Look what I just found! The Garfield-Perry March Party stamp show will host the First Day Ceremony for my four waterlily FOREVER stamps on Friday, March 20 at 11:00 am. The show is March 19-21 in Cleveland, Ohio. Guess who’s planning a road trip to Cleveland in March?
David Von Metz’s site, Iconella Arts, has four of my botanical images for sale. I’ve seen them printed and they are stunning (if I do say so myself). From the site: “Our archival pigment print is produced on heavyweight (300 gsm) fine-textured watercolor paper, made from 100% cotton fiber, archival-certified for 100+ years, acid and lignin free.” Check them out here:
http://www.iconella.com/collectio…/artist/Artist:-Cindy-Dyer
Originally posted 1.28.2010
A few years ago I dabbled in scanning flowers on my Epson flatbed scanner and got some pretty good results. The technique works best if you can cover the flower arrangement with a dark piece of fabric or black cardboard. While the original images were nice “record” shots of my flowers, I wanted to do something more with them. I ran the scanned images through some artsy Photoshop filters to give them a romantic, soft-focus glowy look. So there you have it…photographs without a camera!
Not long after I toyed with the process, I saw an exhibit of photographer Robert Creamer’s images at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. These large-scale works were amazing! He scanned all sorts of things—dead birds, flowers, fruit, bones, and more. You can read more about his Smithsonian exhibit here and see more of his work on his website here. Watch the video here for a demonstration of his setup.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
Originally posted 7.20.2009 (Hey Karen W.—this could be one of my craft projects to (finally) finalize in 2015!)
My friend Karen inherited this rocking chair from her grandmother and took it out to the lake house a few weekends ago. She has often declared, “I’ve never met a little chair I didn’t like!” Since the fabric wasn’t in great shape, she asked what I thought about painting something on the chair to make it more whimsical. And, of course, I took on the challenge with gusto!
NOTE: The chair is not finished yet—the photo on the right is a Photoshop collage utilizing the chair in its current state with an overlay of a screen grab image of one of Monet’s water lily paintings. I combined the two images to use as a painting reference. This is what it should look like when I’m done.
Over the July 4th weekend, I painted a base coat of metallic blue, green and gold paint (finally, a use for all those little bottles of fabric paint I bought when such-and-such store was going out of business!). My initial plan was to paint sketchy leaves or swirly abstract shapes on top in a lighter color. I thought that it was starting to look like the water in one of Monet’s paintings of water lilies at his garden in Giverny, France. I shot some record shots of the chair after I was done. Karen loved the idea of turning it into a “Monet chair,” and it was her idea to split up the painting with the Japanese bridge on back of the chair and the water lilies on the seat. We found one of Monet’s many water lily paintings on the web, including one with very bright blue/teal and green combination of tones in the water. I did a screen grab of the painting and superimposed it over the chair in Photoshop to see what it would look like. She loved the effect—so guess what my project at the lake house this next weekend is? I’ll shoot some during-and-after shots so you can see how it turned out. I’m estimating it will take about 3-4 hours to complete.
Temps have been in the 30s and 40s here in (usually sunny) Texas, with murky gray skies almost every day. I’m in need of some color!
Originally posted July 27, 2010
Overcast and very pleasant day, perfect for a quick (and fruitful) lunchtime shoot at Green Spring Gardens. This is an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on a ‘Zowie’ Zinnia.
Note: I was actually trying to get a shot (with the tripod in place) of just the two Zinnias when the Swallowtail landed on one of the flowers. I held my breath and got just two shots before it flew off. I live for moments (and wild color) like this!
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
One of my favorite dragonfly shots…previously posted in July 2008—photographed at the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in Washington, D.C. For more about the Halloween Pennant dragonfly, click here. Read photographer Bill Horn’s tips for photographing them on his Photo Migrations website.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
Poem and photo © Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
I’ve picked one photo from each month of blogging in 2014 to recap the year visually (starting with December 2014 and working my way back to January 2014). Now here’s to 2015—hoping it is another year of immense creativity, staying connected to family, nurturing friendships both near and far and old and new, growing my graphic design and photography business in fresh and challenging directions, continuing to dust off my rusty sketching and painting skills, decluttering my physical space, communing with nature, photographing more flowers and bugs, updating my garden with quirky and photogenic new plants, hitting the road in search of adventure (and fresh photographs), honing my writing craft, acquiring new skills and learning something new every day.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
Garden Muse 
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