, and quite a smorgasbord of art mediums.  We were flipping through my Drawing newsprint pad when we came across some nudes...good thing it was the female first so I could quickly close it and move on!

One of my VCDP projects from my second semester.  First semester was only done in black and white.

From a 200 level Architectural Drawing Class.  Makes me want to pull out some trace sheets!

The lighthouse is pen on mylar and done in pointellism (zillions of little dots).  The pear was done during an Independent Study Watercolor class I took in college.  Not sure what I was thinking adding yet another studio class to my schedule!

I ♥ Faces: Sunflare Challenge

This week's I Heart Faces Challenge is Sunflare which is something I have a bit of a love affair with.  Too bad I live in the Pacific Northwest where pretty sunflare is less available during the rainy season (9 months out of the year)!  I triumphed over mother nature last month and snuck some photos of my kids at sunset (i.e. 4:30pm) in the empty field behind our house.  Take THAT rainy season!

For more pretty sunflare photos check out the link below:

I ♥ Faces: Anything But a Face Challenge

I'm sharing a recent photo of the week from my Project 52 blog for this week's Anything But a Face Challenge because I still really LOVE it!

For more Anything But a Face photos check out the button below: