‘While her lips are still red’ by Amalia Iuliana

This beautiful image is the winner of the ‘Blood Red’ challenge!

“While her lips are still red” by Amalia Iuliana Chitulescu

Wishlist, a writing challenge

Though the TBF members were so very shy about this challenge (only one work was submitted), we celebrate pauldrobertson‘s Soliloquy, charcoal+chalk, the truth about suicide

 

Soliloquy. Charcoal and white pastel. My former companion, lover and friend, sat for me though she really wanted to go outside and play in the sprinklers.
160×120 cm

She is so still, so still.

The way she sits with such delicacy, perfect and human.

Exquisite… she is so breathtakingly beautiful that it hurts me to look at her.
It makes me ache for her. For her sadness that I know so well; For the scars upon her sweet skin. For her, for her.
For her.
That this moment shall ever have to end.

And here is the truth about suicide, or one of the greatest of truths, one perhaps of the truest.

ah… speak truth and long and exhale hard into the empty hearts the softness of the night

Here.

Here.

I beg some breaths from you. I want your attention for a few minutes. Let me open my heart and my wounds for you.
There are, according to me, four kinds of suicides:

The first suicides I will discuss I will not dwell on. They are the suicides of the very young, and the very foolish. They are also a real component of our contemporary lives. The child or the fool imagines themselves at their own funeral. The absolute nature of what they do is lost to them, and they go blinded and innocent before their own bloody hands. A fool ends.
I can’t help but think as their last heart’s blood drains from their bodies, does it occur to them that they won’t be THERE when everybody is fucking sorry?
“No wait, I…” and breath shudders last. How utterly foolish and tragic. A messy comedy. Another life stolen from us.

I believe that the most common is as a result of a momentary, even if recurring, definitive madness of pain.
I think that… the despair takes us in sudden gulps and sucks the sanity from us; the frail bubble that it is bursts for a bloody but succinct, specifically human succession of moments. Twenty minutes. An hour. Long enough.
The pain… spears and punctures what we are. Our ecstasy of existence, the supremacy of our essential drive to live is swept into the wilding deep by it in savage sudden stabs. The pure violence of it, that something of this scale can even exist within us fills and covers us until that is what we ARE.
Terror is the answer, our reeling cramping minds’ answer. A devastating shudder of fear locks so many into death.
It is not the pain itself. It is that the pain may continue.
It is terror of the pain, you see. That it will not end. That this will go on. The moment cannot be prolonged, for it is untenable. It must be ended. The means are visceral, ancient and brutal.
Because, in the end, so are WE.

Challenge winner Josephine Pugh: “Haunting Places”

The winner of the Haunting Places challenge is Josephine Pugh‘s “Empty ~ West Park Asylum”. A very powerful, sombre and indeed haunting image. Minimalist in composition, subdued in tone, but rough and tactile in texture – very effective!

Give me a word and I will write you a poem

If you saw Before Sunrise, that ever so romantic movie, you’ll probably remember a scene with a street poet. He asks the main characters for a word, instead of just money (watch the scene, it’s much better than me describing it), so that he could write a poem for them with that word. A few weeks ago I asked some of my Facebook friends for the same kind of deal: give me a word, I’ll write you a poem, and if you feel like it contributes something to your life, you can give me something in return. So… give me a word, please!

P.S. This will ultimately become a free e-book that I’ll upload in April.

 

Winner of the ‘Psychological Landscape’ challenge

Congratulations to Maureen Maliha whose beautifully sombre and evocative image when you walk alone won first place in the Touched By Fire – Psychological Landscape challenge today!

I also think the second-place winner, Mary Ann Reilly‘s Forgetfulness is breathtakingly dreamlike and moving.

Rebecca
x

Thought-provoking/somewhat erotic – challenge winner

In our latest challenge, we searched for those images that touched our soul, while titillating our sensual nature. Please congratulate (and purchase some of her pieces, why not?) Margaret Bryant for her winning work: Stone Cold Fox Says Reading is Sexy. And, to top it off, it’s a self-portrait! That’s double the genius…

 

Touched by Layers – challenge winner

Greetings and salutations, fellow art lovers. Recently we asked the Touched by Fire members to participate in a challenge that featured the use of layers through editing or photo manipulation. Dorit‘s “by invitation only” was deserving of the most votes. We congratulate this featured member and urge you to visit her profile on RedBubble.

Challenge winners – “Monochrome, but not B&W”, December 10th 2010

“This challenge is for artwork and photographs which pretty much only involve one colour, but we are not looking for black & white or grayscale photos or drawings here.
For example…
It might be a monochrome photograph in the sense of being e.g. sepia, ambrotype, cyanotype, either originally or through a post-processing filter.
Or it could be any sort of digital image which has been given a hue, colour cast or some kind of filter so that all the colour in the images consists of different shades of one colour.
Or it might simply be that the subject matter of the photo, painting or drawing involves almost or completely one colour.
Or it colour be any digital image which has been so reduced in saturation, brilliance or contrast that each shade barely differs from grey.
I am taking the word ‘colour’ to mean not black or white. Black and white can be thought of as the darkest and lightest shade of any given colour.
Monochrome means almost the same thing as duotone!”

We have two winners for the “Monochrome, but not B&W” challenge: Berns, with A Blue Day, and Ivy Izzard, with The Web.

A Blue Day by Berns

This beautiful image of Oliva Beach, Valencia, Spain is a great example of how the use of one colour can give a calm and dreamlike overall quality to an image. The subtle variation in the blues of the distant mountains receding into the mist is perfectly complemented by the sharper light and dark contrast which captures the crispness of the waves so effectively. And the simple, silhouetted figure in the middle distance gives the image a story.

The Web by Ivy Izzard

This is a lovely example of how choosing one narrow part of the colour spectrum and working with that can produce a stylish and evocative image. The masterful use of bluish greys for the soft but fine shading in this picture is part of what gives the image its mysterious feel, as the figure seems to be literally emerging from the foliage. I think this is a beautifully romantic and charming picture.

Congratulations to both our winners, who are now featured members for a while!

Challenge winner: Footloose and Fancy Free

As promised, despite the low voting on this particular challenge, we must congratulate Autumnwind, whose work received the most votes: “Rock on Dudes!”

The challenge:

Have you ever heard the term foot loose and fancy free? In the older days it meant someone that could do whatever they wanted because they lack responsibilities. Responsibilities or not, these days it represents the feeling of embracing the moment and enjoying life as it is.

Please submit your best work that gives the feeling of living it up, feeling free and fun.

Touched by Fire: Trust (challenge winner)

Trust – the feeling of knowing you can rely on someone and having a feeling of security. Please enter your best work depicting trust.

“To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.” George MacDonald

Let’s congratulate Lynnette Shelley for winning this challenge with her work The Union.

Details of the work, as written by the artist:

Two elephants entwine trunks in this mixed media artwork. I used complimentary colors on the two elephants to represent the union of opposition.

19×25 inches on pastel paper. I used oil pastels, colored pencils, liquid gold leaf, gold acrylics and marker.