Canvas to the Imagination

The previous couple of weeks I’d been getting myself into a very unhappy state of mind. I haven’t been feeling good about myself with many doubts and insecurities eating away at my self-confidence. I’ve also been in a rut creatively since I finished working on the fairy tale altered books. For me, self-confidence and creativity go hand-in-hand.

I think I’m a lot burnt out after a very intense year with too much stress and not enough vacation, and then I started a new part-time job. And while the new part time job is terrific and challenging, it means art and creativity get much less time than I’d like to dedicate to them.

To give myself something good to focus my energy into I decided I needed to get the creative juices flowing and begin a small project. I’ve chosen to do one self portrait a day for the next month. I started shooting a week ago today and I’m already at day 8 of the series.

Day 1: Losing My Head

Day 2: A Moment In The Sun

Day 4: It’s Raining

Click through to flickr to view the rest of the series so far.

Some of the photos have been more creative than others, but it all depends on how much time I have available each day. I’m really enjoying working on this series so far.

I wanted to shoot a fun portrait of Boris and myself to send out as a digital Christmas card. We finally got around to doing this the other evening but I wasn’t quite happy with the results. The portrait wasn’t creative or fun enough to suit me so I decided to take seven photos from the series and make them into an animated gif. I’ve never done this before but It was really fun figuring out how to put it together in photoshop. It was relatively simple too. And now you can watch Boris and I kiss over and over and over…

The tutorial I used is for Photoshop CS3, if you want to make your own animated gif.

These were taken almost three years apart but they both capture a similar feeling. I decided to revisit this idea because I felt like taking a self portrait last week but wanted to hide my face and do something with an umbrella. I like the most recent one better because the shadow gives it more atmosphere.

One of the things they don’t tell you about being an artist is that it’s a lonely road. But only at times.