New image-Artery

OK, I finally found something to do with the water tower pics. I'm not 100% pleased with the end results, but I like it enough to say "enough". The text element I used is a little off IMO. I took it from the same book I used in a few other images (True, Passion, and Salvation #3, and maybe one or two others) and it usually adds a lot to the image. Not this time. The book is a replica of a 18th century Encyclopedia Britannica. I suppose I don't need to worry about copyright infringement when I use shots of the pages in my images. That's an incentive to use this book, and not something more current. Plus, the old typesetting of the pages looks really wild. All the "f"s and "s"s look the same. Sucking ftrange ftuss.

Old habits (and new pic--Salvation #4)

I'm terrible with my writing sometimes. I get all enthusiastic about writing, and then when I miss a day or two, I just become complacent. I need to take this blog a little more seriously. Anyway, new pic. It's another in my Salvation series. Despite my separation from Catholicism many many years ago, I still like the icons from that religion. I suppose they don't have the same impact for non-christians, or perhaps it's a different sort of impact. This crucifix had a small star of David embedded in the top, which I thought was interesting. So there it is.

Rose #2

I played some more with the image, and found a graffiti pic that I took last year at Sandy Hook. It seemed to work. Then I tweaked the color using a Selective Color layer.

I've noticed that I use flowers for my image subjects quite often. There's a scene in the movie "The Four Seasons" when a woman takes up photography as a hobby, but all she ever photographs is vegetables. I'm not that bad, but I think I need to expand on my photo subjects so that my Photoshop images will have a little more variety.

Apparition

I'm really REALLY glad it's Friday. The week has been a drag on my system, and my head cold has refused to let go. I plan to sleep in tomorrow, and since the weather will be rainy, I have an excuse to stay inside and be extra lazy.

I took a little time tonight to play with some old pics. I'm not sure if I'm happy with the image I made, but it seemed to have an interesting look, so I posted it.

New image--Invitation

I was up late last night, and early this AM, because my head cold is back in full swing. It's hard to sleep when you're having a coughing fit every few minutes. So, an upside to all this is I had time to make another new image. I started with my dead mouse picture from the other day, and then went a little haywire. After using the halftone pattern filter and radial blur, I started adding gradient layers to the image, thinking I'd try a new Abstraction-style image, but then on a whim, I added an old flower pic I had on file, and started blending the edges into the background. I think it gave it an alien sort of feeling. So anyway, it was a quick and painless image to make. If only I could say the same thing for my cough.

Silence

I made a few changes to the image. Mostly, I adjusted the color in the leaves, and toned back the statue so only the face can be seen clearly. Better, I think.

And I'm noticing the Google ad I set up in the sidebar must be reading the subject lines in my blog entry, because there is an ad for seasonal allergy medication. Great, I'll need to be careful with my titles now, otherwise it'll start showing ads for lawn fertilizer and ear-wax remover.

Recycling--Melt #2

I was scanning through some old files last night, and came upon an early version of Nova #2 that I decided was not worth keeping. I didn't delete the image, though. I started playing a little with it, and it wound up having a very interesting look. It's sort of reminiscent of the Melt pic I made with my cat, Shadow, hence the title Melt #2. So I'm posting it in the Gallery. But I feel like I cheated with this image, because it reuses something I've already featured in another image. I'm probably just being anal, because it's not uncommon for digital artists (or even traditional artists such as painters or musicians) to reuse their work in other pieces.

I'm also trying a new method of posting an image. The links above, as well as the embedded image, are from Picasa. It'll save me a little storage space by handing the pics this way, but hopefully it won't affect the load time.

Wood Sprite #2

I found a pic of a marble bust that I'd taken last summer at the Met that works nicely as a focal point for the image I'd been working on last night. I tried a few blending options, and found one that gave it a spirit-like feeling. If you flip through my Gallery, you'll find my first "Wood Sprite", and this image feels similar to me, so I named it the same.

I also took away the pine needle blend over the leaves, but kept it behind the bust. It makes it seem as if the figure is changing the woods where it stands. Anyway, click for a closer look. Sorry it isn't full size, because some of the finer details are nice to see too. I may go back to tweak it later, because some of the edges of the figure look too strong to me now. Hmm...