art photo blend

Photo Blends 1: Collared Dove and Flowers

I’ve been continuing to play with GIMP, the open source photo editing software, to blend photos and create new digital art. Usually, I create 7-10 iterations out of 2 photos and see where I end up. In August 2020, I shared 14 iterations from 1 photo of a dahlia in a post called The Arty Dahlia. When I make these photo blends, which is my term for them, I never know where I will end…

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observations

Motherwort at the End of Summer

Back in June, I posted about a plant I found in our rain garden that I was unfamiliar with. It had these beautiful, tiny purple flowers along the stem. Readers of my blog helped me identify it as motherwort. Wanna know what happened to those tiny flowers? They turned into spiky, spiny, poker-thingys. Youch! Now I’m afraid to touch the plant. I did not see that transformation coming.

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art observations

Hosta

Continuing my floral-themed somewhat frivolous blog posts (frivolous only because they don’t take long to write, but not in terms of the beauty of these plants), here are a couple of photos from the hostas we have in the yard. We were fortunate to adopt what turned into an entire bed of hostas (and then some) from a gardener who was thinning her plants a few years ago. The hostas are looking healthy and gorgeous…

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art observations

Tiger Lily

The lily crop has been tremendous this year. One after another the lilies in our yard have been taking turns blooming. I’ve been waiting a week to see how the Tiger Lilies were going to pop. Here is the first one. I was not disappointed. The great thing is there are more to come. I was lucky enough to capture some interesting close-ups. Check out the structure of the different parts of the lily, especially…

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inspiration observations

Lush

This, right here, right now, is my favorite time of the year. April, May, June, whenever in Minnesota it decides to warm up and become green, a vibrant spring green. My college color theory professor pointed out that if you pay close attention to nature, spring greens and summer greens have different qualities. I’m a spring green kind of gal. I especially appreciate spring green with a light rain. The foliage becomes lush, which is…

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