The yellows are finished, finally. Whew, what a process!

Yellows are always problematic because at full saturation it is at a value nine, very high, and has nowhere to go in the value scale when white is added. Very top heavy. Messes up all the color charts.

Here is the pastel station in my studio. The natural light isn't great, so there is a full-spectrum clamp-on lamp above the easel. I like to have the  pastels selection right in front of the painting for finding the right color. The cabinet is a Stanton Cart from HomeDecorators.com. They no longer carry that particular configuration, although they have many others. It is only 14" deep, so I don't have to reach very far, (I'm short), which reduces shoulder strain. It's on wheels which occassionly comes in handy, although it is quite heavy full loaded. There is a little dust catcher tray that I made from foam-core under the drawing board.

Some Pastel Sets
Here are a few of the sets I've put together. The one on the far left is the one at the studio painting station. The one on the lower right is my smallest travel set. The trays are made with foam-core. You can see that they are all arranged with the same color configuration, so that no matter which set I'm using, I know where to go to find the color I need.

At this point I have far more pastels than I will ever use up. I still want to get more, of course, just to make sure I have the right color. It's like getting a brand new box of crayons.

I like viewers to have a say in some of my artistic decisions, to be an active part of the creative process.  So a very big "Thank you" to all the participating viewers who chose the winning photos from the dozens of candidates. These winners were transformed into the final panels, then printed, framed and installed in the Quilt Matrix located at the Hill Center on Capitol Hill.

Of course the project took longer to finish than anticipated, but I am very pleased by both the process and the outcome. It was quite interesting to see which images gathered the most votes - not always the ones I would have expected. My favorite transformed panel was always the one I had just finished, so the final few panels are my final favorites.

This project was also a prototype for future collaborative art projects. I've been working with the concept of evolution for many years now, how images can morph into other images, or start whole families with generations and siblings and cousins. In the past I always had to provide the forces that transformed the images, as well as determine which would surrive to the next generation. With the internet, this survival-of-the-fittest decision can be crowd-sourced, providing a more natural force to work with. This project proved the concept to be viable.

So again, many thanks to you all. I have many ideas for future projects, and hope you will participate again.

I usually take multiple photos of whatever catches my eye, as I am not always so steady, and often the smallest change of angle or tilt can dramatically alter the composition. When I am lucky enough to have a photo shoot that goes for several days, I also tend to revisit some especially fruitful situations. The light changes or I think of a different approach or I see something new. This can produce hundreds of pictures. In the case of the trip to the river, there were over 500 photos to contend with.

To organize them all and start to sort out the winners, I begin by putting them all in a single file. Then I divide them into as many sub-files as necessary to make sense of them, the files named as descriptively as possible . The river series produced twelve categories, including such groups as "the Thin Red LIne", "Stems and Bowls", and "Stack o' Crystal Balls"

There are always a few that defy categorization, or that are one-of-a-kind. Here are a few from the "Cool Things" category.

The Contenders vote page is up.

I like the idea of crowd-sourcing the survival-of-the-fittest decisions. I like viewers to be an active part of the creative process. The most direct way for you  to influence this process right now is to vote, to pass judgement on the "contenders."  You get to be the decider.

Every week the contender with the most votes will move up to the Winners page. The lowest ranked will be removed and new contenders will be added, somewhat like a tournament.

The Winners page will be the selection pool for competitions, exhibitions, demos, paintings, and future evolution and explorations. So the more you vote, the more you influence the process and the more it helps me.  Join the creative process. Vote!

The Contenders: Click here to vote

I've taken about 800 photos of an antique painted jardineire that sits in a south-facing bay where I  often come to enjoy the sun. Its colors and patterns, and the play of light on its surface, have provided an endless source of images, from representational to very abstract. This series also shows off some of the powerful digital tools that are available now for image manipulation.

Click here to see the series.

This was my first layered photographic painting,  done early in my  art-apps obsession, to test out my ideas and theories and some artist apps capabilities. I used four photos, four or five apps and probably seven or eight  layers. The inspiration is from some photos taken of a struggling houseplant, whose drooping leaves were beginning to turn gold.

I was so pleased with the process and the results that I am now (and probably forever) hooked.