Tag Archives: flowers

Momentary Contact – A Call to the Heart

by Adonna Ebrahimi

For this body of work, instead of holding a paintbrush, I challenged myself to use natural objects from the outdoors and discarded items from the home. The contrast of these dual sources brings competing energy to the process. I like the pleasant tension. Pressing my fingers into the deep smooth paint and onto the flat coarse canvas sparks a sensation of pure joy and energy and reveals these flowers as I enthusiastically create. I hope you can appreciate this experience and perhaps imagine how you might approach it if given the time and space.

I have always loved flowers, everything about flowers. When I plant them, I wear no gloves. I want to feel the soil as I prepare the space that will ultimately nurture beautiful blooms. I want the touch and the scent of the soil on my hands. It connects me with the focus of my art. Have you ever felt that? If not with soil and flora, then perhaps with some other tactile creation. You of course have.

Flowers have a general, basic design that repeats in thousands of forms. And yet, each one is its own miracle of intricate shape, texture and fragrance. A single flower can compel us to joy. And when one flower combines with some others – of the same species or not – in a single spot, the result can mesmerize an unsuspecting viewer. I seek that power when I paint.

Some of my “tools”. Fork, feather, bubble wrap, credit card, shelf liner, and my fingers, of course 🙂

Bio

Adonna Ebrahimi
Born and raised in the Cincinnati Tri-state area, Adonna relocated to the West Coast in 1998 and began her professional art career. After being introduced to commercial art through a vocational – technical program in high school, she knew at a young age art was her calling. While working for small advertising agencies in Northern Kentucky and New Jersey she raised a family while eventually being led back to what she has always held dear in her heart, creating original art. Adonna’s mission is to create art that inspires and uplifts people in their sacred space.

Working out of her studio at H Gallery & Studios off Main Street in mid-town, Ventura, CA, Adonna invites collectors inside by appointment. She shares new work on social media platforms, Instagram and Facebook, and you can find her @ArtistrybyAdonna as well as on her website, www.artistrybyadonna.com.

Her floral interpretations invite you to experience her love of flowers and transmits onto canvas unique tools found in nature and one’s household versus standard brushes. This has resulted in a body of work that prompts viewers to take a much closer look.

Flowers, Color, Form Background for Business Card

Graphic designers have lots of problems. With every job we accept we’re presented with problems that are begging for solutions. Recently I was presented with a problem…a purple and green flower for a business card for a massage therapist in the middle of winter…in Southern California. No sweat.

lily of the nile

This is the full frame of the image that became the foundation for the business card.

When I took a series of digital photos on the macro setting, I was thinking about colors (purple and green) and holding still enough to focus the camera on a target that was swaying in the breeze. I wasn’t worrying about composition. Just keep the flowers in the frame before the wind catches them.

I had no idea if these Lily of the Nile would have any chance of working on a business card. I had taken the photos weeks before, and when it came time to buckle down and create the image that would carry the business card, I found my answer by looking at the flowers, not as a whole, but for their “parts.” Perhaps there is just a small part of the image that contains the necessary elements to play a supporting role to the typography?

In order to isolate just the right section of the image, I worked in Adobe Photoshop, but most image editing software has a cropping tool or a selection tool with the ability to crop to a selection. In Photoshop, I fixed the width, height and resolution of the cropping tool to 3.75 inches by 2.25 inches, 300 pixels per inch, adding one eighth of an inch to all four sides to allow for a bleed. When fixing a cropping area, the size of the area can change, but the correct proportions remain constant.

Photoshop's cropping tool can isolate a precise area, resize and resample the pixels to the desired resolution in a single step.

Once a specific area of the image is isolated and cropped, that segment of the photo now stands alone at the correct size and resolution to become a unique background for the business card. The same image could just as easily be cropped and sized for greeting cards, postcards or bookmarks.

Typography is always a challenge. When white type is reversed out of a background, in this case, a moderately busy background, it begins to get lost. It’s almost gobbled up by the very background that’s intended to support the type.

To prevent the white type from becoming too difficult to read as it moves over alternating light and dark leaves or purple petals, a dark green is sampled from the background and used to give it an “outer glow” effect. If reverse type is placed over a purple petal, sample a slightly darker purple for the outer glow to allow it to “pop” off the background.

type before outer glow

type after outer glow is applied

Because we designers are never satisfied with just one version of our layout, I used two different photos with a variety of type alignments before sharing them with the client.