Magpie Jay

I am fortunate to have travelled to quite a few countries over the years and it amazes me at the varieties of jays and magpies that one gets in all the different countries and how beautiful they are.

For Photo Art Friday, I used a picture of a magpie jay I took in Costa Rica which I think is a lovely bird.  The one photo I have given almost a tapestry effect and the other I applied, amongst others, one of my own doodle patterns.

Steampunk

Thought I would have a go at Steampunk this time and have added a heart to get into the spirit of Valentine's Day which is nearly here.

I've also added a little video to show you how to add a 'cut-out' heart.  It's probably more suited to the intermediate user but anyone can watch!  Hope it helps.



To see full-size, hover over the video and click on Vimeo and when in Vimeo hover over the video and click the full screen icon. 

Snow today, gone tomorrow

I love a day of snow but I think the best snow is a good 3 inches of powder snow that looks great on the day and then melts by the next day letting everybody enjoy it but getting back to normal and that's what we had:

Taking the Hundertwasser Building one step further

I took a picture of this Hundertwasser building in Vienna some years ago and have been itching for sometime to do something with it.  I had some ideas I wanted to test and I immediately thought of this picture to apply them to.

These are the results:

 Which one do you prefer?

Photo Art Friday

This week's Photo Art Friday is supposed to be Surprise!  Not sure that what I have chosen to do is much of a surprise but wanted to work on painting in Photoshop Elements using brushes so I literally painted over the cat with colours selected using the colour picker to make it look like a painting.  I converted the background to black and white and then applied the cutout filter.  Had a lot of fun but it is quite painstaking and I realised that artists who draw and paint in Photoshop must take hours to do it.

My second picture I did in ArtRage a wonderful art package that allows you to 'trace' over a photo using a brush such as a watercolour brush and it automatically picks up the right colours - much easier!

Repeating Patterns: Creative Block

I spent hours last night trying out repeating patterns such as tartans, plaids, gingham and checks and I can't say that I produced anything that I could say wow that's amazing.  I did learn a lot though and I suppose I do have some potential backgrounds for the future.

Oh well, I suppose we have Valentine's Day coming up soon so this is the best I've got from last night's endeavours, I'm afraid.