View From Mt. Tamalpais

 Scenes of the 180 degree view from Mt. Tamalpais East Peak on New Year's Day with an original soundtrack.

Rainy Day Jazz

What better way is there to spend a rainy day than making new music and animations!  

New Video! Falling Into Winter

The older I get, the more I appreciate autumn.  This video is a 2+ minute photo montage, with an original soundtrack featuring Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata theme (played and recorded by me using my Yamaha MX88), and some novel effects.  With over 80 images, the video is a celebration of a beautiful time of year, as photographed in and around Marin County over several seasons.   

New Oil Paintings September/October

 Top to Bottom:

1.  Playing in Mud at the Estero 18x24x1.5 oil on stretched canvas.  

2.  Parts 2 if 5 of a 5x7 oil-on-linen mini landscape series:  

    a)  Northern California Quarry & Hills

    b)  Winding Road to Mustard Fields

Hiking Dry Marin in the Month of May

Post Covid-19 vaccinations, a family visit and hike up into the dry hills of Marin County, with fire hazard grass being eaten by goats in the distance. Video and Soundtrack by Lucy Autrey Wilson with original music by Greg Manata. Copyright Lucy Autrey Wilson, 2021. Full screen version of video on my YouTube channel here

This Beautiful World

View from Marin County of San Francisco Bay, including Angel Island, and in the distance, Mt. Diablo.  Shot walking the Dipsea trail from Muir Woods in Mill Valley to Stinson Beach.  Nice workout, lovely views.  More landscape pics taken during this hike at  Lucy Autrey Wilson (@lucyautreywilson) • Instagram photos and videos and some with people below

Marin County Drought - We're In for it Now!

 Top two photos taken April 2021; Bottom two taken August 2016.  Different angles, different lenses and a significantly different amount of water!  

An Interview with the Author of Little Cloud

The children's book Little Cloud is now available in print and as an e-book on Amazon.com  First published as an e-book in 2014, and a print edition on Blurb, it has now been made available as a print edition on Amazon.  Here's more information about the book, in the form of an interview:

Interviewer:  What is the story behind the story of Little Cloud?

Lucy Autrey Wilson:  I wrote and illustrated Little Cloud in 2014, at the peak of California’s driest period since record-keeping began, between late 2011 and 2014.  I was wishing for more rain so thought a story about a rain cloud might be nice.

Interviewer:  Is there a reason your other main character is a blue jay named Jack?

Lucy Autrey Wilson:  Since I made the cloud feminine, I thought it would be good to make the bird male.  I have twin grandsons who were four years old at the time, the age target of my story, and by making one of the characters male I hoped to appeal to them.  Neither of the twins is named Jack, but that name seemed to fit. I was also inspired by my backyard blue jays.

Interviewer:  Can you tell the reader a little bit about your illustration process.  It looks like your illustrations were drawn using vector software, is that correct?

Lucy Autrey Wilson:  Yes.  I wanted to make both a digital and a print book.  The requirements for an e-book meant getting the file size as small as possible.  I needed to create the art using vector software, instead of raster images.   A raster image is artwork created in a non digital medium, then scanned in to the computer becoming a digital file made up of pixels.  When these raster images are enlarged, the image quality diminishes significantly and the file sizes are much bigger.  Vector artwork, on the other hand, is composed of mathematical lines and curves.  Not only does vector art take up a lot less digital space, it can be scaled to any size without losing quality. 

Interviewer:  How did you come up with your book title?

Lucy Autrey Wilson:  The title Little Cloud just fit the story.  After I first published the e-book in 2014, I realized it was the same title as a book by Eric Carle, one of my favorite children’s book author/illustrators.  That was certainly not intentional.

Interviewer:  What source material did you use for your illustrations?

Lucy Autrey Wilson:  I am a photographer and am always looking for new ways to use the tens of thousands of photos I’ve taken over the years.  At the time I wrote Little Cloud, I was also travelling up to Seattle a couple times a year to visit my daughter’s family, including the aforementioned twins.  So the photo reference in the beginning of Little Cloud was shot in Washington State.  Where Little Cloud travels south to, is Marin County, California, where I live.

The tall mountains in my story are based on the Olympic mountains, as seen from the top of Mount Walker, in Washington State.  The tallest of the Olympic mountains is Mount Olympus at 7,965 ft.

