The Art of Fantasy in the Digital Era!

Starting a new blog

2011-10-19T14:13:00.001-07:00

Please be patient with me. Something happened to this blog and most images have disappeared so I have decided to start all over again.

Thank you!

Slide-show of some products!

2011-10-19T14:00:00.001-07:00

Available at Zazzle.com and other shops listed to your left!

Clip Art, definition and copyrights!

2011-10-19T11:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I found out that one of my graphics (not showing in this blog) has been published without my permission and much to my surprise licensed as clip art in a popular CD.

I am presently working on this situation.

This article could be helpful in defining "Clip art" and various user licenses as well as copyrights!

If you are an Artist don't forget to copyright your creations. If you are using images while creating you can add some details, date of the creation etc. Always keep your original images and after editing this same image just save it under another name, if not, there is a good chance your info will disappear.

The following weblog Art Thieves in the Digital Age belongs to Artist Susan Donley (I've asked permission to link of course! :-)) interesting article as well as good advice!

Stay in the shade if you live in Arizona my friends!

All images in this site are © Nicole L Marques And shall not to be used without permission except where noted. None are to be considered "Public Domain" images or included nor distributed in any list or CD. Thank you.

Water Crystals and Vibrating Energy!

2009-03-30T12:38:00.033-07:00

♥ I indirectly own a deck of cards (indirectly because it was offered as a gift to somebody else who later on gave it to me). This deck is called "Water Crystal Oracle" based on the work of Masaru Emoto author of, "The hidden messages in water." This deck was never used and is still sitting next to my computer.

Yesterday while watching a show on the Science channel I was intrigued by what the images were showing on screen. Crystals of water growing and changing shapes when submitted to either positive or negative energy. The show was about the experiments of Masuru Emoto.

The crystals also seemed to be transforming while music was playing! See a few results at: "Welcome to the world of water." You will have to rub the mouse upward to see the title above each water crystal.

It aroused profound curiosity in me as some of my artworks (The Colorful Butterflies Series) were creating while listening to some Opera music. My late grandmother and I used to go to the Opera when I was a child in France and it exposed me to classical music, Operettas and some Opera, mostly Italian and French, at the tender age of 6! :-) These butterflies seem to be mostly set in what is reminiscent at times of "Stage decor."

I don't know if there is a correlation at all, but it did make me very curious to pursue some kind of research on this matter.

Furtive moment of fame for Galatic Butterfly!

2009-03-29T09:41:00.015-07:00

♥ 365 Pictures - Creativity Portal.com.

My butterfly furtive moment of fame! Showing today "Galactic Butterfly"

I have no idea why I named it: "Crystalline Butterfly?" My mind must have been on a short vacation!

There are two other pieces but their display won't be known until a three months before they are scheduled to show! Enjoy!

NOTE: Of course it is already gone but the name at least can be found in this list!
And original products with this butterfly are available in my gallery here!

Daily prompt project "365 Pictures".

2009-03-15T00:00:00.006-07:00

♥ Creativity Portal's first-ever worldwide collaborative daily prompt project, "365 Pictures" is now live!

Galactic Butterfly on the left is in the March Collaborator list, scheduled for March 29 .

It was a pleasure to contribute to the Creativity Portal's project. This website has been one of my favorites since the very beginning. Two other pieces will also be showcased whenever their turn will come!

About the Creativity Portal: "Creativity-Portal.com is an invigorating community alive with the voices of creativity coaches, artists, writers, and business professionals sharing their knowledge and expertise, inspiring creative exploration and expression in everyone.

The original picture is available in my gallery at Zazzle.com.

The "365 Pictures" project at Creativity Portal, a Writer's Digest Best Web Site.The image is ©Nicole L Marques

The Creative Personality!

2009-03-12T10:33:00.025-07:00

♥ Today I stumbled on an article that immediately caught my attention, written by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (I hope the spelling is correct!) he devoted 30 years of research to find out how creative people live and work.

According to Mihaly: "Creative people alternate between imagination and fantasy, and a rooted sense of reality."

Great art and great science involve a leap of imagination into a world that is different from the present. The rest of society often views these new ideas as fantasies without relevance to current reality. And they are right. But the whole point of art and science is to go beyond what we now consider real and create a new reality. At the same time, this "escape" is not into a never-never land. What makes a novel idea creative is that once we see it, sooner or later we recognize that, strange as it is, it is true.

He is citing 10 antithetical traits often present in creative people.

For insight or simply to discover the mental and social process of creativity, click on the following link to "Psychology Today."

Full of contradictions at times (we writers, musicians, painters, poets, even scientists, etc.) always enjoy the process of creation by taking risks and almost always thinking outside the box, sometimes disregarding whatever was valued in the past.

