Pam Lostracco: for fun

Showing posts with label for fun. Show all posts

September 02, 2011

Morning Glories

Today I counted 94 morning glories on our patio. They are the most cheerful colour of blue--I wish they would last longer than only the morning! The first photo uses Lord Kelvin which makes a redder contrast in the bricks and adds a rough border. The second (Poprocket), is a close up of a bee finding some pollen, burrowed inside the glowing-yellow centre of the flower.

August 29, 2011

Fun with Instagram

This is my favourite iphone app! Instagram crops your photo to a square format and then adds a filter which mimics similar colours and textures of old film. Here are my first few.

July 04, 2011

Photo Transfer Magic

I wish I could keep these patterns to use in my artwork! But they magically appear briefly for about 15 minutes before it dries away.

Transferring my photographs onto mylar is one of the first steps of my art process. This is done by applying a thin layer of a liquid polymer to the front side of a laser printout. Then it is flipped upside down and placed on top of the mylar. What you see here, is the back of the laser print. The polymer soaked through the paper in the white parts of the image more quickly than the coloured areas with ink. Eventually, the paper dries back to white and then I peel off the paper while the ink remains fixed to the mylar.

With the positive/negative shapes, I think they look similar to the effects of cyanotypes!

November 22, 2009

Cyanotypes

I tried out a second workshop to find out more about the Sunprints I made a couple months ago. The instructor was Sally Ayre who makes gorgeous cyanotypes on several layers of silk. We were able to use some of her negatives and our own materials. The images had considerable more detail and contrast than I had expected. Preparing your own paper is much more advantageous than buying the pre-made kits. The possibilities seemed endless and this technique felt really in-tune with how I like to work which also incorporates the natural objects I already use in my artwork.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pamlostracco/sets/72157622858110474/

Pinhole Camera

Gallery 44 has some fun photography workshops. Last weekend I made my own pinhole camera to step back in time to learn the basic processes used when photography first began. It was rough, holding our tinfoil boxes still and making guestimates on the length of time the photo paper would be exposed for. It was also refreshing, using the sun instead of a button, going into the darkroom instead of on the computer, and waiting for the image to emerge magically instead of already knowing what it looks like! The unexpected inconsistencies of wide-angled distortion and textures were quite imperfect but very much welcomed.

The experiments:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pamlostracco/4126225655/in/set-72157622733622065/

September 14, 2009

Sunprints

I spent Sunday afternoon in my backyard taking advantage of the sun to make these fun prints! I experimented with a Sunprint Kit... just place an object on cyan-coloured paper, expose for about 5 minutes, rinse in water, then the blue-on-white image slowly reverses into a white-on-blue image! I used dried and fresh flora with some interesting forms. The flat money plant seeds and pine needles worked best since they are opaque and press well against the paper. The shadows of orchids and basil obviously didn't produce the same contrast. Lots of fun, I want to do more!

The whole series is posted on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pamlostracco/sets/72157622369987490/

November 19, 2008

The Bookmark Project

Two miniature pieces of art I submitted for The Bookmark Project 2008: Insert, organized by the Koffler Gallery.

May 14, 2008

It's Spring!

New colours of life are sprouting up everywhere now. Here are some fresh photos of: reflected-red graffiti art, bright-greens up in the trees, wet-browns after a storm, and... the gorgeous-whiteness I've waited a whole year to see again... cherry blossoms in High Park. Visit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/97853875@N00/

April 03, 2008

New Photos from February and March

Just posted some new photos of the dino exhibit at the ROM, the aftermath of the Queen fire, and of course some more glimpses of our crazy winter! (Click on the title.)