The body of water Little Cloud and Jack fly over is Puget Sound, as seen from Seattle.

Small Mountain is based on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County.  Although the biggest mountain around where I live, its peak is 2,572 ft.  much shorter than the Olympic mountains.

The various flower drawings are based on photographs taken at the Botanical Gardens in Fort Bragg, California in 2013.

Interviewer:  What do you hope your readers take away from the book?

Lucy Autrey Wilson:  First and foremost, I hope the reader is entertained.  Secondly, I hope the message of friendship, and the benefits of helping others, resonates.  And finally, I hope there is a little more awareness of the beautiful world we live in and a desire to help combat climate change to keep it that way.

#29, #30 and #31 best photos from 2018.

#6 of 31 best photos of 2018 by me

Mustard fields of West Marin

A Trio of Digital Window Paintings

Top to Bottom:

Belize Water Sports and Marin Window merged:  Two separate Decembers, two separate years

Marin Window with GrutBrush Clouds & Rain

Marin Window (with Adobe KYLE brushes adding a variety of graffiti)

California Sunshine Quilt

Finally finished my mega quilt!  80 individual photographs printed on fabric and woven into the quilt using an original plaid design.  Photos of my artist wooden models were used as templates for the four characters, which were then appliqued onto silk swatches using some cool Martha Negley designed fabric.  They looked a bit naked, even after adding the birds, so I later added bathing suits with a fabric I designed and printed.  The quilt is so big (74 1/4" h x 66 3/4" w) I had to do it in three sections then sew the sections together at the end.  What's going on in this quilt, you ask?  Well, I love California, I love the sun, I love taking photos in my neighborhood on sunny days, and I love birds. 

Art Quilts In Process

I now have so much fabric, I feel obligated to do something with it before it takes over the entire house.  So I am doing a lot of quilting these days.  One of my self imposed guidelines requires each quilt include some original art and/or photograph, which further expands the fabric library.  The top two images are for a giant quilt tentatively called "Birdmen of Marin," because it will ultimately include 80 2x2 photos that I shot in and around Marin County, combined with 4 wooden artist model photos done in an applique rose fabric + some original bird art.  The third image down is for a different quilt of funky birds in primary colors.  The one featured here is blue.  The final in process quilt depicted here is called "Magnolia from Bud to Flower" and includes magnolia photos printed on silk, then cut up, together with some applique magnolia buds and flowers in a mix of cotton and silk that is still being worked on.

Between Storms

View of Phoenix Lake from the climb up Bald Hill

Honorable Mention at the Marin County Fair

My five photos entered in the special category - "In Focus," judged by Jack Fulton, got an honorable mention.   #1 winner was Louise Williams, a Bay Area photographer, who composited zoo animals into rooms in a charming way.  Can't find a link on-line but here is her Saatchi page: http://www.saatchiart.com/louisekwilliams

What a difference the Rain Makes

Same view of Bon Tempe Lake and Mt. Tamalpais peak from the Mt. Tamalpais Watershed in November, 2015 and again in April, 2016.  Different camera gear.

Ten Favorite Photos of 2015

My New Year's resolution is to improve my photography in 2016.
Past favorites from 2015 top to bottom:
1.  My neighborhood, November
2.  Photographing blur, September
3.  The Golden Gate Bridge during my first photography workshop, August
4.  A composite of shots taken in my backyard during the eclipse of the moon, September
5.  Portrait of Wilson Taylor in Seattle, December
6.  Portrait of Cole Taylor in Seattle, December
7. Inverness at dusk, during my 2nd photography workshop, September
8.  A neighborhood tree, November
9.  A neighborhood oak tree with dry hills, November
10. South Beach, newly edited RAW file now that I have Photoshop CC, April

So Many Photo Options. Which Would You Choose?

Photography used to be a lot simpler.  You had to worry about what ASA film to buy, whether B&W or color, slide or print, and a few other things when shooting the picture.  Usually a lab took it from there.  Now there are an explosion of options from what you select on your DSL camera, when taking the picture, to a thousand things you can do in post production.  Above is one picture as shot (top), slightly manipulated in Lightroom (middle photo) and more manipulated in Photoshop (bottom).   But which one is best?