My client chose a particular rich dark green siding and black window trim for their Craftsman bungalow. I presented them with options for the remaining trim and door colors. Then I made this quick GIF animation for fun.
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I’ve been going through the slides from my family’s past to figure out what to do with them and how to do it. My Dad was a diligent photographer, shooting quantities of slides, stills, and movies. When I was a child, he had a darkroom for black and white processing. I spent many hours in there with him and later, on my own. I remember well: “When the little red light by the entrance is on, don’t go in!” In the process of reviewing the slides, I am enjoying the opportunity to see the world through my Dad’s eyes– what interested him, what he focused on, what he thought was significant.
We’ve got a lot of slides.
My task is to cull the images that I think will be of significance to current and future generations, and to discard the others. Each slide will be considered in these terms. The “keepers” will be digitized and stored on a dedicated portable drive, and then opened on my graphic design software, where I can quickly rotate, crop, and adjust the color, contrast, and/or brightness of each. I’ll figure out a way to present a streamlined version of the best images for my family members. It’s a big job; I expect it to take a couple of years.
The batch I have been working with tonight are of a trip my parents took to Turkey in 1973. The 40-year-old slides have undergone some physical changes over time (haven’t we all!), and their color is uniformly distorted. I can correct the color when there are people in the shot. However, in this batch of slides, most of the images are of scenery, buildings, and ruins. I’ve got no reference point about the “real” color except the software’s auto correct semblance of the actual colors, which is only a computer code-driven guess.
In their unretouched form, the color distortion makes the scenes surreal and compelling, perhaps even more so than what is “correct” or “true.” It adds additional other worldliness to a world that is already “other” to me.
The slide’s age turned the mosque this luminous purple.
The colors and the atmosphere in the mosque image are not so different from those above in “Daybreak,” by painter/illustrator Maxfield Parrish in 1922.
Unretouched, exceptionally vibrant and emphatically colored shot, taken from a position seated on the floor.
Cool car, interesting loose urban density, some expected colors, and some weird colors.
Unretouched image inside mosque.
Color adjusted to what might be “real.”
Color correction by software to remove red cast of original.
Manipulated, and starting to look like a textile.
This unretouched image of a ruin in an arid landscape is, in fact, upside down.
Unretouched image of ruins, looking like a parched otherworldly landscape at sunset. the color palette reminds me of Pre-Raphaelite paintings like this one (I’ve only seen the reproduction, not the actual thing), in which color is used to evoke physical and emotional feelings:
John Everett Millais, Chill October, 1870
Unretouched composition, with the base of a gold finial touching the frame at the top. Dad sometimes framed his shots with the tops of people’s heads or tops of buildings cut off, but in this case, it makes a great composition. The negative space of the blue sky is lovely to me.
All Images courtesy of Alan Kraft, with interventions by me.
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I invite your comments.
This California garden looks like the sea floor. The plants look like sea-dwelling creatures and plants. The imagination swims!
Succulents expert and horticulturist Joe Stead says, “As a kid, I explored tide pools …I marveled at the starfish and sea anemones. I wanted to bring that sense of wonder to this garden.”
With great knowledge and skill, he has selected and arranged boldly colored, drought-tolerant plants to create charming and compelling illusions.
The “sea anemones” are agaves, nestled among red mangaves.
The “starfish” is Echeveria subrigida.
The “kelp” is Senecio vitalis.
All photos courtesy of Bret Gum; written content is derived from the article “How to create a sea-creature succulent garden,” written by Debra Lee Baldwin, in Sunset Magazine.
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I invite your comments.
Enjoying the good fortune to be in Vernazza, Italy a few years ago, on a May morning after breakfast, I did this watercolor sketch of the waterfront. The early light had a blue tinge. I saw slightly gray colors. The forms were softened, as if by a haze.
Later that afternoon around three o’clock, I sat in the same spot and resumed painting the waterfront. The building at the far right of the first painting is more or less the same as that on the far left of the second one.
At this hour, the light had a warm cast. The forms were sharp, colors saturated, contrasts high.
Light changes color and character continuously during the course of a day. One of the pleasures of painting outdoors is being mindful of the color of light, and capturing a moment in time.
All images belong to Laura Kraft-Architect. Feel free to share any of these images, but please provide a link back to 2H Pencil. Thanks.
My clients, Ed and Laurel were adamant: they wanted their house to have lot of color and as much handcraft as they could afford. They are great fans of the work of the Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi. They love the ad hoc nature of his tile installations where the workers, collaborating with Gaudi, made the mosaics come to life.
mosaic walls at Barcelona’s Parc Güell
Clearly, and excitingly, some elements of this work could not have been planned. They grew out of the process.
The social and economic conditions that made Gaudi’s work possible don’t exist here and now. And yet, within constraints of a modest budget and a remote rural location, my design directive from Ed and Laurel was, “Capture something of the spirit of Gaudi. Let color happen.”
This is the flooring in one room of Ed and Laurel’s house. Each room has its own color “personality.” For each room and the front foyer, four colors of standard vinyl tile were selected, and then cut (in the shop) on a diagonal. They were then installed in pattern that is random, except that no color may abut itself, so it’s “almost random.”
A conceptual floor plan sketch shows an early version of the color layout. The foyer has soothing water colors of blue, purple and green.
transition from Foyer to Multi-Purpose Room
Transition from Foyer to Kitchen
Ed and Laurel are happy with their house.
contented basking lizard at Parc Güell
First image courtesy of Bing Images, second image courtesy of traveladventures.org, last image courtesy of entertainmentdesigner.com.
All other images belong to Laura Kraft-Architect. Feel free to share any of these images, but please provide a link back to 2H Pencil. Thanks.
This is the floor in a basement kitchen of a house in NW Washington DC. As the story goes, at one time, the house belonged to a tile setter.
The tile setter brought home tiles left over from his jobs. He laid out patterns and combinations based on the tiles he happened to have on hand. He allowed himself to try things, without the yoke of rules, just to see what they looked like. He allowed his work to be imperfect. He let his children try their hands at his craft.
The resulting floor is remarkable. It is like a patchwork quilt. Each patch is an interesting composition in its own right. The overall combination is delightfully unselfconscious and lively.
All images belong to Laura Kraft-Architect. Feel free to share any of these images, but please provide a link back to 2H Pencil. Thanks.
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