Photography, photomontage and digital art..

Hello world.

It is over four months since my last post. I really didn't mean such a long gap between posts, sorry. Many things have happened in those four months;  a holiday, then two lots of major internal work on the house. I also had the first of  two full knee replacements. I'm having the second one done at the end of October. Expect a break after the NEXT post. I shall make the effort to put one up before the operation. I  think it will be a selection of my favorite macro photography photos taken this year. The operation takes a long time to recover from and takes a tremendous amount of mental and physical stamina out of you but it has been worth it. It proved to be a life changing, life enhancing event for me. Following the operation, I seem to have fallen into a hiatus, it has taken me some time to pull out of.

So, on with this new post. Sometime ago, I thought I'd have a go at a self portrait. I created  several, some I was more pleased with than others. A lot of artists do this, some have been accurate drawings or paintings, some abstract, or even tongue-in-cheek ones. I decided to start this post with one mine. My dear friend Roger, (hello Roger) does not like the white areas in this one. I explained that they're supposed to represent places where the paper has been torn out.

Self Portrait #3.

Here are two more "portraits" but not of me!

The Queen of Dreams.

Rock Troll.

Six photos now. I came across this spiders web, it was too good to miss. The colours and composition were perfect. Nature has a knack of doing that.

Spiders Web.

St John's Wort.

I took the image below with a powerful telephoto lens, It's reflections of  people passing a large window. They looked as if they were dancing. Sometimes you just happen to be there at the right time, in the right frame of mind and the magic of inspiration happens.

Street Dancers.

The following is of part of a modern building. It works well as an abstract image.

Building Detail.

The next shot was just begging to be taken. I wonder how many hundreds of people have passed it, or walked over it and didn't notice it.

Greek Horse.

I was on my way to somewhere, I forget where, when I spotted this scaffolding. It has a very sculptural feel to it. 

Construction #2.

Now for the abstract images. I won't comment on these unless I feel that one, or more need it.

Evening Sky.

Mozambique.

Fallen Angel.

The next one is a computer modified photo-montage. It's title, "The Mill is Your Chapel", is a rather bitter, sarcastic condemnation of the British Mill owners in the past. I seem to think I talked about this before.  Basically, I'm having a dig at the great textile mill owners in England in the 18th and 19th Century. A great many of them were members of the Methodist chapel. Without going into the complexities of it all, here is the thrust of my title and the piece of art.In the 1800s conditions were very harsh for mill workers. They generally worked in terrible conditions, with little or no safety, for long hours and very low wages. Also, children from five or six years old were set to work in mills for anything from 12 to 16 hours a day, the were often very badly treated, part starved and paid very little. Often children would be found in the road having falling asleep whilst walking from the mill to their homes. On the other side of the coin, a lot of Methodist preachers at the time were giving sermons to the workers from the pulpit about putting up with their situation as, "The Lord would reward them in heaven." The mill owners and ministers at this time, were, of course living very rich lives with plenty of good food and drink and an easy, comfortable life. I'm sorry this was a long explanation, but I could not see a way of talking about why I called the next image what I did.

The image represents the chaos in the mills. You might need to study it before you seem the actual building in the work.

The Mill is Your Chapel.

On to lighter subjects after that.

City Bypass.

 Flying Fish.

Mushroom Spore Prints.

The polyptych below was inspired by Andy Warhol's screen prints. I did screen printing for a while, I really enjoyed it. It can be time consuming, demanding and fiddly, but when you get it right, the results are worth the effort. The subject is an extreme close-up of a halftone photo of a strawberry, from a magazine cover. 

Strawberry.

I Told You Before!

Volume in Context.

Solar Flare Telemetry,

The Shadow Lands,

I'm disappointed that it's taken so long to get this post out. I hope all my readers have enjoyed it and perhaps even liked, some of the work.

Be careful  and be good to each other.

Gordon.

Abstract Art, Abstract Expressionism, Modern Art, Photomontage, Photography.

Hello and welcome to everyone around the world. At last, the new post. Between continuing health issues and major work being done inside our house, I have  been kept away from blogging for a while. This post is a mixture of my latest work. As always, if  I think a piece needs any comments, I will add them immediately above that piece of art. So, in no special order, on with the show.

I'm starting with one I was particularly pleased with. As some of the regular readers will know, I have done a fair bit of Fine Art printing. I'm hoping to start again, once the work on the house is finished. The artwork below is in a fine art print style and came out far better than my expectations.

Still Life #7

Next, two more which I like a lot, both in a fine art print style.

