Getting Lost is Just Part of the Process. Digital collage by © LUMILYON.

If you’re interested in learning how to to create an artful, poetic, digital photo collage, you’re in luck! Award winning iPhone photographer Lumilyon has written the second free tutorial in her amazing series. This time she reveals how she creates her stunning, dreamy digital collages using her iPhone!

In this unique tutorial you’ll learn:

• one of Lumilyon’s techniques for creating a collage using an iPhone
• how to create an interesting background with just one click of an app
• how to extract an element from a photograph and collage it onto another
• how to blend two two photographs together by blurring them

You’ll need 3 creative photography apps to follow along in this guide for how to create a digital collage using your iPhone:

• Tiny Planets – Stereographic photos on your iPhone (free app!)
• Juxtaposer – Fun and Intuitive Photo Compositing App for your iPhone and iPod Touch
• BlurFX – Fantastic out of focus pictures

Now head on over to this priceless tutorial: iPhone Tutorial 02: Little Fishy Collages.

Related Posts:
The Secret of Artful iPhone Photography
15 Best Photo Apps for iPad and iPhone
PhotoSync: Wirelessly Transfer Photos and Videos
Top 20 Apps to Turn Your iPad into a Portable Creative Studio

Dry pastel crayons

When your art is your work or when you’re blogging about what you create, the spontaneity is easily lost. You want your clients and buyers to be happy and you want to give your blog visitors a valuable experience. Your art becomes an achievement.

Part of you goes about your day thinking “this would make a good blog post” or “now I know how to solve that detail in the commission I’m working on“. Sometimes you feel you’re producing art and regardless of what mood you’re in, the job is due tomorrow. Even though you love your job, it’s partly become an obligation.

When you put your creative life on display or make a living as an artist, it’s easy to loose sight of creating without intention, just for the sheer joy of it.

A blog or an online portfolio can be a creative outlet in itself and a great way to stay motivated and hold yourself accountable for your creative projects. A way to document your creative journey and to connect with others.

On the other hand, blogging takes a lot of time and puts you on a schedule. You can begin blogging for the comments on your blog, and maybe you start looking for validation from your readers, rather than from within yourself. In a time when we seem more busy documenting our lives than living our lives, it takes deliberation to find a peaceful space that hasn’t got anything to do with other people or how they perceive us. To create a space that has nothing to do even with our own expectations.

A creativity lab. So can you plan to be spontaneous? Write your own permission slip? Can you make room for experiments, happy accidents and non-judgemental creativity? Find time and space to change your mindset?

This autumn I’ve reserved Friday afternoons for spontaneous explorations and I promised myself that I wouldn’t display any of the art from these sessions here on my blog. It’s been a process that’s about loosening up, improvising, letting go of expectations, being associative, having fun and allowing art to unfold intuitively. I’ve been working quickly with natural media. Each Friday a new theme and different mediums. The emphasis is on getting into flow rather than stepping back and judging.

I’ve spent time getting messy with acrylics, oils, dry pastels, clay, oil pastels, watercolours, textiles, charcoal and gouache. Working on different types of canvases such as cardboard, different kinds of paper, wood panel and canvas. I’ll admit that after the first two sessions I felt disappointed with the “result”, even though the whole point was to let go of expectations, but after that it’s been much easier to let go, have fun and step into the freedom of playful creating.

Paintbrushes

Palette with acrylics: earth tones

A Bed of Roses. Collage.

New Year’s Eve will be lit by a Blue Moon and the moonlight will welcome the new year, 2010. Obviously, this only happens once in a blue moon!

As I prepared my dreamboard for the Full Moon Circle, I thought a lot about this. The Blue Moon shining as fireworks go off and the new year rings in. The passage between the first and second decade of this century.

Then I thought about the word I’ve chosen to guide me through the New Year. My word is “ease”. I thought of clouds and minimalism. But in the end my research of the word and its origin lead me to the synonym “bed of roses”, and that was irresistible! So here it is, passionate, romantic ease!

December. Walnuts, swedes, cranberries, turnips, pomegranates and passionfruit.

