3Muse Challenge - Gotta Dance

My black, white, and red image ended up being a little off color.

Sigh.

The Golden Egg

Flamingo Moon - 3Muse Challenge

So Blue - Digitalmania challenge

Fiery - TAW Orange challenge

Balloon Walk - Digitalmania challenge

War of the Roses - Banksy Digitalmania Challenge

Our challenge this week at Digitalmania was Banksy.

I thought it would be an interesting change to go medieval on this challenge!

Jarred Octopi - 3Muse Jar Challenge

I don't know what these two sinister octopi are up to, but it can't be good.

Don't ask me how we arrived here as I am not quite certain myself.

I started off with an image of a Victorian girl in a yellow floral field with a wide blue sky.  My intention was to give her a nice balloon, maybe a poodle head or an elephant head.  Harmless, easy fun.

After I cleaned up the black and white image and then painted in some pretty colors, I realized she wasn't right for my balloon girl so I saved the psd file and found another Victorian girl to walk my surreal balloons.

Three Muses posted a jar challenge last week so I opened up my older saved image to play with.  Sometimes I think we have a goal in mind and other times the very vaguest of ideas.

To begin with, I put her into a jar, thinking maybe Alice in Wonderland?  Maybe I should add a rabbit?  Then I thought that she could be one of many jars on a shelf....  I decided that instead she would going somewhere so I added a cart.  Where to go next?

I wasn't sure so I saved again and left the project for another day.

While scrolling through the huge piles of images I have on my pc, I noticed a particular vintage image of an octopus. ( If you follow me at all, you might notice that I seem to have a weakness for octopi.  There is just something so intriguingly alien about them).  I noticed that this particular octopus would be perfect for the top of the jar.

Now, I had a little girl in a jar, on a cart, with an octopus on top in the middle of a yellow floral field.  Clearly, the cart wasn't going anywhere and looked out of place in a floral meadow.

I changed out the ground to a more vintage cobblestone.  I added some columns to give it a sense of an urban landscape and decided that it needed a wall.  Finally, I realized that the octopus needed a sea to escape too and that the cart needed to be pulled by something so....

Here we are.

I really think that they are friendly octopi.  Really!  They are probably just bringing a misplaced child home to her family....

I LOVE Halloween - TAW Challenge

Our challenge this week from Take a Word blogspot was Halloween.

I started with a photo that I had taken of Lafayette Cemetery in New Orleans.

I made up this piece but the more I looked at it, the more it felt like two separate pieces.

It seemed as if the two halves don't really belong together or that 

the Victorian bat girl is too far from the Halloween tomb.  

She seems so beautifully framed in the middle of the 

walkway so I hated to try to scoot her closer.

So I decided to break the first artwork into two pieces.

I left the bat girl intact in her walkway, ready to fly up and create Halloween havoc.

I added some elements to my Halloween tomb.

I went back and forth with my tomb poem, finally deciding on a quote from 

Samuel Coleridge's Kubla Khan.  It seemed suitably romantic and eerie.

Henry the Eighth - Digitalmania Banksy Challenge

Out Foxed

Catherine the Not so Bad - Digitalmania Banksy challenge

Our challenge this week at Digitalmania was Banksy.

I'm a little ambivalent on the subject of graffiti.  On the one hand I dislike 

the tagging sort that is little more than vandalism.

Yet, when you see a clever witty piece by someone like Banksy, 

I can't help but admire the artistry of it.

My take on the Banksy challenge took me back to my love of history.  

Even in medieval times, surely, there were young vandals making trouble 

and tagging the ever so majestic castle walls...

Paris Stroll - 3Muse Umbrella Challenge

Maybe my Victorian Kitty Girl isn't actually in Paris.

Maybe she is actually sashaying down the street in a photo I took in New Orleans.

Certainly, it all seems to have a Parisian feel.

The challenge this week at Three Muses was a Rain / Umbrella challenge.

My Victorian Kitty Girl might actually be carrying a parasol to keep the sun from bronzing her perfect lily white complexion, but in New Orleans, an afternoon storm is just a few hours or minutes away!

Blue Thylacine - TAW Australia Challenge

The challenge this week from Take a Word was Australia.

My first thought was of some of the amazing wildlife found only in Australia.

I've always thought how unfortunate that the intriguing Thylacine is gone from this world.

But perhaps they can still be found in Fairyland?

My sources are public domain images from Wikimedia Commons, all altered to suit my needs.  ;)

The Big Bad meets the Three - 3Muses Challenge

I admit that I am a little torn here.

On the one hand, I would really hate for anything

to happen to such adorable little girls.

On the other hand, it is three versus one.

I think our Big Bad might be

a little over-matched on this one.

(Also, wolves are endangered!)

Mr Lumberjack and his axe are NOT ok!

The Three Muses challenge this week was all about the power of Three.

As soon as I saw these little Victorian girls, I knew I had found my three.

The wolf is courtesy of the US Parks and Wildlife and the pretty treescape is a public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.