157. Reproduction Star

I picked up a book which I haven't been working on for rather a long time.
This is a Reproduction...

... from Keri Smith's "This is not a Book".

I might still use this seal somehow... :)

156. Milkshake-Candle Star

Here's a quick one from tonight: Candle shining through glass with milkshake remnants.

155. Tape & Highlighters

I'm dead tired. University is wearing me down and sadly all those stars are more of an obligation at the moment and no real fun at all. However, I can still remember that feeling, so maybe I can get it back. Here's a short one for tonight made out of what I'm using a lot at the moment: highlighters, tape, and discarded paper (that's where the lines and letters come from).

P.S.: Highlighters are definitely no good for photographing or scanning. The colours will just disappear and I have to dig through a lot of photoshop funcions to bring them back.

154. Music Monday #5

Okay, since this one is definitely too difficult to figure out, I'll just reveal it:

Mike Oldfield - Dark Star

What was really interesting about the process of drawing this was how the star changed from radiating darkness to radiating light and finally to radiating both. I had thought about doing this with watercolours or acrylic paint, but it turned out that charcoal was an excellent choice: There's a lot of power in this music, it's very forceful, and it requires rather a lot of force to apply that much charcoal to a white paper to make it look this dark.

I love listening to a piece of music over and over again, and transforming the sounds into an image. This is a rather unusual one, though, because colours are normally important in that process...

For those who are interested in the music: Here's the version I was listening to.

153. Glow-in-the-Dark Stars

Not much 'making' to this one either - I was just too busy with my master's thesis today. So I finished putting some glow-in-the-dark stars up to the ceiling above my bed. (Yes, it does make me feel like a little child every now and then to look at them before I fall asleep - which is basically the reason I put them there.^^) Then I went through a lot of trouble trying to get a clear picture of them glowing. This is the best I could manage:

152. Star Flakes

Right, I remember how I decided that simply taking a photo of a star would not be enough - I'd have to contribute something to the star for it to become one. Today's project is a bit controversial when it comes to that resolution because what I did was basically take some photos.

But: It wasn't as easy as that. I had to play around with my camera's functions in order to get a sharply focused picture of those tiny tiny tiny snowflakes that came down this morning. The advantage with really tiny snowflakes is that they are actually seperate snowflakes that look like crystal stars.

(The fabric of my jacket which they fell on actually looks like the smoothest fabric you can imagine, so that might give you an idea of how closely this is zoomed in...)

The other thing I did to 'make' these stars was to reduce the contrast of the background a little on the computer so that the snowflakes would be visible more clearly.

I simply love the look of real snowflakes so these just have to count.

Right, I convinced myself. :)

151. Star Bread

I got a present today - totally random, no reason at all, except that my lovely friend Tina thought of me when she discovered some star-shaped baking moulds and biscuit cutters. :) I had planned on baking some bread today, so I used those moulds to make two buns (if you can call them that... nothing like a real German Brötchen! :D):

Yummy!

150. Phoning a Star

What number would I have to dial to reach a star?
Well, obviously 1525356595857545.

Unfortunately, earthly telephones seem unable to establish a connection. Perhaps I can discover an enhanced device capable of dual-tone multi-frequency signaling (never knew 'tone dialing' had such a long name) and can establish a connection accross several thousand lightyears... I'll let you know. :)

149. Highlighter-Photoshop Collaboration Star

Well, not much to say about this one, actually. Lots of studying today, and lots of highlighters in use. So I drew a star with them and then had five minutes of fun with several photoshop functions to create a little colour explosion:

I like the result better than I thought I would.

148. CD Splinters

I have cracked CDs before because I was really curious about how far they could be bent and how they would finally crack. However, when I decided to do that again to an old CD which was to be thrown away I wasn't at all prepared for such an explosion. Apparently, CDs of different brands behave differently when threatened in such a way. They all fight back, but this one delivered a final blow at me much stronger than others. But the splinters it left looked interesting:

And I love how they shimmer! :)

On a side note: Today, 150 years ago, Alvan Graham Clark discovered the second white darf in the history of astronomy: Sirius B (white dot in the lower left quadrant of the picture), the tiny companion of the brightest star in our night sky, Sirius A.

