Garden Cottage

Garden Cottage

© 2009 Ashlee Elizabeth Lindsay. All rights reserved

This is my second attempt at using my photoshop program... Garden Cottage is a blending of many pictures that I took from the Lake Shrine in Pacific Palasades, Ca.

CPD-Looks Can Be Deceiving...

CPD-Releasing the Genie

Cynnefully Poetic-Breakdown

The Universe is pleased!...

It seems that since I decided to follow my heart and hobbies to the fullest I am being rewarded through the SECRET. In my life philosophy, when you are on the right path in your journey of life you receive road signs telling you that you are going in the right direction. At these road signs I stop, pause and reflect on where I have come from to get to this new point in my life. I re-assess my life and mentally look through the pages to see what lead me here to this specific point in my life and contemplate on how just one little , tiny , insignificant decision can change the rest of your life from that moment on. That one bad choice or decision can set you back so far in you life that you barely remember the kind of potential you have to share with the world. Understanding that I am on the path that I am on even if I make a bad choice it is still heading in the right direction because it is the physical step I took that is recorded in the Ultimate Book of Deeds. Am intuitive enough to gleam that it is blessing in disguise. Like Eva said, " you can't have a testimony with a test."

My life has gone through a lot of adversity and I have overcome it with my childlike innocence fully intact. My past makes me stronger; not quite sure how strong I need to be in God's eyes but I'm glad for the responsibility to bear it. My 27th birthday marked the dawn of a new era for me as myself: the character that I was meant to be in the great role of life. I have stopped running from myself; from the hurt, the pain of love lost in it's most innocent state. From the rage inside of me from what the pain left behind when it wasn't allowed audible expression. I made amends with my past selves; I had wronged them by leaving them alone in the dark to fester while I had to pretend to be perfect. I always self sacrificed for other than for myself even if it kills me health wise. When that happens I know that it is time for me to finally choose myself. Here is my best example of this:

My brother told the smartest 2 things that anyone could have said to me to make me strong enough to do what I had to do. He asked me inquisitively, "do you like being abused, yelled at or belittled?"
-,"No"
-"Then change it. If you stay, that means that you like it and I do not feel sorry for you...."
I didn't like the situation I was in back then. Didn't like it at all and I realized that It was time to get out of this abusive relationship. I left *Eric* (name not real changed to protect person involved)with the help of the local sheriff on a June 29th, 2 of my best friends birthdays. That next day I looked at myself in the mirror and my inner voice said, " How does it feel knowing that today is the first day of the rest of your life?" Tears were flowing down my face, while there was a huge smile on my face...

Today was another one of those days... at the end of class I went to my teacher and showed him the list of things in the courses that I was going to skip over due to being a transfer student. He took the list and went home to see what handouts, books and any other resource he could give to me to make my hobby become the real thing.

He explained that I have a lot of natural talent when it comes to my pictures. That I have an eye for blending colors and for putting together color schemes; that they all share some type of story and convey some type of emotion. I couldn't believe what I was hearing! I just do the creations when my insomnia takes a hold of me. That my artwork could be considered Fine Art and could possibly make a living selling them! (To all of the people who thought that my hobbies wouldn't lead me anywhere and told me that I needed to pay more attention to having a job than to follow my heart and make my hobby my career... I did it despite what you thought.) He also told me to meet the photoshop teacher and show him my notebook portfolio... so I did.

He was a little less receptive to me but I went for it anyways and won him over in the end. My natural raw talent was there, but it wasn't structured or focused and not industry standard. He asked me if they were created with photoshop and I said no; that I couldn't afford the program. He recommended Lynda.com and take the tutorials and see just how much more I could do that I originally thought. Then out of the blue on of his students tells me that she'll bring in her copy and I could use hers to learn on. (Photoshop has been a dream of mine ever since I could take pictures and manipulate them. for me to be able to work on one was the equivalent of having Santa Claus answer my prayers! ) It touched him that I wanted to pursue my passion; that was the way he first started out. Next thing I know he said that he would show me how to use it after my class till I learn it.

This is so amazing to me! It was these series of events that reconfirmed my philosophy on life... that finally I realized where my energy is best suited: in school learning how to turn my degree into a career that focuses on my passionate hobby of graphics art design.

Butterfly Wings...

Butterfly Wings

© 2009 Purely Cynnefull Designs

This is one of those pieces of artwork that I just pulled from everything that I could think of that I wanted in the picture and then scaled back to produce Butterfly Wings. Not quite sure why the blue is in there... this was originally going to be purple and black color scheme but it looked cooler with them there.

Little Worlds...

Little Worlds

©2009 Purely Cynnefull Designs

Bubbles are happy things... I wanted to create a picture that used bubbles and happy things. Rainbows, multi colored bubbles, nature and some fairy elements are incorporated within most of the bubbles.

Widowed Lies...

