Pouring My Art Out

Saving Christmas; part 5… A little side trip…

Posted on January 23, 2021 by pouringmyartout

Well, we are still in the Bay Area. We have done our late Christmas and New Year/new president party. But we had to get out of my mom’s house for one trip across the bay.

Had to see our godson, William, and his parents.

That is Big Johnny, Willie’s dad. Somehow I missed getting a photo of his mom. Must be the masks.

We drove across two bridges… twice each… one of them a very famous bridge.

I made a new friend. Because of the pandemic, I haven’t met Curry, John, Eva and William’s new dog.

I took the usual touristy pictures.

I made another new friend.

He and Curry met, but didn’t hit it off.

I met some anemones. I think they liked me.

Mollie has been here hundreds of times, but her boyfriend Ben is from New Mexico, and it is his first trip to the Bay Area.

Mollie has been making some custom masks.

I have so many pictures to post, on so many topics… sigh…

Posted in dogs and other animals, My travels | Tagged art, bay area, dogs, golden gate bridge, humor, nature, photography, san francisco, san francisco bay area, travel | 2 Comments

Saving Christmas; part 4…

Posted on January 23, 2021 by pouringmyartout

Well, I am still in the San Francisco Bay Area, celebrating late Christmas with my family, and you know how I love to do these ‘wiggly light’ photos, where I shake the camera around while shooting in low light to make lights leave patterns on the image because of the shutter staying open longer…

And what lights are better for this than Christmas lights?

I still haven’t taken notes to narrow down the best lens, or the best distance to do these.

I like not knowing what I will end up with. Most of these are taken of lights way up the street.

Half a block seems like a good distance.

But it is still all about the wiggle.

And the zoom?

Now that one, and the next few, were of the tree in the same room as I was.

And I don’t remember what lens I was using, the regular or the telephoto.

But I do remember that I had way less time for wiggling. More light, maybe?

Does it even matter?

These aren’t as good as the night cityscapes ones, I do know that much.

But just for fun, I do them.

Because it makes me happy.

Posted in Everything Else | Tagged art, humor, lights, photography | 2 Comments

Throwing shade; A study in light and shadow… part 5…

Posted on January 22, 2021 by pouringmyartout

Light and shadow. A light making shadows. Our world is light and shadow.

Each photo in this post will have a copy shown below it. All the digital effects I used were only to either turn it into a negative image, or a black and white photo.

A lightshade making light and shade. The simple irony of light.

These are just shapes around my mom’s house that caught my eye, that displayed the interweaving of light and shadow.

A curtain, almost a black and white image even in color. Is the light coming through from behind, or from another window?

A negative version does not answer the question. Light and shadow bleed into one another.

Blinds.

That is the negative version. It looks like I flipped the whole photo, or just changed the brightness and contrast a little.

A vase I made for my mom in my glass-blowing class. Diffused, indirect light that makes the shadows subtle things.

But they are there, always, if it is light enough to see anything at all. Which brings us to sunlight…

A corner of our deck railing. Bright sunlight throws dark shadows, but there are overcast days where the shadows are shy.

I am sure we will touch on that soon.

Posted in Everything Else | Tagged art, digital photography, humor, light, photography, shadow, shapes | 2 Comments

Throwing shade; A study in light and shadow… part 4…

Posted on January 22, 2021 by pouringmyartout

I thought I would mix up our study of light and shadow with some digital filter magic. That is a black cat, looking at the shadow of its own belly.

The same black cat and her shadow. Notice the two nails that make eyes in the shadow.

An orange cat making digital magic.

A different black cat, sleeping in the dappled sunlight.

Turkey lurkey.

Posted in dogs and other animals | Tagged animals, art, cats, digital art, digital photography, humor, nature, photography, shade, shadows | Leave a comment

Throwing shade; A study in light and shadow… part 3…

Posted on January 21, 2021 by pouringmyartout

How is that for a magical way to examine light and shadow? Or what about this…

I could have just done this…

Removing the colors seems to draw the focus to the variance of shades of light and shadow… shades of gray, as it were.

