First [Lame] Attempt...

Well, it's been [over] a month since the residency, and it has taken me all this time to finally get into the studio. At Sarah's recommendation (my artist mentor), I just need to start building up my studio time. Even though my own business is crazy busy, I realize that I need to treat my art like a job (not one of those jobs I hate, but the kind I can't wait to get to.) The point is to develop the commitment and discipline to show up every day and do the work!

So, I can't believe I'm going to post this in here, but below is my first (I think pretty lame) attempt at moving in the direction I want to head. Hey, I have to start somewhere! And at least one thing I'm not afraid of is to try things. I spent a couple of hours today going through all of my images, and importing them into Lightroom where I could set keywords to each one and then perform searches to find specific subjects that I wanted to work with.

I picked four images, slightly at random (all nature based: three images of water/ice/snow reflections, and one of mushrooms growing on the side of a tree). I layered them and began to play with color and masking. There is/was no real focus or purpose to this image other than to begin the process and just see what happens. Even this very short exploration has already provided a lot of information (and queries) on what to try next (although the possibilities seem a bit limitless) and it will be interesting to see how this progresses. I guess that's why I'm posting this embarrassing first image in here, so that I can create a visual journal of sorts to document the progress as it happens.