I’ve been playing with some iPad photo apps today, working with some of my recent photos of the models I made last year to try and get an old silent movie look. As some of the models were inspired by 1920s German expressionist film the treatment should work ok and the little forest cottage does work pretty well with this dramatic monochrome look I think. I wanted to try and get that bleed and faint nimbus around the dark tones you sometimes get on old films. I love old black and white cartoons for the same reason.

Went and invested in a really good laptop at the weekend (the upside of doing the ‘day job’ type of work) and I’m looking forward to getting stuck into photoshop, and other more powerful photo editing tools soon 😊

Flew over to Berlin for a lovely long weekend with my hubby so had some time on trains and planes to play with more photos in the Enlight app. I’ve tried blending models with photos of actual landscapes, such the pic above of the Reculver model transported to the Peak District, and also some real life buildings set in my imaginary model landscapes such as the pic below of the little folly arch at Mount Ephraim in Kent:

And another arch, this time from the Südgelände naturpark down the road from our flat in Berlin set in one of my model forest scenes:

This one combines a photo of a hedgerow in Kent, with a photo of a collage I did last year:

And finally a surreal scene of some of the model trees set by the sea at Whirstable. The iPad and apps really are great for travel when you’re squeezed onto a cramped planE and can’t even get your sketchbook out !

  
Not much time to make new work this last week but I’ve been trying out a couple more photo editing apps, just the cheap or free ones to use on the iPad. Not sure what I’ll do with the images, they’re more curiosities than anything, but it’s been fun putting the models into real landscape photos. I’m a bit surprised how easily the expressionist cottage and medieval tower fit into photos of the forests around Berlin and the Lincolnshire landscape but I’m enjoying how it blurs the lines between the real and inagined.

  
These images are made with the Enlight app. to get the layered images to blend and then add a few effects. Fun to play with on the commute to the office and it makes the journey go quicker. 

On a gallery visit when I was a teenager I bought a postcard of Arnold Böcklin’s The Sacred Grove and stuck it on my bedroom wall. I was smitten with the image and the postcard travelled around with me and adorned the wall of my student digs during university, a couple of years in Spain and Italy and then my first jobs in London in my 20s  before it finally got so tatty I threw it out. I’m a big fan of his late 19th century symbolist paintings, and had another print of his, The Island of the Dead,  on my walls too.

I don’t have the postcard any more but I put some of my tree models together and took a few photographs, making my own sacred grove, a little clump of ancient, gnarled trees where some kind of spirits reside. A couple more photos trying out different colour effects:

This is the second of three sets of photos I did with the models before I left Berlin last weekend. I arrived in the UK just in the nick of time before storm Imogen swept across the country; I wouldn’t have liked trying to land in those gales on Sunday night!

Now settling in by the sea; it’s, er, bracing on the seafront at the moment, but lovely 😊. I took a few photos on Monday and had the beach to myself:

Instead of packing for my flight to the UK this morning I couldn’t resist getting my models out and playing  again; I won’t be here for a couple of weeks and I’m going to miss the art table!
This is one of the towers I made for the model of Reculver, the ruined church on the north Kent coast I visited when I lived down her a few years ago. I’m going to be based in Whistable for the next few months so I’ll be able to go and visit it again.

And a few more photos – the Reculver tower has been transported to a blasted Heath somewhere up north by the looks of it, lots of bleak,  wuthering atmosphere:

And another photo with the rustic cottage I made when I was trying out ideas for Hansel and Gretel:

Ok, waiting to board the flight, next post from the UK! 😉

My little niece and nephew are only four and six but they’re already perfectly adept at playing on their tablets. They have an infinite world of interactive games, apps, films and books at their fingertips, all of them beautifully designed and bursting with colour and magic. I grew up in the ’70s so none of this existed then, except in Sci-fi programmes like Star Trek. The height of exciting entertainment for me as a child was getting a book for Christmas and discovering it was a pop-up book no less – amaaaaazing! They still delight me. I’m so glad I live in the digital age, I love the new technology and what it can do, but old fashioned toys, pop up books and stop-motion or hand-drawn animation have their own magic that will never fade I think.

I made this little image yesterday, just with a few layers of cut out paper elements to give an extra dimension; not really a pop-up book, but I’m intrigued by the effect of this technique. I find pop-up books so enthralling I could happily spend all my time making them. But much as I’d love to get into exploring all the different mechanisms of making proper pop-up books, I’d need to clone myself to find the time to explore it properly I think, there are just too many things to do!

A couple more images with the lighthouse keeper, mooning about with his top off as usual:

And from next week I’m back in the UK for a few months to do some ‘regular’ work again to earn some money. That tiresome little detail of earning a living is becoming more pressing so it’s back to the office I go, at least for a while. I can save enough over six months to support another year of artwork back home in Berlin though, so it’s worthwhile, but frustrating as I won’t have much time for playing at my art table. I’ll be living back in Whitstable so at least I’ll be by the sea again, Jan can come visit and we can sit on the beach 😎. I’ll take a sketchbook and some basic art materials and I’ll keep on making models when I can.

And a couple of links to sites where you can see proper pop-up books:
A wonderful looking book from the US National Parks Conservation Association, here. This would have driven me delirious as a kid.

And another amazing book about the Large Hadron Collidor at CERN, here.

And a blast from my childhood, the clunky but charming opening credits of Marine Boy, here.