Altered Photography: Jazzing up Colorless Dull Photos

 

Do-Something-Everyday, May 3, 2016

For today's project, I took a rather dingy photo that I took of the fountain in the Piazza della Rotonda in front of Pantheon in Rome (bottom photo, above) and altered it into this dynamic image (top photo, above).

Zodiac Art Series: Aries

Finished the third one in the Zodiac Art Series last one. The other finished pieces are here and here.

Thanks for visiting.

Sari Wall Art: Born Free

The theme of "Born Free" is depicted in this mixed media art. The background created using vintage sari fabric on a water color paper painted in shades of yellow evoke the freshness of the open green. It makes a perfect setting for the colorful bird and the lovely butterfly to feel at home and to fly freely without constraints.

The images of the bird and the butterfly are been given a 3-D effect with glazes. I have machine stitched four sides of the watercolor paper and affixed it on a gallery wrapped stretched canvas. I have added filigree embellishments above the artwork on the canvas and have added the words "Born Free" at the bottom.

This mixed media piece is available in my Etsy shop.

Thanks for visiting.

Ma and Masi Together

Part of my ongoing exploration of South Asian literature, this mixed media artwork was inspired by Anita Desai's Winterscape, a masterpiece on cross-cultural minefields.

Sometimes,  I have the students in my Cross-Cultural Perspectives class read this story. It is a perfect case study of the infamous pronouncement of Kipling, "The East is east and the West is west and never the twain shall meet". In a span of 20+ pages, Desai lays out every cultural trope: our culture/their culture, our norm/their deviance, to name a few. Just when we assume that we know where the story is going, Desai being a master storyteller that she is, pulls the rug gently from under our feet. In the small act of taking a photo of Ma and Masi watching the snow together, she makes Beth cross a cultural border and, gives her a glimmer of understanding of how her Indian husband came to be raised by one sister while born to the other. It is an understanding that comes not from rational processing but from something deep, almost mystical. Beth's impulsive act to get it on the camera may have been as much to capture the moment as to remind herself that she understood.

Without Borders

 Since the beginning of this year, I have been working on and off on creating artwork based on South Asian literature. Early in the year, I did this piece on Shakuntalam, Kalidasa's classical love story. This new piece, Without Borders, inspired by Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, is very post-modern. I was trying to respond to Melange team's November challenge "Home" and the idea came when I spent one whole Saturday morning hunting for documents to apply for Indian visa. I felt much like Ashima, a borderless nomad, straddling a 10,000 miles wide Asian Indian boat. The power of Lahiri's book lies in the fact that global themes of dislocation, loss, and the longing for roots are explored inside the particulars of one Bengali woman's immigrant experience. This point was most poignantly brought to me when my Brazilian born aerobic instructor asked me if I had read the book. Ashima, derived from the sanskrit word asima, means "without boundaries". The book may have well been about Miguela, Ivana, Habiba or even one Indira.

Sari Art Mixed Media Yin and Yang in Autumn

This sari art is my interpretation of the Daoist concept of Yin Yang-- dark-light, strong images-soft lines, text-symbols are brought together to create a unified whole. Select wisdom sayings from Dao De Jing are printed in soft colors on the background along with the Chinese symbol of harmony and peace. The fusion of Indian materials and colors with Chinese text and symbol is also very yinyang.

You can find more about this artwork here : yin and yang

How to Create U-Tube Video for Your Etsy, 1000 Markets Teams

As an artisan with a shop on Etsy I belong to several teams and on 1000Markets, I founded and manage a market known as the Asian Inspirations Market.

This week as part of my team duties, I created u-tube videos for the Etsy Melange Team ( a mixed media art group with shops on Etsy) and the Asian Inspirations Market. Many of my team/market colleagues wanted to know if it was difficult to do. Actually, it is not. It is super simple and I did it all on Picasa. Basically, it is a slide show converted into a movie format. Below is the video I made for the Etsy Melange Team

Here is how:

Note: Before you gather the images for the video, get the artists consent first.

1. You need to create a folder to hold the images that will be included in the video. Give a name to the folder, preferably with the team name and a date. This is what will show on the first slide (you can also edit the slide later).

2. Go to individual shops and decide on the product that will be part of the slide show.

2. Saving the images---I have a Mac and it is simply a matter of dragging the product image to the folder. Do not use the thumbnail image. Click on the thumbnail and copy the image that shows up on the actual product page. 

3. Once you have added all the images that you want to include in the video, open up Picasa. If you do not have Picasa, you can download it  here

4. In Picasa, select the folder that contains the images and click on the Movie icon at the bottom of the screen.

5. The movie window will look like this

5. Now you set up the video as you want. Under the movie tab, on the left side, you can load audio from your hard disk and use the various options to play (e.g, fit photos to audio, truncate audio etc.).

6. Set the transition style.

7. if you want to add any text slide, click on the slide tab and it will open a blank slide and you can add your text. I must warn you here--the adding and editing text is the clunkiest part of this process. 

8. Click on "Create Movie" to make the movie. It will take a few minutes for it to process.

9. Play it and if you want to change it, click on edit, make the changes and click on "Create Movie" again. You can do this any number of times till you are satisfied.

10. Now the last step: Click on the YouTube button. You need to have an account onYouTube t to load the video. Once you set up the account, follow the instructions on the screen.

Etsy Melange video on YouTube