Oh, goody!  More entries!!

The kid without team or ball is poignant and I think we've all felt like that tulip on occasion.

Carolly

Attached Link: full image

It hadn't changed much in the last century of its life: how much more weathering can a tree endure?  It will be centuries before there is another tree there to keep watch.

Wonderful... I'm glad that the viewers had fun, too. :)

Even serious musicians get silly sometimes... listen for "Three Blind Mice" or "The Bear Went Over the Mountain" or "Frere Jacque" tucked into major intense works.  Architects tuck cartoon characters into detail drawings of high-rises.  Artists play with hidden images such as elongated skulls seen from a mark on the frame or upside-down faces or names written in the embroidery on a dress.  We shouldn't have to hide it all the time.  Like a clown in a parade, we have to put on our respectable clothes and go back to work the next week... though perhaps with an impish smile.

So, congratulations to ra3vyn!!!  And to everyone who played along.

Let's see what challenge is up next?

Carolly

Yup, the hardest part. sigh  Choosing....  Wait, can I hop the train of thought as it choo-chooses along?  sorry

ICM - Philosiraptor - 3 Points

Ra3vyn - Writer's block - 2 Points

KOOSIEVANTUTTE - Pawn Shop - 1 Point

Honorable mentions to dancineyes for Keep off the Grass and L8RDAZE for Cut the Cheese. 

This was fun and light-hearted for a winter month, with a fair number of giggles and groans.  We can be serious artists next time. ;^)

Living with a constant migraine (7 damned years now) means that I don't have the ability to linger, read, write, or create very much.  Sometimes all I can do is pull out an older work of art and digitize it.  However, I still think! 

I try to put a few words under an image to show why I took a photo, my state of mind at the time, what inspired an illustration, or if something came from within.  For the photographs, I don't give technical camera details because that is like discussing whether art created on the Mac is technically superior to art created on the PC, or if oils are superior to watercolors!  It's the eye that counts.  I own a Nikon F2 (wowie-zowie finger-in-air), but the digital cameras make sharing online easier.  Even if I scanned all those old slides, the choice of camera and lens would be inconsequential compared to the choice of subject and lighting.  Besides, after I take an image into Photoshop for salvage, perhaps the only thing we can say is, "it used to be a photo!"

Because I still think, I'm still capable of learning.  Yes, I enjoy the compliments and friendly comments.  They are few because I don't do the reciprocal clique-thing.  Being unexpected makes them better... like selling something on cafepress to a stranger who likes our work enough to buy it.  The best comments, though, are helpful critiques or suggestions or leads to other artists or something that inspires an idea or opens the eye to possibilities. 

The only way we'll learn is if we admit that nothing we create is perfect.  Sometimes it is close, but what I see, what the camera sees, and what the viewer sees are not the same image at all.  Two people standing side-by-side can not see the same rainbow unless they are sharing the eyeball.  The viewer looking at a painting, CGI rendering, or photo of a rainbow is most certainly not going to see what the creator saw inside his or her mind's eye.  The most we can do is appreciate what each other sees and shares... and perhaps leave a comment.

And, yes, if I do look at someone's gallery, I'll look at the older work, too.

Carolly

Welcome back!

That's an appropriately-placed sign.

BTW, when I worked for a nursery/florist back in the late 70's, I sometimes wore a large green button that said

I Push Grass

in wavy letters.

fescue, bluegrass,.... seed or sod ready to roll out and pat into place... ;^)

Carolly

Attached Link: full size gallery image

That is one of Galileo's six simple machines, and is usually encountered in a carpenter's toolbox.  Between the scientists and the punsters, things aren't quite as simple anymore!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclined_plane

Train is a great word!  The French use it even more than we do, but even in English, there are training camps and training wheels and fitness trainers and roses trained against a wall.

Another good word is "press" as in express, suppress, oppress, depress, and repress!  So, I have a pressing engagement at the laundromat or at the newsroom or at the winery?

And how about "land"?  Landing a fish or landing a job or making landfall?