Growth

Caves

Recently, we had some heavy snowfalls here in the village, followed by freezing conditions. The image below is a photograph of ice which had somehow created a bubble like surface. The ice was about 1 inch thick, (25.4cm).

 Ice Bubbles

The next image continues with the idea of something being frozen, then painted.

In Ice

I think it's time for something suggesting warm weather. I think the title says all I want to say about it.

Summer of  '67 #2

The next five pieces are part of  a series. They were created using a technique I was inventing, (making up) as I worked on the images. It was very experimental, I had no clear idea what the results would be like. It was quite exciting for me and gave me a pleasant surprise. 

Daleside

The following work, (The Last Mill Chimney) is a lament for the loss of England's great textile industry.

The Last Mill Chimney

Vases

Standing Figures

Three Harbour Views

The one below is a photomontage. It's part of a series entitled, "Lost Mills". It is another lament for our textile industry. Textiles are a huge part of Yorkshire's heritage, and were the main factor in it's wealth for a long time. For those visitors to this blog from overseas, I will explain that the area of Yorkshire I live is very hilly, being in the Pennine Mountain chain. It is a wonderful water catchment area, with plenty of streams and rivers, and is suitable for sheep. The water is "soft" i.e. it runs through Millstone Grit, (sandstone) and not Limestone. The calcium and magnesium carbonates in Limestone, result in "hard" water. Soft water is perfect for washing the oils and lanolin from the wool of sheep. (Soap lathers far better in soft water). Naturally, a textile industry formed here.  That was a very potted history of our textile industry, missing a lot out, such as the Industrial Revolution and the Luddites. Sorry Yorkshire! I'm (slowly) adding images to the "Lost Mill" series. 

Lost Mill #4

Quite a few of the next images fall loosely under the heading of  Abstract Expressionism, but by no means all of them. Two or three are abstract photomontage works. The rest are, well, take a look and decide for yourselves.

Devolving

Rays of Glory

Druid's Temple

Countryside Study

Island Splash

Seabed

Sunken Atlantis

Lambda

1950s Cocktail Bar

Lime

Green Rain

Robot 7XB

Robot 7XB was the last image in this post. I hope you liked what you have seen, or at least liked some of it. I've not decided what the subject of the next post will be yet. I do know that it is unlikely I shall be able to do another post within the next six weeks or so. I have to wait until the work being carried out at home is finished and I have access to my studio again. Plus we shall be taking a holiday on The Isle of Arran, in Scotland soon. We were there two years ago and I fell in love with it. I came home with a lot of photos, many of which are in this blog. Look at the post on Seaweeds for a start. I hope to be getting a lot more photos of parts of Arran that we didn't see last time.  I love malt whisky, so we shall be visiting the Arran Whisky distillery for certain. I'm getting excited already.

Please don't forget to leave a comment, thank you.

In the meantime, be nice to each other.

Gordon.

New blog post coming in the following week.

Hi

I'm sorry for the 3 month or so gap in postings. So many things have been going on that I've not been able to post. However, most of the images, (loosely called Modern Art) have been prepared. I want to add one or two more and some text, then it will be posted.

Below are two images to be going on with.

 Moonlit Estuary

Breakout 2

See you soon.

Gordon.

Sci-Fi and 3-D Art. 31st December 2017.

Hello and a very happy, peaceful and profitable New Year to you all.

Somehow, it seems fitting that I should mount this post on the last day of 2017. I hope you enjoy the work exhibited below. I shall make comments about any of the pieces here, which I feel would benefit from them.

Off we go...

Some of my friends may have seen this first piece before. It still remains one of my favourite works.

Alien Egg.

Still on the egg theme, the next one is one of the things I like to do with my art; create something in the hope that people looking at it will have that, "carpet-pulled-from-under-them", feeling. By this, I mean the viewer will try to rationalise what they see, attempting to fit it in to their personal frame of reference and experience. Like all artists who do this, I hope the viewer will fail and feel a little off balance, and possibly the path to new ways of seeing things will result. Quite a few of my works have that intention behind them.

Cosmic Egg.

One more of my "egg" themed works. This one is an alien egg before hatching.

Oval Shell Sunset.

The next two, are part of a long set I made showing an imagined holiday hotel on Mars. If Elon Musk, or the USA government have their way, this may become a reality a lot sooner than I expect.

Mars Hotel & Spaceport.

Looking out from the
Mars hotel window.

Below is done in the style of Sci-Fi graphic novels art. It's an attempt to show two scenes happening at different times, in one image. The spaceship is in colour, in the three front panels in real time. It's shadow can be seen as a reflection passing across the huge building behind. The ship it'self is just visible at the left edge of the right hand panel. This section is in the past. It's another part of the Mars Spaceport.

