Kansas Dresners
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Summer means BUGS!
Like I said, my creative outlet is taking pictures, and the harder the picture, the happier I am.
¶ Sunday, July 29, 2007 0 comments 
 | This is a bee on a star-fruit blossom. I've taken "the best bee ever" before, but this one goes to the head of the list. Look at that fuzz and those "impossible" wings! |
 | There are few greater challenges than pictures of animals in flight (except, perhaps, children doing anything). I had a good bright day recently with some dragonflies buzzing about the gymnastics parking lot. The picture of me laying in wait is by Max. |
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 | Some very small pictures of very small black ladybug like beetles. |
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 | I'd never seen a spider set up shop in a flower before. It's kind of clever, I suppose, though Hibiscus folds up pretty quickly once it's bloomed. |
 | If you look close, you can see some of the web building. Below are a spider I saw in the stairwell at school (about an inch across, despite his fierce appearance), and a very small bug I found on my hand last time we went up to Volcano. |
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Summer Fun: Arts and Crafts
Sorry it's been a while since I posted anything. I assure you, I haven't stopped taking pictures!
I thought I'd get back in the swing of things by showing you some of the creative stuff we've been doing.
What do I do for a creative outlet? Take pictures, of course! ¶ Sunday, July 29, 2007 2 comments
I thought I'd get back in the swing of things by showing you some of the creative stuff we've been doing.
 | Gram (Marge) has been sending Max recordings of the Thorton Burgess animal adventures, which he loves. She also sent along this sticker book -- not his first, but his first in a while -- which he's been having fun with. |
 | Max has been helping me learn Photoshop by taking pictures and modifying them, exploring themes, changing things around, etc. This was a picture from a ballet/dance version of Aesop's Fables to which Max has added the butterflies and fish (copied from other pictures and modified with various photoshop filters and recoloring). |
 | Yesterday Max asked me to print out some of his photoshop pictures so he could color them by hand. After playing with the filters for a while I found several that leave an outline version of a picture, and we produced a twelve-page coloring book. This picture is made up entirely of shapes from the Photoshop library (the angel is a combination of the WALK sign and pigeon wings). |
 | Free-form painting by Max. |
 | Sculpie Unicorn. The horn fell off, was superglued back on, fell off again, so I drilled holes in the horn and head and used a toothpick for a peg and this time the glue is holding fine. |
 | Max took this picture, of his favorite set of dolls. |
 | Really, really favorite. I included this one mostly for the smile. |
 | The shirt is by Max's cousin Samantha: it kind of got put aside after it got here, but he rediscovered it and it's now one of his favorites. |
 | Woody's taken up chess. We all got interested after the Through the Looking Glass experience, and Woody found an online correspondence course. In addition to her assignments, she and I have been playing about every week. I'm still kibitzing pretty heavily, but she's getting better. This is a stalemate. |
 | Max has been doing a lot of craft stuff at school, as usual. The summer program was a lot of fun, and he brought lots of little projects home. |
What do I do for a creative outlet? Take pictures, of course! ¶ Sunday, July 29, 2007 2 comments
