Moontree

 [Schrag Canvas is how I have decided to designate posts that are exclusively visual. Apologies for some format glitches. I am dodging between platforms to get this post out to y’all!]

My history of image-making has had about as many different stops as the New York subway. OK maybe I exaggerate. I haven't changed visual emphasis 427 times, but sometimes it feels like it.

From doodles in library books (for which I was deservedly chastised), through photography and my undergraduate senior thesis film, into video and now digital media, always including some aspect of marks on paper - it has been a kaleidoscopic ride. Here is the most recent stop.

Moontree

Today's canvas blends a few of the stops along my visual subway. The tree began as my current standard: hand drawn and colored in a 14x21 inch format. 

But then I fed that image into my computer in a 21x28 format at 150 dpi. I went into that image in photoshop and "cleaned and brightened" the image at the 4 - 5 pixel level.

Next I added another layer and "borrowed" an image from NASA's collection of images of the "super moon" from several months ago. I then merged those two layers together and made everything except the tree and the moon transparent.

 

OK. Next I added another layer behind those two merged/transparent layers. I went back to a sunrise image I had created some 20 or 30 years ago for an image I called Tequila Sunrise. I cut out a piece of that sunrise that "felt right" and copied it into the Moonrise image third level so it floated behind the tree and the moon.

You will have do image that old image, it is two computers and a hard drive away from me right now 🥴

And that completed the composition. Only problem is that when I had the 21x28 image printed it came out huge! 21x28 covers a lot of real estate which quickly shoves the cost of "appropriate" framing into the "I don't think so!" level. So Moontree will live with a more prosaic backing for the time being.