This year the Winter Solstice occurs on December 21. This is the shortest day or longest night of the year and I think it’s fascinating that although the interpretation of Winter Solstice has varied from culture to culture, most cultures in the world and throughout the times, celebrated it as a turning point and have held a recognition of rebirth, involving holidays, festivals, gatherings, rituals or other celebrations around this time. And still do.

Blue Branches is inspired by my longing for light during the dark winter months. The crisp blue quality that is specific to blue winter’s skies in the north and the beautiful twilight blue hour or l’heure bleue, with its intense blues. I’ve been documenting the process of how this image was created in my Creative Minutes project.

This desktop picture is a perfect match for the collection of Luminous Blue Folder Icons and as usual the download includes fullscreen, widescreen and iPhone versions.

< — Save this wallpaper to your computer.

Dreamboard. Full Frost Moon. November 2009.

This dreamboard didn’t turn out as I had planned it, not at all. And here I thought I had clear idea for what I wanted to bring into November! Since I’ve been spending my autumn expanding, following my heart, being in my creative process, participating in projects, resetting my internal compass, getting to know new friends and connecting with old ones, I felt it was time to, consolidate. To retreat to my home, to prepare for the holidays, find peace, bring beauty to my home, do yoga and sort out drawers. That is what my dreamboard was supposed to be about, but it took a direction of its own.

What I see is a dreamboard that’s about giving my creativity wings! Finding creative freedom. And a dreamboard strongly influenced by the bright colours of the autumn leaves, that bring me so much joy and inspiration!

For those of you who feel inspired by this dreamboard, I created Satsuma Sky, a desktop wallpaper and calendar for November with this motif. I hope you enjoy it!

November. Chestnuts, satsumas, celeriac, mangos, parsnips and pears. Darker days and candlelit evenings. Shades of orange and brown. I’m so enjoying experimenting with watercolours and collage techniques. This desktop wallpaper takes its cue from the autumn skies, watercolours and the explosive oranges of autumn leaves. A perfect backdrop for both Luminous Orange Folder Icons and Luminous Purple Folder Icons.

The download contains fullscreen, widescreen and iPhone versions.

< — Save this wallpaper to your computer.

Dreamboard. Full Harvest Moon. October 2009.

A Dreamboard for the Full Harvest Moon. Layers of transformation, expanding creative expressions, painting, photography, writing, type… The past, the present. And finding a focus for the future.

I was standing in the museum of a castle ruin, reading fascinating (no I’m not being sarcastic) and informative text on those typical museum boards, when suddenly the graffiti on the wall behind the board caught my attention. Or rather came forward to me, like a wave of text, like light, layers and layers of graffiti carved onto the stone wall. And I started to photograph the graffiti, going from room to room, floor to floor, captivated by it, following its light, and forgetting everything else… The earliest date I found was 1609, and the most recent was 2009. It was like a living memorial to all those people. I imagined each person writing their name on the wall, carving glorious moments of stolen kisses, or writing a “here I am, I exist” in the middle of an everyday experience… I wondered if people ever recalled, later on, the moment when they crafted that graffiti…

When I returned from my journey to Öland, my best friend wanted to see my photos from my trip, but I mostly have loads of photos of this graffiti from the castle… One of the images, the one below, was the starting point for this collage, and was meant to be the focal point, and yet it didn’t make it in! Somehow it just got to be too much.

Here is a desktop wallpaper and an October desktop calendar version of my Harvest Moon dreamscape.

Centuries of layered graffiti on the wall of a castle ruin.

October. Russet, plum, dark brown, rust, gold, purple and green. Mushrooms. Candied apples. Figs. Pumpkins. Roasted chestnuts. Halloween. And as I walk down the road, a scattering of acorns, pine cones and oak leaves.

I’ve been working on this image, inspired by my trip to Öland and the graffiti in a medieval castle. Creating a dreamscape in a whole different format when I realised it would work as a desktop wallpaper too, so I adapted the montage with its layers of writing and watercolours to desktop sizes. This download contains fullscreen, widescreen and iPhone versions. Montage wallpaper works very well with the collection of Purple Luminous Folder Icons, the Orange and Pink Folder Icons and Vintage Folder Icons: Purple Grapes.

< — Save this wallpaper to your computer.