I love photography. It was the first area of art in which I ever dabbled. I started when I was 8, and I got my first camera from sending in cereal box tops (yes, seriously). When I was in college, I bought my first SLR camera and took a black & white photography class. I loved developing film and how the camera helped me see the world in different ways. I didn't buy a digital camera until a few years ago because I didn't like the quality of digital prints or the price of digital SLR's. I finally took the dive into digital with a Nikon D50 (no longer made), and I love it. Part of my artistic style is to incorporate my photography into my work. Here's a few ways I do that.
1. Photo panels. One of the first things I started doing with my photographs was to place them onto painted 6x6 panels of paper. I usually mat the picture and add a stamped sentiment. The one at left has a picture from a park in Budapest. I find these sell pretty well at craft fairs. I price them for $20 unframed. Occasionally, I frame them, like the one up top. For photo panels, I use an actual photo, not a copy. Travel photos seem to work very well. In the future, I'd like to make some that are 12x12.
2. Copy the photo and use it in a collage. I've featured lots of these on my blog, but you can see two that hang in my living room in this post and a whole variety in this post. Many of my collages use heritage photos from my collection. While not actually my photos, I think it's worth mentioning as well. You can see a sample here and here.
3. Use the photo as inspiration for drawing or other type of art journal page. I would not have thought of this before making the clothesline art journal page and getting such nice feedback on it from you all. But now, I think I'm going to do more of this and see where it leads me.
4. Copy a lot of photos to make collage sheets and use the photos on collage image cards. I featured this idea as a tutorial in this post and featured the various cards people made with the tutorial here. As a variation, I have also copied heritage photos and used them on cards, here.
5. Make photo cards. This is actually a little different than the cards we made before. They deserve their own post and that's what's coming tomorrow.
I hope you found this useful. I'd love to hear if there are other ways that you use your photographs in your art.
Rinda, you are so creative. I love that sentiment in your gate piece and I'm not surprised that those pieces are popular at craft fairs. That's art with ream meaning.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed seeing how you combine your art and your photography. This post has ideas percolating in my mind!
ReplyDeleteSome great ideas there. I love the photos on the paper with a sentiment and can see why they would sell.
ReplyDeleteReally interesting, thanks Rinda :-) Looking forward to tomorrow's post! x
ReplyDeleteSome really creative ideas for photos.....and love the way you combine with other media.
ReplyDeleteI think I definately need a photography class......my photos are such poor quality.....
definately couldn't sell them!!
These are so beautiful. I really like the gate picture. I would be drawn to it at a craft show too!
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing these ideas on incorporating photography into your artwork. It's always a joy to see what you've been creating!
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ReplyDeleteGreat ideas Rinda...gonna give this one a try. You artwork is always inspirational...TFS!
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