PEOPLE OF NEW YORK SLIDE SHOW & MAY PAINTING CHALLENGE

Usually, photos are only interesting to the people who took them, especially vacation photos. I usually leave the "tourist" type photos to my husband and I spend my time searching out potential material for paintings. Since I am mostly interested in faces and figures, the majority of my photos reflect my interest. Digital cameras are so amazing and they allow you to take tons of photos and edit later. I often focus in on small details that can be inserted in other images. Shoes, hands, etc. A good zoom lens keeps me anonymous. The slide show will give you an idea of the kind of people who catch my eye. My friends have me all figured out and are good spotters for me when we are out together. The Museum of Modern Art was a wonderful place to take interesting photos. Most of the museum had no restrictions on taking pictures and they allowed you to get quite close to the art work. For those of us who want to see every brush stroke, it was a welcome bonus.

Today is the first of the month, so I have a challenge for myself and any of you who want to join in. Let's start with the title and see what image pops into our heads! With this in mind, I have an exciting web site for you. It is designed for writers to give them ideas but it works beautifully for artists as well. I will give you three titles to pick from. If you don't like any of them, you can go to "http://writingfix.com" and play around until you find a sentence or phrase that inspires you to paint. Many of them lent themselves to images other than people. Because of my desire to do a figurative painting, these are the three that set my imagination off on a journey:

1. "Her Friendship is like a birdcage"
2. "Finding my Marbles"
3. "The Picture in the Catalog had lied"

If you come up with some other wonderful titles, be sure and share. It will be fun to see multiple interpretations of the same title.