Wisdom and childishness! Discipline and playfullness! Introversion and extroversion, etc. The every day, moments in the life of a creative person! :-) For us life is never boring!

From Creativity: The Work and Lives of 91 Eminent People, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, published by HarperCollins, 1996.

Inner Child!

2008-12-23T11:56:00.031-07:00

♥ We all experience child-like wonder at one point or another and especially as artists, keeping in touch with the child inside is always important in regards to creativity but this is ridiculous!

I find myself looking for the mini pals contained in "Rice Krispies" boxes, I must be regressing fast!

Of course it starts like this on the side of the box: "A Magical Day begins with a balanced breakfast" it has to be the "magical" part I'm responding to!! :-))

Meet left to right: "Mike" and "Sulley" I have no idea who these pals are but I think they are kind of catchy, don't you? I'm looking forward to get "Dorry" the blue fish and of course "Rémy" my countryman, star of Ratatouille!

Have a safe and sunny day!

White Feather!

2008-12-22T00:54:00.038-07:00

♥ Today I found a white feather in a place where no feather logically should have been! No pillow of mine has feathers besides I don't store any pillows nearby!

I was looking for some doilies my late grandmother had created as mentioned before and while trying to get to the bottom of the box, a scarf dropped on the floor and next to it, a small and soft fuzzy feather of the purest white gently fell over it!

A warm feeling immediately came over me, and I left the room with a smile on my face. I took the feather and placed it in my curio cabinet after taking a picture of it!

Was there a message in this? Sure we all heard that white feathers belong to Angels from up above or are simply a sign that somebody dear to your heart who passed away is sending a message of love, support and protection?

It is commonly believed in some cultures that feathers are symbols of higher thought, spiritual progression. Sometimes a message that we need to lighten up, not take things too seriously and enjoy the moment or that we are on the right path to a journey of our own!

This happened to me before, for instance I was at the post office in France in early 2007 and mailing very crucial papers, I had just finished filling out the form necessary to a speedy delivery when all of a sudden a white feather came down fluttering from above and landed on the counter next to me, there were two more people inside the room when this happened and we all wondered where this feather could be coming from, we did end up laughing when I hinted that it probably was a good omen and that my request would be granted. It was!

I'm not sure why but I just thought I'd mentioned this in a post as for some reason it seemed to matter, after all this is the season for Angels!

Happy Holidays to all!

Note: I skipped on the expression: "to show the white feather" which is a sign of cowardice! I know that I am not a coward and probably neither are you! :-))

Empathic Electronic Art

2008-12-11T22:23:00.024-07:00

♥ We all know that empathy is in some way the ability to experience the outlook or emotions of another being within oneself.

Well in recent years a new level of empathy has been born. Known as “Empathic painting,” an interactive painterly rendering whose appearance adapts in real time to reflect the perceived emotional state of the user.

The University of Bath in south-west England presented its "Empathic painting"* experiment in the electronic artwork at a symposium on non-photo-realistic animation and rendering, part of the International Animation Festival in France in 2006.

A pretty incredible project in which the computer- software observes eight facial features and is capable of recognizing and translating on screen the emotions of a subject in real time. The computer is actually recognizing a user's facial expressions giving a painterly visual rendering algorithm. The image on screen changes as the subject changes its facial expression: smile, frown etc. This could really affect the way we work digitally on the computer, only an experiment right now but the possibilities are endless when we start thinking about it.

On a different level but still connected to empathy, there is also something called "The Mirror Space Project" in which the subject can experience his "transformed" image on screen. Effect can be grasped by our perception and presented in this system as dynamic data converted in three-dimensional objects! See for yourselves!

This artistic system is to be further developed so the artist is able to realize her or his philosophical vision by means of computer interactivity.

It looks like the future holds some interesting tools to experiment with! :-)

* The paper on "Empathic Painting Experiment" can be dowloaded as a pdf document.

The Red Star

2008-12-11T11:04:00.015-07:00

This is an example of mixed-media art. The lady was mouse-painted, wings worked with a brush from Corel Paint Shop Pro (brush #7 to be exact), a few feather-like elements were added, the small glowing dots of light were created by using the "Dodge" brush.

The image was superimposed over the sky, a digital photograph I had taken of a partly sunny day in the East Valley of Arizona, later ran through an external plug-in to get this particular, somewhat apocalyptic shade.

This digital piece, (what you're seeing here is in fact a photograph of a print on canvas) is entitled " The Red Star" my vision of the "Hopi Prophecy" referring to the "Fifth World". For a detailed explanation on this Native American mythology and if you are interested just click on the following link to Wikipedia.

"The Blue Star" version is also available to make the prophecy and collection complete! :-) at: Zazzle.com amongst other places around the Net.