 

(photo taken by the NASA and ESA's Hubble Space Telescope)

147. Music Monday #4

Oh dear, it looks like last week's music project was too difficult to figure out after all. Well, maybe I'll just post the solution in a comment... :)

For the one today, I'll give a little hint: It's also (rather strongly) related to a movie...

Just a quick sketch and watercolours. - I had originally thought of something very different for today but that would have required a lot more time and I was at home for about 3 hours total today. Maybe next week.

146. Book Sculpture Star

It worked, finally! This is the project I've been struggling with for days:

Another book that was of no real use anymore (a several years old workshop programme) got put to a new use: decoration. Here's a side view of it:

And this is its story: My mother used to make such book sculptures a while ago and I spent quite some time trying to figure out how I could make one that would look like a star. I did, eventually, and folded approximately 100 sheets (200 pages - that took a few hours...), only to find that the glued spine was impossible to bend. I got only half a circle. :(

Some tips from my mother (and the reassurance that she had somehow made it work before - even with glued spines), made me try again and I sat down with a knife to scrape a part of the glue off - as much as possible without the pages falling off - and scratch thin fissures into it, hoping it would bend then.

The result was better than before but still not a proper circle. I had to use a lot of glue and fixate it over night so it would stay in shape. Now it does and I'm quite amazed at the result! Two days ago, I really couldn't imagine it to ever look like this. :)

145. Snow Cake Star

Unbelievable: We finally got the first real snow this winter! So I had to abandon my studies and go out for a bit.

I went up my favourite mountain - well, depending on what you are used to it could be called 'mountain' or 'hill', but where I live people call it a mountain. I was a little late so the light started to fade before I reached the top; and though I had already made it down this mountain in the dark before, I didn't want to try it again with a ground slippery from snow and (just-about-to-become-ice-)mud. Fortunately, I passed by this beautiful spot just below the top and was amazed to find it still barely touched.

(It's usually a really nice viewpoint but today there wasn't much to be viewed as the air was thick with grey mist.)

I used the snow on the stone table to make a star (almost killing my fingers in the process):

Here's how passers-by might see it from the path just above that viewpoint:

Only then did I realise that it looked very much like a cake - a Snow Cake (beautiful film, by the way). I didn't eat it, though - found myself some other snow to eat.^^

144. Clothes Peg Star

Hooray... Once again, I wasted an entire evening on a project which didn't work out. Honestly, I'm not very happy with all this at the moment. Here's a poor substitute star of clothes pegs I stuck together:

143 Rubber Star

Have you ever cut a rubber/eraser? Well, it probably depends on the type, but it generally is very amazing - at least to someone like me who likes to fiddle around with things.

 

This one has a long history, it must be ancient, really. And one can see the holes where we used to stick the pens in. (As I found out when cutting it: In some of them there're even pieces of lead left that broke off.

I think the star's points will break off rather soon when it's used, but nevermind. I thought it was a good way to honour such an old and faithfull companion. :)

142. Pizza Star

Having eaten half of my dinner:

141. A Piece of Night Sky

As there is no beautiful night sky to be seen outside (and I really could use some of that right now), I had to make my own:

Black piece of paper with tiny holes poked into it in front of my living room lamp. It's the "Random Winter Night Constellation".

140. Music Monday #3

Still raining - inside and outside.

I found a very appropriate music project for this situation. This one is a little harder to figure out, I suppose (unless, of course, one knows the song well^^). But it's also one I had on my mind a lot during the first weeks of my year of stars (though it wasn't raining, then).

139. Coloured Dots

Oh dear. I just had a look at the past couple of weeks and realised that there's hardly any colour in the stars... Here's an attempt at changing that - though it does feel a little pathetic right now...

138. Snow Flake Star

Late again...

Well, I tried, it didn't work, I was frustrated - and forgot about it until I had just gone to bed. Since I refused to get up again, I had to finish it today, which (I think) makes it the first star that is actually late...

This one expresses my hope for at least one day of snow this winter. It did snow a little yesterday morning - at least about 10 meters above ground. Upon reaching the ground it all turned to water. That's why I decided to make my own snow out of paper.