2012-04-15 East Kennett, Wiltshire, England

The 2012 crop circle season has begun and I have colored the first circle of the year.

1024x768 Fall at the Lake Wallpaper

The fall colors around the lake are always a joy to see. So I decided that I will use the photo of them for November’s wallpaper. 

Right click on the file link below to save the file to your computer

Wallpaper

• 1024 x 768 pixels
• 1280 x 1024 pixels
• 1920 x 1200 pixels

Wallpaper with Calendar

• 1024 x 768 pixels
• 1280 x 1024 pixels
• 1920 x 1200 pixels

Painted Optical Fiber box

It looks like our street is finally getting optical fiber cables from the phone company. First I saw a tags appear on hydro poles, then there was this big white junction box on the pole. Now there are workers working on the poles installing the cable and the white box has been transformed into this beautiful painting of Oat Hill Lake. That’s when I decided to make this the wallpaper for October.

Right click on the file link below to save the file to your computer

Wallpaper

• 

  1024x768 painted lake wallpaper

  1024 x 768 pixels
• 1280 x 1024 pixels
• 1920 x 1200 pixels

Wallpaper with Calendar

• 1024 x 768 pixels
• 1280 x 1024 pixels
• 1920 x 1200 pixels

For a long time I had this idea floating around my brain of using a puzzle overlay on some of my graphics.

So I posted on the microsoft.public.imagecomposer.discussion newsgroup for a puzzle overlay. I received a puzzle overlay and a puzzle font.

My daughter and I were trying to create a puzzle with the font, and we succeeded, but it was quite difficult. Then one thing led to another and the puzzle pieces started to look like people to me and this creation was born.

Puzzle People

For a long time I had this saying buzzing around my head and wanted to make it into a bumper sticker. It just never worked. Well, now it just kind of created itself. My biggest trouble had always been to make it look like the words are jumping over the fence. Then it hit me I had to distort the original half circle I had created and the rest was easy.

Playing with distortion

Solar Flares Graphic

I found at the discovery channel’s online site a camera that takes ultraviolet pictures of the solar flares. As soon as I saw the image I knew that it had great possibilities as a graphic. So I took the original green sun image from December 16/1999 and played around with the saturation and put my creation together.

Since I have been drawn to creating things in the round lately, it has been a natural progression to “Mandalas”.

Here is the dictionary definition of the word:

man·da·la 
Pronunciation: ‘man-da-la 
Function: noun 
Etymology: Sanskrit mandala circle 
Date: 1859

1 : a Hindu or Buddhist graphic symbol of the universe; specifically : a circle enclosing a square with a deity on each side

2 : a graphic and often symbolic pattern usually in the form of a circle divided into four separate sections or bearing a multiple projection of an image

- man·dal·ic /”man-’da-lik/ adjective  

While looking through the links for Mandala’s at About.com’s Healing page, I came across one site where they linked the creation of Mandala’s to Numerology (Clare’s Mandala Page). The person’s name and birthdate is translated into numbers and the numbers have colors assigned to them. This fits perfectly in with my interest in Numerology and Graphic Design.

These Mandalas are computer generated with Microsoft’s Image Composer program.

The ”Marlies’ Mandala” is called that as it uses the colors for my name and birthdate based on numerology.

The “Turtle Mandala” just kind of came together on its own. I started out with this full color version and then it progressed to the final result of version 2.

Dream Window animated

I like to work with dingbat fonts to create graphics. I needed a graphic looking through a window and could not find one, so I made my own.

Dream Window

I created this image the following way: The window frame started out as a film strip piece, the mountains are variations of the same character. And the rest is just playing around with the program. I created this totally in Microsoft’s Image Composer 1.5 and Gif Animator.

The Geisha

While looking through newsgroups I came across a link for a tutorial for a Geisha with PhotoImpact. I really like the finished image, but don’t have that program. So I decided to see if I could follow the tutorial and create the Geisha with Microsoft’s Image Composer.

It turned out to be a lot of fun and quite easily done. When I didn’t have the tools to duplicate the tutorial, I just improvised. I found that the ‘Shape Blocks Solid Font’ came in quite handy for unusual shapes.

To create the fabric of the kimono I used the Xenofex filters rather than bmp files as fabric swatches.

the night window

I wanted to create a window that I could put different scenery behind, but did not have the means to do it.

Now in the meantime I found a perfect window frame. The glass panes were originally white, but by cutting them out and inserting a night sky behind it it look almost real.