Sensuality

Sensuality has to do with our five senses – sight, taste, hearing, touch and smell – and our degree of awareness thereof; in other words our perception of Life and anything that happens around us.

Sensuality is what my Online Newspaper  Touch Vision Talk was built on where we constrain ourselves to five main categories, referring to the five senses… plus obviously media-oriented categories like a photo gallery, a featured gallery, an art and presentation gallery and a media gallery for videos.

In the Digital Photo “Taste of Paradise” that I took of an adorable little sunbird on dark blue agapanthus blooming right now in Cape Town’s unique Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens yesterday – and the colors are absolutely untouched while I obviously turned this picture into a bit of Wildlife Art by creating and integrating other elements of my own personal taste – , I may assume that this Picture talks to more than just your visual receptors!

Sensuality in Images

In our previous article under the main topic ‘Web Graphics Design’, we spoke about “Pictures that Talk” and how to design “Images that Create Empathy” … and my simple answer to this is by creating digital pictures and images that appeal to one or more of our senses – and this irrespective of the topic. We can do this by expressing or translating our personal perception, understanding and skill in terms of :

• Taste and Finesse
• Aesthetics
• Humor
• Simplicity or Elaboration
• Accuracy and Photo Realism … or the exact opposite thereof:
• Absolute Freedom of Form and Shape etc…

in the style, technique and ways of our own choice.

As with anything of value, the closer we are connected to what we are doing – really within the process and part thereof – the more sensual the result and the response it triggers.

BEing in the NOW is the secret of it all – and the most important lesson to learn. Touching and being touched… that’s all there is.

Author: Bianca Gubalke, Art, Media, Publishing. Co-Founder of YORGOO, YCADEMY and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

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• Images that Create Empathy
• Digital Art
• Images that Create Empathy
• Visitor from Mars
• Malachite Sunbird

Images that Create Empathy

An important function of Images is to Create Empathy in the viewer, meaning an emotion, a feeling, something that resonates and as such carries our message across and – as a consequence – triggers a reaction.

In Advertising, this reaction is carefully calculated and anticipated.

Images that Create Empathy

Images that Talk blur the lines between us and ‘the other’ – in other words the sender (say the artist) and the receiver (the audience) and they are always images that Create Empathy – Empathy translating basically into feeling and our capability to underestand and share someone else’s emotions.

Heinz Kohut put it like this: “Empathy is the capacity to think and feel oneself into the inner life of another person.”

What counts for us as Web Graphic Designers when it comes to Websites and Blogs is that our Artwork reflects what we want to express at a given moment, for a specific reason… which is mostly articulated in text format. As such Web graphics amd Images are much more than a decorative element of a website; they have a very clear goal: to captivate peoples’ attention and to mobilize a desired reaction.

Google has recognized the increasing importance of Images and gives us many ways to tag them and give our posts an additional boost to reach top level rankings.

Author: Bianca Gubalke, Art, Media, Publishing. Co-Founder of YORGOO, YCADEMY and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

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Visitor from Mars

All my work turns around Art, Web Design and any form of artistic and spiritual expression beyond space and time… and in terms of this blog this is what I mostly write about.

It is funny how things we focus on suddenly appear in our lives… it may be the strangest encounters, but if we are sensibilized and sort of alert… almost expecting something to happen, the strangest things materialize. maybe there is even an answer right here, however, let me tell you of a microscopic, yet amazing encounter of a little “green man”.

A Visitor from Mars?

Visitor from Mars

It all started with a discussion about amongst others, supernatural happenings in our lives – that’s where it really steamed up and the ‘free spirit’ bounced against a ‘superstition barrier’. However, many people had witnessed spectacular UFO’s over Johannesburg two weeks or so ago, it was in the news, although more overseas than here. I got the whole story in detail when my friends visited who had been amongst those lucky ones who had seen it all… As this has happened to me and my family on several occasions in France, even confirmed by official sources in the UK at the time… and what one has experienced in great detail can simply not be ridiculed away, impossible. So this very special friend laughed it all off and said that he would love to see a little green man, meaning a visitor from Mars.