Fasteners of all sorts offer multiple opportunities to bind words and images in the metagame:

• Knot/naughty/nought

•  

• Tack (ship's course, thumbtacks, tacky little house, tacky glue)

•  

• Tie (necktie, tie one on, tie the knot, fit to be tied, thai food, tai chi)

•  

•  

• Staples and Buttons and Snaps!  (Why do people click their fingers when they get an idea?  Because the synapses just fired!)  sorry

As for nudity?  Well, naked singularities, bald-faced lies, bare truths, and undressed salads come to mind and I doubt if any of them would violate the TOS (although I have seen some sensuous veggies).  Naked ambition is trickier.  I don't think anybody wants to see candidates for public office debating in the nude (although exposure on the balcony was part of the coronation ritual for centuries when the health of the king was tied to the health of the land).

Well time for me to get more coffee and something for the migraine, but it is soooo good to see folks having fun!

ouch, ouch, and double ouch!!

(and ra3vyn's entry is subtly elegant, too)

Attached Link: Planet Perplex

So far I've thrown up filler pieces as idea-starters, and will remove them from competition as more stuff comes in or I get something serious finished.  They are intended to get people thinking as well as groaning.  Meanwhile, giggles and chuckles are good.  My favorite so far is the Philosiraptor.

Here's another link to a site with some gorgeous and twisted art.  I even learned a new word to play with. ;^)

http://www.planetperplex.com/en/index.html

Carolly

TheBryster,

We're having fun playing with words and images, making puns in obvious (visual) ways.  You know how children play with their food?  Remember that scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind where the grown man turned a plate of mashed potatoes into the Mother Ship's landing site?  Yes, he was playing with his food, but in a rather more recognizably artistic fashion. ;)

Let's assume that your primary tool is Bryce and your focus is creating landscapes.  Where do your interests lie?  The classics?  Homer sang of a "wine dark sea"... Ruby waves, Greek ship, crewman filling his beaker over the side!  Astronomy?  The sky is full of imagery like a "Milky Way" with white jugs in lieu of stars.  Or have astronauts discovering mermaids in the Sea of Tranquility.  Genealogy (ok, I paused and peeked):  Family tree!  (In fact, trees are almost too full of puns, given that bark, branch, root, leaf, etc., all have many meanings.)

You can slap a different and unexpected texture upon your deserts to get desserts... rock candy for the pun-within-a-pun!  A river bank?  Well, bank is a chair, and a place where finances are transferred and held, and you can bank coals and airplanes and billiard balls, so almost anything with a steep slope can be punned upon.  As for river?  Well, the word actually means that which cuts or divides (rive, riven): whether it is the Styx or the Rubicon, crossing the river usually is more significant than following it.

You can start with a terrain or with a prop... let's say that you need an excuse to use a loom... looming disaster, warped threads, spinning a yarn, shuttle diplomacy... you can take a simple prop and go out in any direction to find the humor in it.

I'm going to try to create something pretty this month as my real entry, but meanwhile have quickly thrown up humorous bits to nudge others into light-heartedness.

Carolly

Attached Link: bake cookies here!

LUCKY BREAK

My favorite fortune was one I got decades ago from an upscale restaurant: "make friendship more lasting: seal someone in plastic" and I can't think of anything to top that.  Sorry.

http://www.redkid.net/generator/fortune/

There are generators of church signs and love notes and such, too.  If you need ideas for church signs, the REAL ones can be extremely funny, and there are books of them!!

http://crummychurchsigns.blogspot.com/

Again, anybody with a sense of humor and two fingers to type with can play along.  simply Google for various generators

Attached Link: tombstone generator

Anyway... a misspelling is reading FRST as the abbreviation for First and not for Forest.  HUSAN FRST would probably have only worked for baseball and Three Stooges fans anyway.  sigh

This is not a Tombstone!

There are Tombstone Generators, too.  Some offer 4 or 5 lines for poets to decorate with words.  No art tools or skills needed, so this is part of why I'd hoped that the writers and others could join in the play.  Here, I'm playing on Magritte's "This is not a Pipe." 

One of the tombstone sites had skeletons lounging in the graveyard (which offers scope for all sorts of puns with bones), but it was flash, so no way to effectively save the image.

Attached Link: Make Street Signs Here

How about a street sign for some surreal estate?

FARFARA WAY

Well, you're off and running!   pawn shop... groan!