The fox joins friends upon the manipulated background of my print.

Here is a larger section with the three creatures together on the new background.

And of course, I made it as a repeat so it could be fun to place on fabric, wallpaper, etc.

Taking the original print I made the other day:

And simply sampling two sections, I made repeats and mirrored the top and bottom sections.

This gave me a sort of modern abstract ground upon which to place some animals. Taking your physical work and making it digital gives you the freedom now to play with colour or size or layering; endless digital collage opportunities.

Next this cast of characters was sketched and then made digital and done in ink and watercolour.

This allows me now to use them as I see fit. In this case I sampled the three of them in this configuration to use as a repeat upon the new altered background. I though the quasi-psychadelic feel of an enlarged garden would be the perfect place to put three natural enemies. Well, the fox at the least is the enemy of the other two; he loves to feed on them.

As artists we get to be story tellers and this random creation places these unlikely friends upon a repeated ground hinting at nature.

Changing the background colour to suit the colours of the animals is the next step of fun. I can then change the colours of characters and background for endless iterations.

Keeping these two elements as separate layers allows me to play with colour to no end.

At some point I will probably go in with another tool and make the sharp lines blur or smear or smudge. Or I'll add a third layer from the print by sampling a section of the original print just to build it up.

Digital collage is just an amazing way to play and create with your own pieces.

Now, back to my premise: Play and why it's so important to me. Whether I am in the studio with a mess of ink pots, silk screens and printing press or simply on my digital tablet with far too many windows open for inspiration, playing with ideas and images is very important to me. Now, is it important to the final result? Possibly, one would hope. But, in many ways, I think it is important to me, as an artist, as it keeps the fire going and the desire to create and to say something. Because, really, artists are trying to say something when they create.

Artist are the pictorial story-tellers.

Even in a sparse almost monotone abstraction an artist is telling us a story. So, for me, sampling and playing is really important.

When I first discovered using digital it was magical. I hadn't even a drawing tablet yet and was simply using digital tech to aid in my process for my screenprinted monoprints. I would pour over old family and other photos from the Victorian times, often focusing on the female form, and bring these into the digital world. There I could manipulate contrast and shadow until I could get a good silhouette or layer to print on plastic to use as a negative to make silk screens.

Thus my process would go in and out of the digital and real world.

Today I have found my love of oil again and I found it by playing in the digital world. I now can spend as long as I often did on a 'real' canvas painting and smearing oil to get effect. However, the digital world allows me to capture layers to use again and again or to readdress later if I wish I had done something differently.

All things are potential tools for artists.

I truly believe a stick from the garden, your finger, or the digital world are all tools in the arsenal of the artist as story teller. And in many ways, the digital world can be a playground for the artist. Even if an artists final work is only in the physical, the amount of preparation, experiment, and play in the digital could be so valuable for any artist in any medium.

Now, of course, 'play' to me isn't just messing in my studio or playing in my digital space, it is also other elements that I feel feed my creativity. I love to Garden, I've made no bones about that, but playing with plant and seed, herbaceous border or clay pot is enriching.

The colour of plants and the textures of soil and container are all inspiration to a hungry mind constantly wishing to tell pictorial stories.

My own obsession with animals also is part of the play I find so important to Art and Life. Watching my chickens in their little society, or nurturing an egg in the incubator to chick then adult then to her own motherhood hatching her own eggs, all of this is wonder and play to me.

I honestly believe that to give over to Play in our lives is important to us all whether we are artists of any sort or simply want to enjoy and enrich our lives. That moment of discovery and trial and error we take for granted as children often gets lost along the way. Yet, I am not saying we should remain 'childish' or think 'immature irresponsibility' is what I am lauding. I think to have the knowledge of an adults rationale mind with the joy and play of the childlike mind is really a fine quality and good goal for happiness and creative impulse. And anyway, I think it at least a good way to simply enjoy the Simple in life, which is important to ones feeling of well being.

Here I have gone off on some random tangent when I simply meant to share the next bit of Play I was doing with the gelliplate prints I shared in my last post.

Yet it does show how simple acts and pure observation can lead to creation and joy.

And I hope you make some time today for play, whatever Play might mean to you.

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If you like my posts please upvote, resteem, and by all means comment, I love comments!

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Check out my other posts:

• Playing in the studio with succulents and plants from the Garden. Gelliplate fun prints.
• A #sublimesunday on a Monday: Garden, mini-pond and daily sketch
• My Singularity piece for Art Explosion Week 42: No Theme
• An accidental Haiku and a marriage of said poem to a cafe drawing.
• Daily Drawing: Best friends
• Photos of the day: My flowers colour inspiration.

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