Saturday, July 26, 2008

Digital Collage: "Empty"

One digital collage of the 'Journal' series. All the images used are my own photographs: landscape and sky from The Netherlands, seagull from Scotland, window and shutters from France, and the chair was shot in my backyard. The old 1830's paper was folded and scanned.

The weather has changed here in Holland: it is pretty warm, too hot to sit in front on the computer, too hot to do anything except sitting in the shadow and reading a good book!
The ideas for a next collage is already forming in my head, but I am heading for the garden now!

Jane T.: I make these collages in Photoshop. I have been using the program since version 3 so I feel that I know my way around this piece of software. For this collage I used Layers, Layer Modes and Layer Masks only. These features, as far as I know, are also available in Photoshop Elements and Corel PhotoPaint.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Digital Collage: Opening Up

When the weather is good, I like to eat my breakfast in the garden. On the garden table stood this plant, ready to be potted up in a larger pot. Every morning I could see the new buds appear and watch them growing. After a few days the buds would open up, unfolding their petals from the bud, ready to burst wide open and to soak in the light.
What an eagerness for life and light! I just love the stage when the bud has been opened, but the petals have not yet completely unfolded. This is one of the many shots that I took from that plant.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

New Digital Collages

The last couple of weeks I have spent most of the time in the garden, enjoying the weather, the sound of birds and sometimes even fighting the weeds - a battle that I always loose...
Not much time is spent behind the PC during these quiet weeks. Still I wanted to do something with the photographs that I had taken over the last few months.
I wanted to work quickly, trying not to 'overthink' the piece. Just using a thought, a phrase or a mood for the collage.
This is the first one: Fly Away.
The seagull is one of many that I tried to capture while on holiday in St. Abbs, Scotland. The sky images ( I combined several) are from my own stock, and so are the textures.
It was relaxing, working this way, and I even liked the result!