The big chore : sorting through the inspiration.

On vacation I take many hundreds of photos with my camera and my phone . Along with the typical family vacation photos I took shots of leaves, plants and various things that struck me as having potential. Now I just need to find them so I can use them. Often I take photographs of my surroundings to use as later inspiration for my sketchbook and end up forgetting and never using the photo. Finding it months later and wondering what it is doing on my camera or phone. Digital photography is both a blessing and a curse. I am happy to have it and I certainly don't want to go back to film photography for everyday pictures this is much more affordable. But the sorting can be a nightmare.

Leaving my comfort zone and going digital.

Waiting for collagraph prints to dry so I can draw on them by hand without smudging the ink is a slow and often frustrating experience. But after a day drying my scanner won't smudge the ink if I'm careful. I am better with an actual pen than a digital pen, but I am learning and I get unlimited erasing when I draw digitally and having layers to work on and edit is pretty nice. Great way to take my art on the go with me on vacation. Though I still can't draw in the car without feeling sick.

Take a picture it will last longer

Scanning or photographing each piece I made and saving it on my computer and eventually a back up hard drive used to be something that I did without fail with every piece I made. That way when it sold I would always have a graphic of it. But lately I have been selling more work in person where a graphic is not needed for the sale and I often don't digitize the work at all or very well. Most of these digital copies are buried somewhere on an external hard drive or on the cloud but I would be hard pressed to pull them up quickly. Seems like all that work making things digital was pretty pointless without a solid storage plan.

Now I am making art again on a regular basis and not always getting great digital versions of the pieces and honestly I am okay with this change. I have changed and how I best use the limited time I have has also changed. This piece is available online so I have a great digital image of it. But this is not the case for every piece I make, especially if the piece is difficult to photograph or scan for some reason. My three dimensional mounted pieces are great examples of pieces that I love that I have let pass through my hands without keeping a perfect photograph because they just don't scan very well.  Scanning used to be my default for lovely digital versions. So here I am figuring out new ways of photographing my work.

Fugue