Without taking the background too serious, the idea inspired me to see whether I couldn’t track down a “little green man” the very next morning when hunting with my Coolpix in my garden, just as the first golden rays of the sun sneaked over the mountain tips and through the trees and plants dipping everything into etheric beauty.

I didn’t see ‘it’ at once… but what an amazing microcosm, red like Mars… and lost within it like in a huge Universe. . . a little ‘green man’ – a Visitor from Mars?

Author: Bianca Gubalke, Art, Media, Publishing. Co-Founder of YORGOO, YCADEMY and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

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• Malachite Sunbird
• Malachite Sunbird
• Noordhoek Garden before the Rain
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Watercolor Online

Watercolor Online – is this possible?

I loved doing watercolors in the good old days before the PC entered my life, and I still admire artists who really know how to create this form of spontaneously controlled Artwork where everything needs to flow to give a satisfactory if not stunning result.

Either it’s good – or it’s for the waste bin… there’s no inbetween!

The question for me now is:

Can one really achieve anything online that gives a result that can be compared in terms of visual appearance to the traditional Watercolor Technique – Wet in Wet, Washing, Glazing and the subtle methods of dropping colors into the wetness, lifting superfluous pigments off and working over it all when completely dry with a dry brush?

Watercolor Online

Watercolor Online may not be everyone’s cup of tea, however, most people are equipped with digital cameras and can capture their favorite motives – in my case Pictures from my Garden.

Honey Bee on a Bottlebrush

To see whether I could get anywhere near the impression of  Watercolor Online, I manipulated a digital image I took of a Honeybee on a Bottlebrush in Photoshop… and while I obviously have a bigger original, here’s a small version of my series on the topic  “Honey Bee on a Bottlebrush”.

Another question was the presentation on something more ’tissue-like’ without distorting the image itself… and as I have a transparent background on my Author Blog here was the next challenge.

I’m working on more . . .

…

Author: Bianca Gubalke, Art, Media, Publishing. Co-Founder of YORGOO, YCADEMY and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

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Malachite Sunbird

The Malachite Sunbird – or so-called Green Sugarbird – is endemic to the Cape Peninsula, right at the tip of Africa. It depends on the many nectar-producing plant species and the insects attracted to them on which they feed  – especially the sugarbush Protea, the Pincushion Protea Leucospermum and Pagodas Mimetes, as well as Eucalyptus trees, Agave americana, and the New Zealand Christmas Tree (Metrosideros excelsa) – all of which I grow in my garden here in Noordhoek.

Malachite Sunbird Stamp

The Malachite Sunbird and its joyful voice is such a typical presence down here in South Africa that I decided to dedicate one of my specially designed stamps to it!

Voila the Malachite Sunbird Stamp!

. . .

Author: Bianca Gubalke, Art, Media, Publishing. Co-Founder of YORGOO, YCADEMY and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

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Malachite Sunbird

Malachite Sunbirds (Nectarinia famosa, 1766, Cape of Good Hope, South Africa ) are beautiful little emerald jewels on flurry wings. Attracted by the rich colourful proteas and many other flowering species in my garden, I have a couple of them breeding and it’s not rare they even come into my Studio… the event being an absolute highlight for MadMad, my hunter-hearted cat! It really gets the adrenaline up on all sides. . .

Malachite Sunbird

Malachite Sunbirds – also called Green Sugarbirds -  are extremely fast and often mistaken for colibris, who are much smaller though.  I had not yet taken the time to really wait patiently with my Nikon Coolpix P90 to eternalize these adorable little beings, but they come and greet me every morning and evening with their distinctive voices and cascading songs… and yesterday I quickly caught a male on the large Strelitzia Nicolai on my terrace – and this while the storm was roaring and stripes of rain dimmed the light.

Imagine the colours in full sunlight! It’s a photo still to be made… but the rains continue down here at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa – which is totally unusual for this time of the year.

