never-ending gallery

[Geoffrey]

absolutely fantastic, both your picture and the interesting article. i am not sure if this is three different poses of the same chickadee or if it portrays three different chickadees. the one on the right is recognisable as the little fellow that perched on your finger, but they all look so lovely, especially the middle one - so adorably sweet.

as wood frogs are in a sort of suspended animation for at least half of the year it makes me wonder if their lives might be shorter if they lived in a warmer climate. nature is so wonderfully inexplainable. if scientists manage to discover how these frozen creatures attain resurrection after their winter hibernation perhaps such information could be useful, not only to the cryonics trade but also to 'sleeping' astronauts needing to defy the ravages of time while traveling long distances.

i am still currently occupied with one or two projects, but my phone alerts me when i get one of jarkko's notification emails - hence the sometimes quick response if i am home. i may add more to this reply later when the time is right. meanwhile just wanted to acknowledge and say how much i appreciate your post. thank you for enriching my time!

[LisaLCFan]

absolutely fantastic, both your picture and the interesting article. i am not sure if this is three different poses of the same chickadee or if it portrays three different chickadees. the one on the right is recognisable as the little fellow that perched on your finger, but they all look so lovely, especially the middle one - so adorably sweet...

Thank you, glad you enjoyed! I took photos of chickadees on my fingers on two separate ocassions, and both times, there were several chickadees hanging out with me, taking turns perching on my fingers, and so I am not entirely certain who was who in the photos. The two chickadees who are looking at me are from the same day (the other one isn't), and they coud be the same bird -- they certainly have similar little faces, etc.. I love the chickadee in the middle of my drawing, too -- indeed, so adorably sweet! Here's the photo of that little guy:

[Geoffrey]

it is always nice when someone stops by to interact.

small birds are gorgeously delightful little friends. they do tend to look alike, as we perhaps do so to them. you certainly seem to have built up a special rapport with the chickadees in your area. there are studies that claim birds are quite intelligent, and in all likelihood sense that you would never harm them.
thank you for this exchange, lisa - including the images. you are good at making pictures. there has been no new ones from me for a while, but no doubt they will begin again shortly
https://youtu.be/whq2XZyMT9s?si=-A_dq5fd-iAuWjFH

[murphybridget837]

B4real wrote:
>. . . refraction of light photo that my camera spontaneously decided on its own to take at LC's concert in Sydney 2013

one could say your camera transformed an ordinary picture into a piece of art. unfortunate accidents sometimes have a silver lining. penicillin and velcro were also stumbled upon accidentally. it's the sort of image that will stay in someone's memory longer than a standard photo.

AlanM wrote:
>One of my favourite birds, a New Holland Honey Eater.

the first thing i noticed was it's facial symmetry. a beautiful creature, and so tame. after reading up on the birds that you and lisa have been posting i am becoming quite the ornithologist

its4inthemorning wrote:
>Bev, the photo of Alex and his burning violin is so perfect, but only those who know about the song lyric and LC's final tour can fully appreciate it. And Alan, the honey eater photo is, quite honestly, one of the best bird photos I have ever seen, I love the stare. Thanks to both of you for posting them, and I hope you guys get some rainfall down there.

i was unaware that that part of the world is currently suffering a drought. plenty of rain up here, often a little too much! pity it couldn't be more evenly distributed, but it never seems to be.
the more you live the faster you will die.jpg

It's lovely to hear the appreciation for the depth and significance of the photo featuring Alex and his burning violin, capturing a moment rich with meaning for those familiar with the song lyric and Leonard Cohen's final tour.

[Geoffrey]

murphybridget837 wrote:
>It's lovely to hear the appreciation for the depth and significance of the photo featuring Alex and his burning violin, capturing a moment rich with meaning for those familiar with the song lyric and Leonard Cohen's final tour.

lovely to hear from you, too. always good to get feedback
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back after a short break. hope y'all doin' well!

very slippery in the town centre

[murphybridget837]

murphybridget837 wrote:
>It's lovely to hear the appreciation for the depth and significance of the photo featuring Alex and his burning violin, capturing a moment rich with meaning for those familiar with the song lyric and Leonard Cohen's final tour.

lovely to hear from you, too. always good to get feedback
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back after a short break. hope y'all doin' well!
a momentary loss of muscular coordination.jpg
very slippery in the town centre
the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.jpg

You're most welcome geoffrey.

[Geoffrey]

"own only what you can carry with you" - solzhenitsyn

[1934 - 2016] "gone like the summer, gone like the snow"

card illustration

[Geoffrey]

saw this person at the shopping centre.

[LisaLCFan]

...card illustration...

Love the little happy faces on the flowers -- very cute and cheerful! -- I hope it made someone's day!

To celebrate the Spring weather we've been having (10 degrees celcius, almost unheard of for February in these parts), I made this mixed-media picture: a linocut print (I've been experimenting with linocut lately) and coloured pencil.

Hope you're all having a great weekend. Cheers!