Widowed Lies

© 2009 Purely Cynnefull Designs

Purple is a beautiful color and I realized that I needed a design that incorporated it more than just a splash here and there. Weird random thoughts kept popping in to my head... the one that stuck was the words: "Little girls are made up of sugar, spice and everything nice..." So the picture began to take on more feminine attributes to reflect this quote. Having different types of various females exuding different personas of the female made sense to me. The blue galaxy is the focal point to bring you into the picture so that you take in the message as a whole; not in the sum of the pieces within the picture put together. At the end I was trying to come up with the title of the design [I never name it first without seeing the finished product... even when doing them for my poems] the ending theme song from The Fifth Element" popped into my head. The song was called "Little Light of Love" by RXRA and when I heard the line 'little light' my mind changed it into Widowed Lies...

Ice Queen...

Ice Queen

© 2009 Purely Cynnefull Designs

Ice Queen is an emotional piece with a mixture of white ice, snow and blues. At one point in my life I was an extremely cold and cruel person. My whole world had ended when my Nana died; she took with her all of my May day happiness and this summer knew what it had meant to become winter. It reminded me of the Greek myth of Persephone and why we have the seasons... Demeter's dying every time her daughter would go to the underworld causing the changes of the seasons. In this case the season being my life. Some of the ice is smooth likened to my expression back then; I was too numb to pay attention to anyone or thing. Icicles were my pointy daggers that I would throw to people who commented on how cold-hearted I had become. My body was covered in sheets of ice and was used as an armor towards the outside world. Soon I was dubbed, "The Ice Queen" or "The Icy Bitch." Winter was permanent for me; my heart locked away in a very cold and intolerable place. Depression soon set in and nothing mattered much in those days... that is why the color chosen was for the "blues."

Mysty...

Mysty

© 2009 Purely Cynnefull Designs

The Ocean and Icebergs were always a point of interest to me... under the fullness of the moon the ocean ebbs and flows like a metronome counting out the precise rhythm of life. That visual picture in my head was the one that sparked this design to be made. Mysty is one of my more subtle pieces of artwork that involves very few layers but gives the desired effect the way that I had it intended. The iceberg int this picture was meant more to look like mist [myst] so that it took its own shape and form within the picture. Adding the hint of the Japanese cherry blossom tree in the top left corner really gave the picture a feeling of land in the background... but there isn't; the blossoms come out of nowhere and meet with the mist out of the clear midnight blue sky. It has been said that the ocean is like that of a woman so I incorporated that aspect within Mysty... this design was also one of my myspace backgrounds as well.

Emmeralde

Emmeralde

© 2009 Purely Cynnefull Designs

Green is the closest color that my energy vibrates to... sometimes a mixture of blues and yellows but for the most part its emerald green for it vibrance. I wanted to create this ensemble of green colors together to show my blend of the energy with a hint of pink to represent the 4th charkra- the heart. Originally this was used as one of my own myspace backgrounds and that is why the "Property of Ashlee Lindsay" is not on there...

Lingering Moonbeams

Lingering Moonbeams
©Purely Cynnefull Designs

Moonbeams is a culmination of many images blended into the whole picture. It started out as a woman on a cloud with the moon behind her. then added the layers from there.

Lightning

Lightning
©Purely Cynnefull Designs

Lightning... enough said. Added the ice to give this picture a sence of electricity.

Inspiration From Above

Inspiration From Above
©Purely Cynnefull Designs

I used zodiac pictures to get the concept of astrology and divine inspiration to create Inspiration from above.

Ferns of Cynnefull Gardens... All Versions

After flipping through all of my photograhpy pictures that I took I found this wonderfull image of ferns on a side of a hill. Couple of picutes later I stumbled on the purple flowers and decided to add them as well. I didn't know which direction that "flowered fern" (as it is saved into my hard drive) was going to take.

Ferns of Cynnefull Garden
© Purely Cynnefull Designs

I ran out of time and saved it just like this so that I could come back and work on it at a later opportunity.

Ferns of Cynnefull Gardens 2
©Purely Cynnefull Designs

This next version has more of the inital fern covered but it adds depth to the picutre. As much as I liked this version, I knew that it was missing something...

Ferns of Cynnefull Gardens 3 ©Purely Cynnefull Designs

Spiderwebs and some female fairies was just what was needed to make this artwork whole!

Intertwined Connections

Intertwined Connections

©Purely Cynnefull Designs

Intertwined Connections concept was to show that everything in this picture is connected by some sort of path.

Golden Enchantment

Golden Enchantment

©Purely Cynnefull Designs

Not quite sure what to wirte about this creation...Golden Enchantment is one of those pictures that didn't have a theme or a concept to go with it. It simply is.

Fire

Fire

©Purely Cynnefull Designs

Felt like designing a creation that has fire... many different types with color.

Eye Plural

Eye Plural

©Purely Cynnefull Designs

If eyes are the windows to your soul then this creation is filled with only half souls. I didn't want both eyes; just one eye represented by many eyes giving to the name Eye Plural. This is just a really cool picture to stare at.

Dragonesque

Dragonesque

©Purely Cynnefull Designs

I am a huge fan of all of the mythical animals, but I wanted to do a design that featured dragons. Lots of Dragons.