Tag: Photography

Posted in anxiety, Knitting, Photography

Fall in the Desert

Posted on by debthumanblog

I can do one (or both) of two things when I have anxiety. I can either eat a couple gallons of rocky road ice cream or I can knit. While waiting for the results of a biopsy (turned out to be not cancer, thank you God) I worked on a stress afghan.

First, I bought two big skeins of yarn. That’s what’s at the bottom of the afghan. Then, I realized two skeins weren’t enough so I bought more yarn. That’s what the rest of the afghan looks like. While it may not be great art, it’s nice to snuggle under.

The full moon this month was a super moon. I shot moonrise.

And I shot moonset.

There are problems getting the sky right when shooting the moon. The moon is so bright that it throws off the light metering.


The antidote is to put the landscape into the photo.

Fall in western New York, where I’m from, is yellow, gold, and red. Fall in the desert is mostly green with a bit of white and yellow tossed in.

Itty bitty flowering plant that flowers in the fall.

This is what the flower looks like up close.

So far, this barrel cactus has survived a two-decade drought. But something weird is growing on top of the cactus.

I’ve no idea what this is. I don’t think it’s a seed pod and I have never seen a barrel cactus grow a little cactus.

I’ve no idea what this is, but I thought it looked interesting.

A few flowers cling to the desert sage bush. The bush flowers after it rains and it hasn’t rained in a while. I doubt more rain now would trigger blooming. The shrubs know it’s fall and time to rest.

I decided to take my commissions from Spoonflower sales and order sheets. This is the pattern I used. What I love about the Spoonflower sheets is the fitted sheet actually fits the mattress and the top sheet is generous.

I’m linking with Nina Marie here: https://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com

My Spoonflower shop is here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman

My shop, Deb Thuman Art, is here: http://www.DebThumanArt.com

Posted in Depression, Fiber, Peripheral neuropathy, Photography, Quilts

Art Heals

Posted on by debthumanblog

I’m having a peripheral neuropathy flareup. One of the sure antidotes to the pain is to make art. I had a major depressive episode Monday, and saw the beginnings of a quilt in my head. Or maybe it’s the beginnings of a painting. I’m not entirely sure. I thought about how bipolar disorder, or any DSM-V label, separates the person with the illness from the rest of the world. Like the time I listened to a woman clearly old enough to know better talk trash about someone who had bipolar disorder. When I told her I have bipolar disorder, she literally backed away from me. Gotta watch out for those mental illness cooties.

I dug out my box of fabric and started auditioning fabric for this quilt.

This usually takes a long time. Today was not usually. Today, the fabrics jumped out of the box and insisted on being put together. I was careful about values. How many times have quilters gotten out fabrics and then realized every fabric was a medium value. The red is medium bordering on dark, but I didn’t find a fabric I liked better.

Start here:

End here.

I”ve been playing around with moon shots lately. We’ve had partially cloudy skies and I wanted to get some of the cloud feeling into the shot. The shot, without any editing, is the top photo. I shoot in RAW rather than JPEG. Current thinking is that because modern sensors are so much more sensitive, there’s no need for RAW. RAW files are huge and take up a whole lot of room on the hard drive or the external storage. I don’t use the cloud. I don’t trust the security and someone dumping child pornography into your cloud account can net you many years in a federal prison. Worse, because cloud users don’t own the cloud, the feds don’t need users’ permission to run barefoot through all the person has stored. Because the user doesn’t own the cloud, the user’s standing to contest the warrant or warrentless search is likely nil. Translation: if the feds find child pornography in your area of the cloud, you’re screwed.

The RAW advantage is the sensor records far more detail than JPEG. That advantage is critical when doing nature photography and you have only what nature has given you to work with. When I adjusted the exposure, the background was revealed. The photo is a whole lot more intriguing than the sky was when I took the original shot.

I’ve been playing around with photos in editing with the intention of using the final photo to design fabric. Lately, my Spoonflower shop has gotten a lot of traffic and I’ve had some sales. You can find my designs here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman

I am linking with Nina Marie here: https://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com

Posted in Fiber, Photography, Quilts

Birth Of An Idea or What Can I Do With This Photo?

Posted on by debthumanblog

People have asked me where I get my art ideas from. Most of the time, I’ve no idea. Sometimes I see the finished piece in my head, then I work on the design in my sketch book. Lots of times, I figure it out as I go along. 

Recently, we went to Bosque del Apache. I worked on shooting birds in flight. It’s harder than it looks. I had one shot I liked, but the sky was gray and the photo looked washed out. Here’s the unedited version.

I tried to fix the shot, but nothing seemed to work well.

It still looked washed out. I tried again.

Still didn’t like it.

So, I started to play with funky overlays and weird adjustments.

I didn’t like what I had created. Until……I made the funky edited version my profile photo on Facebook and it had been my profile photo for a few days. Then I started to see the funky version. Really see the funky version. It would make an interesting quilt. I’m working on the design on my iPad. iPad and iPencil make for a never ending sketchbook. 

I haven’t figured out how to handle the background. I like the  washed out sandy, pastel colors in the photo, but I haven’t figured out how to translate that to fabric. I’ve got some water color pencils and those might work. I’ve also got water color crayons. Maybe they would work. I’ve got fabric paint which might be the best approach. Now that it’s cooler, dyeing results in pastels rather than saturated colors. Saturated colors require sunlight and heat. Two things that are in abundance in the desert during the summer.

I’m linking with Nina Marie  http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com  Stop by and see what other artists are creating. 

Looking for cool jewelry or wild scarves? Please stop by my store, Deb Thuman Art http://DebThumanArt.com

Posted in Photography, Quilts

The cure for boredom? Be a multi-media artist.

Posted on by debthumanblog

I find that the more art toys I play with, the more ideas I have. At the moment, I’m working on photography and a quilt. They seem to feed into each other. This morning, I spent quality time taking one photograph…..

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and seeing the different ways I could play with it using special effects.

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Light leaks.

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Playing with texture and color. I think there’s a quilt in here somewhere.

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An effect called tiny planet. There might be a jewelry design in there.

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Just for fun. The bottom one reminds me of the traditional quilt pattern Tumbling Blocks. The others make me think about what I could do with fabric and shape.

I’ve been working on the bipolar quilt, and I came up with an idea for a series of self portraits. I’m not finished with the bipolar quilt, but I did get the quilt sandwich put together and started doing hand quilting.

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I haven’t quite decided how to quilt the spaces between the leaves, but I’m toying with the notion of quilting leaf outlines using a metallic thread.

Some of the leaves I’ve finished embellishing since I last posted. img_5757img_5755img_5753

The tentative working title is: Assorted Parts of an Unintegrated Whole. Like so much of my work, this quilt is autobiographical.

Last week while we were in Albuquerque, NM, Jim and I met up with Rachael and Amir Roggel. Rachael is part of the International Jewish Quilters list. We had lunch, good conversation and showed each other our latest work. Afterward, Jim and I went to Quilts Ole in Corrales, NM. They had fat quarters on sale. It would have been rude not to buy fat quarters on sale. So I bought some. I was picking out colors for the sky and soil for the for real version of Tree of Life. I’ve been looking at landscape photos on the Digital Photography School Facebook page and paying particular attention to the sky in those photographs. I’m now having ideas for how to do the sky and soil and thinking about changing how I usually put things together.

Once again, I have a surplus of ideas and not enough time to work on all of them.

I’m linking with Nina Marie. Click here to see her work and the work of other terrific artists.