[Geoffrey]

my goodness, that is more than amazing! lino cutting is something i have yet to try, so i looked at one or two youtube videos to see exactly how it's done. the ones i saw were just black and white, but your finished product has brilliant colours! i note the varying shades, like on the five sprigs(?) that go from dark to light green/yellow. i suppose one can use the original 'master' linocut to make as many copies with different colours as one wishes? one can also use the hue/saturation tool in paint.net to enhance colours after scanning. lino cutting must be like having one's own printing press!

making pictures can be an addictive and pleasurable pastime, as you too have discovered. there is just something satisfying about the act of creating a visual image, regardless of whether the result is personally acceptable or not. good and bad is too subjective to have a general meaning, which is why warhol's tins of soup are so well known.

on a side note: i was also impressed by the 253kb resolution (slightly below the webmaster's 255kb limit) of your picture. not many people bother about such a detail, even though it allows the viewer to zoom a little bit. thank you so much, lisa.

yes, i am having a nice weekend, as i trust are you. good to see the ice slowly decreasing and warmer grades increasing. my flower picture card was for a close friend who is very sick. she too remarked on their happy faces

cheers back

[LisaLCFan]

my goodness, that is more than amazing! lino cutting is something i have yet to try, so i looked at one or two youtube videos to see exactly how it's done. the ones i saw were just black and white, but your finished product has brilliant colours! i note the varying shades, like on the five sprigs(?) that go from dark to light green/yellow. i suppose one can use the original 'master' linocut to make as many copies with different colours as one wishes? one can also use the hue/saturation tool in paint.net to enhance colours after scanning. lino cutting must be like having one's own printing press!...

Thank you! I greatly enjoyed doing it!

However, I am afraid that my printing skills are fairly rudimentary -- I have yet to try multi-layered printing. The only colour in my picture that was printed was the royal blue background, from the linocut that I carved. Everything else was coloured in with Derwent Coloursoft pencils, which are very vibrant -- in fact, some of the colours in the photo are less vibrant than in reality, the little pink flowers in particular are brighter pink in the original. I did not enhance the colours in the photo -- I just have very good coloured pencils!

If you're curious, below is the linocut print before I coloured in the flowers, leaves, etc.. It is a lot of fun to do the linocutting -- as you probably saw in the videos, one can also create textures, details, and depth through various cutting/carving techniques, rather than creating large white spaces, but this one was meant to be mixed-media and coloured in afterwards with pencils.

All the best!

[Geoffrey]

thank you for this. yes, curiosity is deeply embedded in my nature; it is the fuel that drives learning - as is well known.

your printing skills may be rudimentary, but they function quite adequately as far as i can see. derwent is known for good quality colour pencils; i have some myself! paint is not a first choice these days, too much bother. colours do indeed often look less vibrant in photos than they are in reality, which is why i sometimes use paint.net to return them to their original brightness before posting them.
-g
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i'll leave with you one broken man

[murphybridget837]

art is making something out of nothing and selling it.jpg
normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from.jpg
mostly left-handed using a right-handed violin, people said paganini was so gifted that he must have sold his soul to the devil.
scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.jpg

Many people accused Paganini with that.

[Geoffrey]

i wrote:
>>people said paganini was so gifted that he must have sold his soul to the devil.

murphybridget837 responded:
>Many people accused Paganini with that.
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yes indeed. people say a lot of things, including myself

it is not known whether shelley attended a paganini concert; they were both in naples in 1819, the time the violin virtuoso was giving public performances. shelley was fascinated by stories concerning the devil and anything supernatural; his 2nd wife (mary) invented the dr frankenstein character, of course. it is believed she actually had the pleasure of seeing paganini play, but this was a long while after her husband's death.

personally i find it difficult to believe in devils, souls . . . or anything paranormal - but what do i know? some years ago i did receive an irreversible auratransformation, which is a 'new age' treatment designed to eliminate one's ego and initiate creativity. with me it worked, but that could have been either a coincidence or through some kind of psychological autosuggestion.

so good of you to write, and apologies for the rant.

[LisaLCFan]

...paganini...

I have undoubtedly mentioned this before in coversations about Paganini, but I shall mention it again, because I think that it is interesting: in addition to being a virtuouso violinist and writing a lot of violin music, for which he is most famous, Paganini was also an exceptional classical guitarist (well, back then, they just said "guitarist"), and he wrote a variety of guitar music, all of which is still played and enjoyed -- his "Grand Sonata" is particularly popular (originally written for guitar with violin accompaniment, but usually just played on solo guitar these days). Paganini was known to play guitar in concerts as well as violin, often with his friend and occasional duet partner, Luigi Legnani, the latter of whom was very famous as a guitarist and guitar composer (and whose music is still played).

Paganini was friends with Hector Berlioz (who was a composer who also played the guitar, although Berlioz did not compose any guitar music, that anyone knows of). When Paganini died, his guitar was bequeathed to Berlioz. Here is a picture of Paganini's guitar, which is signed by both Paganini and Berlioz -- it currently resides in the Musée de la musique in Paris.