Shipwreck Dandy

I've been messing around in Photoshop. I can't believe I didn't realize you can just open a blank template and go to town with the paint brush tool. I used to make digital drawings all the time when I first got a computer and discovered some preinstalled rudimentary painting program. I think it was geared or children--it had primary color paint buckets and goofy preschool fonts.

The medium is tricky for me. I'm generally not a an of all-digital art images; I suppose that's why I've never really experimented beyond that paint bucket program and basic photoshop stuff. In working with it, the main thing that bothers me is having poor control over the paint brush. I hate trying to make curvaceous lines and having them come out all falsely pointed and jagged. So, I decided to see what happens when I apply my art ethic of 'alter alter alter.' Kind of like writing's "revise revise revise."

These are the first doodles, and although the tool was pretty much like using the bucket, I'm thinking I can use the other photoshop stuff to alter in process. With these, I used only the brush tool in various sizes and the blur tool a couple times to create a sense of depth, but I don't know if the effect of that is even visible anymore. I was mainly trying to explore the idea of how to create very intricate webbing or veining that looks somewhat organic. It's my favorite aesthetic in the whole world right now. The basic design principles are lost on me--it seems too fractal and baroque to mimic by hand.

But somehow, as I was drawing these, pretty much by making bazillions of strategically sized and placed scribbles, toward the final touches, the webbing was literally creating itself--it was a by product of the jaggedy pixely imperect computer-drawing circles I was making. I can't explain it. I've doodled like this of course, using pen/pencil and paper, and it never turned out as webby. Which is just so loaded with metaphor I can barely stop myself from launching into another esoteric craft/art thing right now. I will save it for later, though. For now, I'll just note I was trying to create organically believable webbing and netting in and by a very inorganic medium which by its particular geometrical/limited/whatever nature forbids total command by its user, but in the end, that very nature actually ended up creating the webbing. This is getting confusing because I'm not being articulate. I'm not really claiming the pieces look like fabulous nets or webs, but I'm referring to the magical transformative ending of the drawing experience, in which by crazily shading, the webbing netting effect appeared by itself. Which, as with many such magical moments, turns out to be quite reflexive, self-referential: net/internet, and of course, "web."

I did write an article on the bird-on-a-branch craft meme which can be read here: Occult Meanings behind the Trendy Bird Form in Popular Craft

And one about the form of macrame: The DNA of Macramé

Well, no Shipwreck Dandy jewelry news on my first post in my Shipwreck Dandy jewelry blog! Oops!

There will be an offer for free samples of my polymer clay floral or pod beads in the next few days. So come see. Oh no--why are the links all black highlighted like that?