Mind Mapping: What Does Go on in that Place in the Dark?

Why is it so much more fun to play with computer toys than real objects? I haven’t played an actual game of solitaire since I was a child. I probably log on around 15 hours of computer solitaire per week, at least 5-7 kinds of games. For some reason, it’s just more fun on a screen.

The same is true of collage. I’m not the girl you let run with scissors, and I have been known to run with scissors and an open rubber cement jar, and that was after I graduated from college. Yet here I am playing endless games with photoshop collage. All you need is a pile of images and Photoshop. I can’t help myself.

So it really shouldn’t surprise me that rather than take a piece of paper (an object bound to be crumpled up under my chair only to be peed upon by one cat or another) I found myself playing with a mind mapping program the last time I got a story idea.  I went online, looked at several online mind mappers and found Mind Map Maker which offered me several ways to map, and a way to save it as a regular png. Twenty minutes later I had a worldview, several characters, a crisis, a beginning of a plot. Wowser! I’m not that good. But this thing was. You could just let it grow wild like weeds.

Is it any good? Damned if I know! But it let me try it out in my head over a period of twenty minutes without any cleanup. In a week or two, I may see if it noodles into something.

That may be the whole of the attraction, There may be a time when you need to clean up the pile of files on your laptop, but there’s no real clean up on aisle 15. Just ideas gone amuck in a place you can find them later. My head is mostly a place in the dark, but at least this closet had a pull light and a virtual shelf.

For all the writing I did as a quilter, there is no plot to a how-to, other than finish the job with the needle not in your finger. This makes it much easier. It could be addictive. I might even get some writing done.

Pictural Stories: The Stories Still Tell You

Add chickens

I just ran into the most amazing treasure trove. I found an archive site that had all of the Baum books available.

The Wizard of Oz movie changed America. But it wasn’t a one-off thing. Baum wrote a number of amazing OZ books. They were the love of my childhood life. They were silly, wild, imaginative and beautifully Art Nouveau.

This is Ozma of Oz congratulating a chicken. See what I mean? Well it’s hard to get sillier than this, but I tried. I put in a marbelized paper behind it, added more chickens, embossed it and added roses. I’m in love.

Original image

marbelized background

background and image together

add roses

Add chikents

Don’t ask me what it’s about. I haven’t a clue. But I had a wonderful time with it. The stories still tell me.

I’ve been playing with a number of archived images, with a book in mind. Coming as soon as I can untangle Amazon Create Children’s books. Pass the aspirin.

The Magic of Brushes: The Rubber Stamp of Photos

 

A collection of cup brushes I made

 

Do you remember rubber stamps? I loved rubber stamps so much. They were on beautiful blocks of wood and ranged from silly to exquisite images that you could layer together to fuse into your art.

Like most art supplies, they fell short of my imagination. I wanted them to work with fabric. I never could make that happen. And they had their frustrating side. They were just one direction and just one size. But they were beautiful.

I learned photoshop late in life. It’s easy to crop your pictures or correct the colouration. It was several years before I learned to have fun with it. 

I found some great old illustrations from Alice and Wonderland and from Grandville I wanted to play with. And I discovered brushes.

The stars are brushes that came with Photoshop. The vines I found at Brusheasy, a site for free brushes. But the scissors I made into a brush with a simple Dover image of embroidery stork scissors. Notice they change in size and angle in my collages It’s easy to do that with brushes

You can go on line and buy brushes or find brushes for free. There are a million kinds. But I was shocked to find how easy they were to make. 

Brushes can be stroked on in lines. But they can also be used like a rubber stamp, with one wonderful difference. 

They can be manipulated, turned at angles, sized, flipped and made to fit exactly what you need. The cups I’ve used in Sight Unseen are from a collection of copyright free cup pictures I made into brushes.

How do you make a brush? You take a black and white image, and choose define brush preset from the edit menu. That easy.

tealeaves

After I made my cup brush and placed it into the image, I layered other images in the cup.  For the coloured cups, I added a smoke brush to simulate steam.

I’ve never had more fun than with Photoshop. You’ll find my teacups on their own page . They’re also in the print version of  Sight Unseen, Tea Room Tales,  Available at Amazon.

Read more about the artwork of Tea Room Tales on this earlier blog post, The Art Behind the Cups.

 

The Art Behind the Cups

When I began to write Tea Room Tales,  I realized the stories needed one thing to make them make more sense. I was proud of the stories I’d written. But I knew from my experience as a tea leaf reader that everyone wants to see inside the cup.

I’m not a fabulous draftsperson. My fiber art depends on physical movement from the shoulders. If I draw well now it’s because I drew poorly until I drew better.

But these cups were created in Photoshop.

I love Photoshop! It allows you to put layers of images together, manipulate them and mold them until you have the image you want.

It also allows you to create brushes. It sounds like that would be regular art brushes, but you can make a brush out of any image and then size and position it any way you like. It’s like a moveable sizable rubber stamp.

In the story Reader, Rita gives Marlene a reading so she can show her what her life in the tea room would be like. Here’s how the cup for Reader was made.

 

 

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1Old cup picture made into a brush and filtered with the stylized

2. Add Moon brush ( All readers are governed by the moon)

3. Add Mouse brush (from Blackpaw)

4. Add mermaid brush (yes! One of the readers is a mermaid. Guess which one?)

5. Add Swirls brush as tea leaves

6. Add Egyptian images as brushes. (One character in the tea room worships Egyptian gods._

7. Add Owl brush, Marlene’s alter ego.

8.  Add R and E as text (two men interested in Marlene)

9. Add Parrot as a brush (from What the Parrot Said)

Would you like to sample Reader? It’s posted online here where you can read it for free.

Or you can read it in Tea Room Tales, available at Amazon.com

Like it? Please leave a comment here or a review at Amazon.