Spaceport 3 Admin Block.

We've had the alien egg, now it's time for the hostile alien warrior to show  himself. I based him on an evolved spider-like creature. A lady-friend of mine described him as, "A handsome beast".

Alien Warrior.

The following two are part of a set of five or six pieces based on the idea that the Earth is under attack by a very advanced race of aliens. The earth is being destroyed by them. The warrior above may be handsome specimen of the invaders, but they are certainly a powerful force to be reckoned with.

 Armageddon #1.

Armageddon #3.

Of course, we are under attack, but not defenceless. One of the Earth's most powerful weapons are the advanced, AI (Artificial intelligence) android warriors, know as cyber warriors.

Cyber Warrior.

I spent a long time teaching myself to draw realistic planets of various types. Here is one example.

Blue Twin Moons.

The image below, is a very advanced starship. These craft, as any Sci-Fi fan knows, are generally too big to land on Earth. The Knot Ship has been designed using twisted space-time physics, (think of a Mobius Curve). Therefore it is small enough to land on the larger planets. Like the Tardis, it's smaller on the outside, than it is on the inside. Here, it is emerging from the sea, on a planet in a far off star system. I have also made a photochromic-lithographic print of this image. I may show it on this blog sometime in the New Year.

Knot Ship Rising from the Sea.

Here is another of my radically designed space craft. It's a shape you will all recognise, I'm sure.

Pyramid Ship Landing.

Yet another of my space ship designs. This time it's a long-haul transport ship. Officially, it's used by the Intergalactic Alliance, to ferry essential equipment, foodstuffs and luxury goods to the outlying planets. Unofficially, it's used for a  bit of smuggling on the side. Not that the authorities are aware of this of course.

Alliance Fleet Arm Transporter Ship.

The next image proved to be quite popular, much to my surprise. This is another of my, "What the hell is going on here?" ones. At least one person has it hanging on their wall. I lose count of who has which of my works in their homes. I suppose I should keep a record, but it's far too late to start now.

Dali's Dream.

I thought I'd add a couple more examples of my surrealistic art. In the 1960s, when I was at art school, my first painting in acrylics, was a set of toroidal shapes (doughnuts). These were in bright colours, against a purple background. There were two tutors in this class, one looked at the half-finished work and said, "You have no colour sense whatsoever". I was a little put out, I KNEW what I was doing. The other tutor told the first one that she was wrong. Adding that I'd not have been able to use the colours I did, if I had no feeling for colour. She was right, I've been tested and have perfect colour vision and I love colour. I think that people in the Western world are frightened of it. I'm not, I wear bright colours.

Some 48 years later I finally managed to create the piece of work I was trying to, all that time ago. The image below was the result.

Desert Rings 2.

The next two works are hanging on people's walls. I'm always very flattered when someone likes my work enough to live with it on their wall.

Steel Staircase.

I had a friend who worked in a photographic shop. I was teaching him some computer art techniques. One day, I took a few of my latest stuff into the shop, to show him. I'd printed the one below on silver coloured photo paper, it looked amazing, almost 3-D. The young female assistant saw it. I've never seen a reaction like it before, or since. She was so impressed that she kept saying, "It's wonderful, I've never seen anything like it in my life, it's incredible". Bless her!

This image has been through several incarnations. Two friends of ours, Chris and Diane, have different versions to the one below. Hi both, Happy New Year!

Dreaming #1.

The one below has been on exhibition a couple of times, it created a lot of interest. One lady asked me how I'd done it. It's very difficult to explain to a person who has not seen or used 3-D imaging software. I did my best, but looking at her, I knew she was lost. Particularly when I told her that I'd drawn it all in wire frame first, then added surface colours and textures. Also, that I'd drawn it as if I was looking at it all in front of me. Then I'd moved the view point of  the camera dolly in to the middle of the image. I explained that it resulted in some of the marbles then being behind me, and only their reflections were visible in the other marbles. I know it sounded like magic, but I couldn't explain it any better.

PCB Marbles.

My very dear friend Roger, fell in love with this next one as soon as he saw it. It's now hanging up in his house.

Silicon Birthing.

I used part of the one below as the cover illustration for my Sci-Fi based instrumental CD, "Unseen Galaxies." 

Strange Cargoes.

Every time I look at the next one, it gives me a feeling of great serenity. I can visualise the craft here floating out of the sky in complete silence, then landing, very gently, in spite of their great size.

They Came from the Stars.

On that peaceful note, I think I will end this post, and wish you all a very happy New Year once more.

Gordon.