Digital Honey Harvest

For my digital playtime this week I am playing around with a photo of a couple of apples from my one year old apple tree – the variety is Fuji and while it is not the most colourful of apples it fruit tastes of nectar!

 To be honest I can’t quite remember how I got to the variation below, I know I inverted and then changed the colour with hues and saturation.  At some stage I used some artistic filters and the sharpen mask and texturizer.  My photo manipulation much of the time actually consists of random fiddling!

A version full of colour.

An abstract version of the apples

duotone version

 Here I inverted the first version again, fiddled and went into duotone.  For the one below I put a mask and a frame from photoscape in the antique filters.  This last one is my favourite as to me it represents the taste of the apple.  I am thinking of trying the techniques from this one on some old family photos or a still life.

So this is my entry for Mandarin Orange Monday, it always amazes me you can do with a simple photo.

Linking to Mandarin Orange Monday

and Creative Every Day

A Medley

Over the last 2 weeks, I have been away from home and have not had access to the internet or most of my art materials.  However, I still managed to do some art, as I had my laptop and watercolors and some pencils.

I painted these watercolours from photos of my garden

.

 

 Altered Book

I also took with me, a project that I have been working on - an altered book.  The book is For the Love of a Rose by Antonia Ridge.  A much loved Auntie visited me in Britain and saw my hedge of the Peace Rose in the front of my house.  When she got home she sent me her copy.  It is about how the Peace Rose came about, a love story of the rose and the love story within the two families involved. I saw a copy in a junk shop last year and thought then it would be good for an altered book project. So finally I have started on the project.  I have decided to redo the story in my words and my illustrations.

For the title page I pasted a photo of the peace rose cut out from the book and used the colours of the rose.

The next pages I did waterclour and pencil faces of the founders of the Meilland dynasty – the first love story.

A Dedication

The next project is very dear to my heart.  As some of you may know my mum has Alzheimer’s and she lives with my sister in Perth.  I feel helpless being so far away.  But there is one thing I can do for her and my family.  I have decided to make a book dedicated to her life.  I hope to have it finished so that I can give it to her and my sister when I visited next Christmas.  So over the last two weeks I took the opportunity to get stuck in.  The above is from a photo of her on her sixteenth birthday party.

I am now back in harness, and hope to spend next week working on journal pages and doing a painting I promised two weeks ago.  However, I am mindful of the old adage ‘the best laid plans of mice and men….’

Happy Paint Party Friday everyone.

Pineaplple Lilies

Now that 29 Faces has finished I am going to keep Mondays for one of my loves that I haven’t blogged much about - digital manipulation of photos and artworks.

Today I have chosen to use photos from my parched garden.

The pineapple lily is amazing as you can see the land is parched and it is doing the best ever!

I decided to combine the photos and show the feeling of heat.

Variation 1

Variation 2

Variation 3

The software I used was Photoshop and Photoscape.

Linking to

Creative Every Day and Mandarin Orange Monday

A Splash of Colour

In my part of the world, we are in middle of a drought, officially declared last week. We have quite severe water restrictions so the garden which is my greatest love after art is suffering. However I have managed to get colour with two of my favourite flowers – geraniums and fuchsias. They seem to like the dry very much as they have grown to triffid like proportions.

 

Today I decided to do a quick watercolour of the geraniums at the back.

Here are some photos of my love splashes of colour that greet me everyday of the year in my garden. 

 

 Have a happy Sunday and week creating wonderful art everyone.

Linking to Sunday Sketches