Fall Fell

Saturday morning with the Bean was very obviously The First Hike of Fall. Nature was being really over-the-top about it with the colours, smells and mist everywhere.

I found a free download of GIMP and so far it's pretty decent for something that makes me think of the uncomfortable scenes from Pulp Fiction. Especially since it's free and not seventy bajillion dollars like Photoshop.

Tonight I'm hooking it up to the scanner to see how it works for art stuff.

September Sunday

I've been trying to cut back on the amount of photos I take on my hikes. East Sooke Park really tests my resolve... and then breaks it into tiny pieces and scatters it to the winds. I think I took over 200 shots and I still have no photo editing software. Brilliant planning on my part! Good thing I live with graphics geeks.

New carved stamp of some generic carp-like fish... in white ink on canvas book cover.

Part of another book cover that's too big for the scanner.

Phew!

My blog attendance over August has been abysmal, but I see from my blog roll that I'm in good company. We finally saw some summer-esque weather around here in the past few weeks and I've been wringing all the sunshine out of it that I could. This Friday's hike showed signs of fall, even if Saturday's kayaking burned my poor shoulders to buffalo wings. I wish I had photos of the kayak trip, but neither of my cameras nor my phone are waterproof in any way.

Maple leaves on Jocelyn Hill

Here's my sign of impending autumn, though.

I'm still without Photoshop cd... I believe it eloped with my blue sock and my last working fine line black marker. If you see any of them, please let me know.

Until I break down and start looking for a cheap alternative I have to steal moments here and there on Axel's machine so I haven't too many art shots. Nature photos are a lot quicker to edit, for some reason.

Carved rubber stamps - wild rose and fir cone

I have been arting a fair bit and having huge fun carving my own stamps still. The two pictured were inspired by some of Patti's amazing botanical photography.

I do have more shots, but Blogger is burping on these two as it is. I'll hopefully get some more up later in the week. Probably not, though. ;-)

Testing...

So I discovered the blog app for my Android phone and, crazy as this seems, I'm currently typing this up at the bus stop while I wait. ;-)

I get such a kick out of this phone, plus it takes pretty decent shots.

I have yet to find a decent free photo editor app but I'm still looking.

Okay I'm going to hit publish before my bus arrives and see if everything shows up in proper order.

Hiking in the Clouds

It was raining so hard this morning that not even Bean would come out with me today. I'd planned for Gowlland Todd but ended up at Mt. Work instead and climbed to the summit through a forest-scented soup of warm fog and rain. I ended up drenched from head to foot but was still too hot to wear more than one layer of clothing. A proper summer morning in the rainforest! I left the Nikon at home, so all of these photos I took on my Samsung phone.

Carving rubber in the sunshine

I was out hiking at Matheson Lake early this morning with Bean and a friend, and then out to Patti's for an afternoon sitting outside by her pond and carving stamps in the studio. A pretty good Canada Day, really.
Here are a couple of pages from my small Strathmore journal showing two of the new stamps I made: the messy, messy pattern, and a long cloud. I put them over top of an existing background and then played with pen and pencil crayon.

And here are some shots from the Matheson Lake hike.

Playing with white lines

Watered down fluid acrylic background with green Pitt pen and white gel pen.