Posted in Everything Else | Tagged art, colors, nature, photography, plants, shade, shadow, trees | Leave a comment

Stuff we have seen on short walks around the neighborhood in the San Francisco Bay Area where I grew up and where we are celebrating late Christmas…

Posted on January 21, 2021 by pouringmyartout

Well, yeah, we saw San Francisco, over across the bay.

A red-tailed hawk.

The moon.

Some yard art.

A cool art house that has been like that for years.

The lady who lives there is as interesting as her house is.

But, that is the Bay Area.

The regular rules of normalcy do not apply.

People do not worry about conformity much.

And they are pretty ‘woke’.

Jessica, in front of her dream home.

Some nice clouds.

So there you go.

Posted in My travels | Tagged america, art, bay area, california, humor, photography, san francisco, san francisco bay area, travel | 2 Comments

Saving democracy… part 2… (or); The one-fancy-finger salute to tRump on his way out the door…

Posted on January 21, 2021 by pouringmyartout

Okay.. what the actual heck?… I hear you all muttering. This could have been on the saving Christmas series of posts, but bear with me.

First of all, to clear things up, why did I have one fancy, flame and metallic-red, super long fingernail?

Because Mollie, our younger daughter, shown on the left above, got an awesome nail doing set for late Christmas.

Her sister Jessica got the glitter treatment.

Not bad for beginners.

Mollie, seen here holding hands with her boyfriend, went for the more subdued stars.

I wanted to join in, and as an artist, I wanted the perfect way to wave goodbye to four years of rubish.

I went with the deep-red metallic background and the ever classy flames, on a long pointy nail so tRump wouldn’t miss my salute.

The thing is… hey, thing, where you been?… I am secure in my masculinity, and now I am secure in my democracy. So I kept it on for a few hours until it caught on something and came off.

Posted in Pictures of me | Tagged art, christmas, democracy, fashion, humor, nails, photography, style | 3 Comments

Saving Christmas; part 3…

Posted on January 21, 2021 by pouringmyartout

We managed to pull off our traditional Christmas dinner, after all the quarantining and testing and what not. Did I mention that I drove my mother-in-law’s RV to the Bay Area in a convoy with my wife, younger daughter and her boyfriend, just so we didn’t have to use pubic restrooms?

All just to keep my 97-year-old mother safe. There she is waiting for us to get the dinner served.

My brother Sid, carving the roast beef.

Yorkshire pudding… did I mention that we have a traditional English Christmas dinner every year?

We even have the English Christmas poppers… Google them.

And we did the Christmas Eve matching jammies thing. Mollie and Ben looked adorable as usual.

And so did Jessica and her husband, Jason.

I was going for moving family photos, to save on the cloud for posterity.

Then it got goofy.

There was photo bombing…

But it was fun, even without the other brothers and their families. Sometimes we have around 15 people in the house for almost a week, not to mention guests for fancy dinners and people who stop by to see us. Covid toned that down.

Mom is still waiting for that dinner.

Jason got a little tippsy.

I tried to look nice for late-Christmas dinner, but I do not shave on my vacations!

My mom loves having family around, and that happens less often now.

She finally gave up and began toasting herself.

At the end of the meal comes the Plum Pudding, doused in liquor, and set ablaze. You can’t take a good photo because it is dark, and the shutter wants to stay open and the flash ruins everything anyway.

Jason, wearing the crown from his popper… seriously, Google them.

And Mollie’s boyfriend Ben, the new kid on the block, was fitting in well as always.

Posted in Stories of my life | Tagged art, christmas, dinner, family, food, humor, people, photography, plum pudding, yorkshire pudding | 4 Comments

Saving democracy… part 1…

Posted on January 20, 2021 by pouringmyartout

My 97-year-old mother, with Joe Biden.

Because we had a late Christmas, we decided we should have a late New Years also. It was all planned by my older daughter Jessica. We did it during the inauguration.