"Lonely Serenade" Takes First Prize in Digital Art at the Kentucky State Fair

My favorite digital collage, "Lonely Serenade" is one I did while active with the Creative Matrix online digital art group a few years ago. The Kentucky State Fair has a new category in Fine Arts for computer generated art, so I entered this piece. It is a digital blending of several photos including a statue of Benny Goodman, an abalone shell, a tree branch, a window and a wooden fence or paddle wheel - possibly others too. When I am creating digital collages the layers add up quickly, are duplicated, altered, and so on. The abalone shell is the star of this one, color-wise, but all of the elements went together so well to complete the story of "Lonely Serenade".

I hope you like it!

Here are a few other digital collages that I've done over the years.

"Orange Crush" - For this one, I layered everything in black and white except the little orange bird. I selectively colored in a few places with orange hues.

"Night in a Foreign City" (The inherent dangers of using Asian figural text is that I have no idea if I'm cursing here or saying something inane or profound or dirty. I just thought it was pretty script.)

"What the Flock" - This one started with a painting which I used for the background. I added some mathematical drawings and some script and two different raven images. Of course there's a mixture of layering, filters and blending in all of these images.

"Black Dahlia" - this one began with a photo of a red dahlia I took in Ireland. I layered some script over it, a bee image and a sprig of some other flowers.

"Continuum" - this one has lots of layering and blending, lots of coloring. Images of Queen Victoria and her family are included, along with some of my lettering and typing and bits of 'found' text.

"Universal Truths" (see note above regarding Asian text...I haven't a clue if it represents truths, universal or otherwise.)

"Viaje" - an experiment with fonts.

"Three Chairs, No Waiting" - I found this antique image of the three long-haired ladies, and an image of a chair online. I added in Spanish the words, "Three chairs, no waiting." and a pair of shears, without much hope that they would sit still for that!

"Cotton Candy" - This started with Photos from my Creative Matrix group of clouds and a baby's hand. The clouds looked like cotton candy, so I made them pink for a little cherub to grab.

"Rose Chapel" - Beautiful roses from a photo, arches from another photo taken in Ireland, blueprints and more were layered for a pretty straightforward digital collage.

I have lots of them, in several different styles. I wrote an article about creating them for Somerset Studio magazine several years ago. It's in the November/December 2003 issue. In addition, Horizons, the magazine for Presbyterian women contracted with me to do their May/June 2005 cover.