Wildlife Art

From Digital Photography to Wildlife Art – I just love this combination and can lose myself completely in it. I did publish a few of the many artistic versions I created with Photoshop in my Gallery… and these are just some delightful experiments, however, they gave me some ideas for commercialization that I will be investigating and possibly putting into practice. Nothing I haven’t done in my ‘low-tech’ past as an artist. . . sometimes one just needs a hint to remember :)

Exciting!

Author: Bianca Gubalke, Art, Media, Publishing. Co-Founder of YORGOO, YCADEMY and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

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• Sensuality
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Pink Flamingos

Pink Flamingos Digital Art

Today’s Google Top 10 results:

Pink Flamingo Pictures

Another niche of interest for me as an artist – here are today’s Google Top 10 results… straight after mega sites like fotosearch and acclaimimages… :

Pink Flamingo Art

Definitely another keyword combination of interest… and we are there, right on Google Top 10 with biancagubalke.com and auctiontalklive.com … not to forget the spiffy Semiomantics Script of course :

Digital Fantasy Art

We have started targeting this niche as well.

Pink Flamingos

I am not happy yet with the performance on this keyword combination; so let’s see what this post will do to get us further to the top.

However, from my research the importance of a domain name relating to the keyword where we wish to dominate a niche is of major importance – which in this particular case would be something like “pinkflamingos.com” or “thepinkflamingo.com” or “pinkflamingo.net” as examples.

If flamingos were my main business and topic, I would do just anything to establish myself with a corresponding domain name – there is no way around it.

I get my domain name on yorGOdom.

. . .

Author: Bianca Gubalke, Art, Media, Publishing. Co-Founder of YORGOO, YCADEMY and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

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Pink Flamingos

Pink Flamingo Graphics

If you followed my evolution on learning new programs in connection with Digital Art – especially as I described HERE at the beginning of this month, then my “Pink Flamingo Magic” is the continuation of the simple topic or ‘job’ I had given myself: to create a landscape consisting of different planes (eg. the sea, the sky, the desert rock alternating with desert sand), 2 mountains and the integration of a lake.

Digital Fantasy Art

As you saw, the digital pictures start looking like something that fits well into the category “Digital Fantasy Art” and obviously there are many different versions for different tastes and purposes. This aspect… to be able to duplicate and alter, albeit slightly – differentiates Digital Art so clearly from traditional Fine Arts, although there are some similarities with fine engravings… I recall regularly diversifying my Artwork at the time when I focused a lot on artistic print making – including lithography with real heavy stones.

Gosh, where did those times go…? Today it’s all about a mouse, a pen, a tablet, a keyboard and a screen – amazing!

Besides I started working with a new digital tablet and a digital pen… and I admit having to struggle to adapt my normally wide gestures to the relatively small area of operation (BAMBOO tablet). I feel like a tennis player on a ping pong table and I hit limitations  more often than I lik. However, it’s all a matter of finetuning the settings of the tool and then: practice, practice, practice!

Pink Flamingo Pictures on Google

Our research this morning gave us some interesting insights on one hand and an overwhelming amount of GOOGLE Top 10 positions for our YORGOO Publishing Network as a whole, based on yesterday’s article focusing entirely on “pink flamingos”.

I am continuously surprised as to how many searches and returns there actually are on even the most ridiculous keyword – eg. pink hamsters at the time.

So the lesson from here is that each niche keyword is of interest to us if it resides within our targeted environment – and what seems to be tiny and rather ‘negligeable’ right now may soon enough develop into a major keyword. Then it’s important to occupy a top ranking position – so we’ve got to work on it now in order to position ourselves where we want to be seen later.

So the crucial question always is: where do I want to be seen – where would potential customers look for me, i.e. what would they type into the Google Search Engine to find me?

In that sense my “Pink Flamingo Digital Art” is currently positioning itself for those interested in exactly that.

. . .

Author: Bianca Gubalke, Art, Media, Publishing. Co-Founder of YORGOO, YCADEMY and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

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