Trish Neil

Living and working on the Central Coast, NSW.

Category: digital

June 29, 2014

Scribbly Gum Image

 

This image was developed in a similar fashion to the previous one. The colours are different; it depends on the time of year the original image was taken. The outer bark is shed at various times throughout the year, but mostly late winter & early spring. The new bark that shows through underneath is bright cream and the scribble insect tracks are a rich red-brown. As the year goes on, the bark colours fade until they are a subtle blue/grey and the tracks are dark grey.

He looks very sad, this one – a grey, downcast creature, feeling rather vulnerable.

 

sad-eyed-man

 

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June 26, 2014

New Scribbly Gum Image

Here is a new way of treating my Scribbly Gum characters. I’m pleased with this; desaturating  the ground and using layer adjustments to enhance the figure brings out what I see in them without losing the context.

 

Frog-Prince

See him? I call him the Frog Prince. He seems a little pensive, for all his funny hat. Perhaps he is not sure whether he preferred being a frog.

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June 14, 2014

A Different Method for the Scribbly Gum Images

Earlier on I found another way to treat the “background” for these little faces I see in the insect tracks that are the scribbly gum ‘scribbles’. In photoshop I can ‘paint bucket’ into the bark texture. Depending on the settings, I can end up with a texture which is a bit like an etching, which I think throws the ‘figure’ into relief against this highly complicated ‘ground’.

Fools-and-Innocents-4 fools-and-innocents-6 fools-and-innocents-7 Fools-and-Innocents-12 Fools-and-Innocents-14fools-and-innocents-5fools-and-innocents-10Fools-and-Innocents-3

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June 1, 2014

New Scribbly Gum images

I have been exploring these for some time – is it really 6 months since I last posted anything? Time flies …..
I have made the ‘background’ (what my mind sees as ‘not the image’) black for some scribble creatures, like these ones.

scribble figure 2

scribble figure 39934

scribble figure 4

Funny sort of creatures, aren’t they? They seem to have such distinct personalities, you could begin to make up lives for each one; real caricatures. Feel free, anyone, to suggest their story!

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November 29, 2013

People I admire – Tamas Dezso

I just came across this great photographer in Timemachine magazine. This is beautiful, evocative work – have a look! It is all about the changes taking place in Hungary and central Europe, with such a sense of loss and mystery.  Tamas Dezso

Here, Anywhere

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September 2, 2013

Escaping Climate Change

I know they said that the trees would move up in altitude as climate warms, but I never dreamed they would move this fast………..

Escaping-Climate-Change

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June 3, 2013

Recent changes to ” …and all the trees were cast down …”

and all the trees were cast down

I’ve been doing some work on this lately. (An earlier version is on my Page titled Work in Progress under Portfolio.) I think it is improving; the theme is hopefully clearer; the ‘Last Judgment’ on the trees that mankind is meting out by collectively deciding that the natural world is not really as important as the financial world, represented by the city on the heights.

All these trees are basically as they are growing. I have rotated them to emphasize the “falling” aspect of the composition, but their tortured, anguished shapes are all their own. They seem to be falling and whirling down to destruction and despair with more energy than before.

I am gaining ever more respect for the Baroque painters whose work I am referencing. Their composition, their painting of clouds, and figures, it’s all quite awe-inspiring.

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April 22, 2013

Scribble #3

Proposal: that there are evanescent personae/archetypes which appear fleetingly in unexpected places, such as the in the curious markings of certain insects in particular species of tree, or in the twisted forms of tree trunks, or in half-caught glimpses and dream states. If you are careful, observant, introspective, you may, on a good day, catch these characters as they manifest.

fools-and-innocents-10

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April 8, 2013

Rock Platform with bonsai like trees

Rock-Platform-3

Rock Platform 1

I was wandering through the bush near where I live, looking at some aboriginal rock carvings, and came across these wonderful rock platforms. I lay down on the rock to take the first picture; the tea trees growing here are so stunted they are natural bonsais. The whole scene conveys that a lovely air of unreality that you get on your own in the bush. Well, not quite unreality, more being totally removed from everyday reality, of being in deep time rather than shallow, rushed time.

The recent rain brings the rocks alive with colour; these little runnels of water make the most beautiful abstract shapes.

Rock-Platform-2

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April 2, 2013

Easter scribble modified.

I am wondering if other people see what I see in these scribbly bark images. It’s a matter of perception, of figure/ground differentiation; what seems figurative to me is perhaps an abstract and meaningless mess of lines to many others.
Maybe I can make it clearer like this:
This is the image:

fools-and-innocents-11

And this is the image again. I have darkened all the ‘background’ areas, and emphasized the left ‘eye’.

fools-and-innocents-11-in-black

Does that make it clearer? Can you see the connection with Easter? It is a peculiarity of perception that once your brain has ‘seen’ something which makes sense to it in an otherwise random pattern, especially a face, you keep seeing only that face and it looks really obvious to you – but not necessarily to anyone else. I would love some feedback on this.

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