THE JOY OF PLAY: AN INVITATION

I remember the first discussion I heard back in the mid 90's about digital collaboration with other artists. I was involved in a collage group back then and one of the women in the group was just beginning to explore working with her art digitally. I think her husband worked for one of the first local companies that offered computer assistance to other local companies using PC's for the first timein their offices. "So you'd scan your collage and then email it to another artist who could play with it too, but it takes forever to send that email." It sounded wonderfully exciting to me, except who had a computer and would I ever want one?

Well, things have sure changed since then. Fast forward thirteen years where there is really nothing to stop anyone on line to capture whatever they want. Hopefully, most who do or might have good manners and remain respectful with integrity of other artists' intellectual property. Most of you who read my blog on a regular basis already know the good fun I've been having with John Mora who Im feeling good considering an online friend and colleague. I think we compliment each other's styles well. Great Grannie Bobbie suggested a round robin challenge, and so I am offering up these images for others to use as a creative exercise. My only request is that they not be used for financial gain without speaking to either John or myself, lest you be plagued with years and years of bad karma bugging your computer.

John's original image can be viewed here. His image was created from a sampling of Babaloo's which can be viewed here. I took his image into Photoshop, put it on a dark purple background, reduced the opacity, blended it with overlay and oversaturated the colors using hue/saturation using an adjustment layer



This mandala emerged, and I thought it was ok enough, but a little too busy with too much detail. When I create my mandalas, the source images and resulting mandalas are high resolution (240 ppi) which I later reduce to 72 ppi for use on the web. The excessive detail is created from reduced pixel content.


A year ago another online friend gave me permission to use his photographs of crystals, which I played with but was never satisfied with the results. The image on the left below is an amethyst captured in slow motion (I think the light trail was a flashlight beam). The image on the right is a photo I took of a cactus growing not to far from where I work. I created mandalas from both of these images and layered them, used different blending modes, adjusted with hue/saturation and curves, to create the final image seen below.






















Emerald Isle Mandala - (Circles of Fun) - collaborative energies 2/2008

I hope you will consider playing with us and letting us see what you do next. No awards, no fanfare, just good fun. Isn't that what art is really about, anyway?