Fresh Colour To Brighten Up Grey Days

Everyday, I receive an email from http://www.design-seeds.com/ in my emailbox with new colour palettes. It always feel like a kind of gift that you get to open: beautiful pictures with a palette of colours attached to it, chosen from the photograph.

Here is one I made myself. I loaded a photograph of the Little Guide Book into Photoshop and made this palette of colours myself. The colours in the photograph might not be as bright as they appear in the palette, but who said that I have to constrain myself to the exact colours? :-)
Just a little bit moving the cursor around in the Colour Picker of Photoshop and I got this beautiful bright set of colours.

Just what you need on these grey, dab days... Hope that these colours will make you smile today as well!

More from the Red Book

The last pages of the Little Red Book have been filled but I had not uploaded these yet. This is a simple page with a strong message. I was reminded of the statement that Dr. Phil made: no matter how flat you make the pancake, there are always two sides.
Yes, there are always two sides of a story. So when you have heard one side, don't judge untill you have heard the other side as well - you might be surprised when you hear the whole and true story.

I used a self portrait that I combined with watercolour paintings in Photoshop. The text was found in a magazine. The background was acrylic paint and I added pencils to get more texture, but this is not visible in the picture.

Trail of Inspiration

This week I was challenged in a class on Inspiration to draw inspiration from a Beatrix Potter image. I did not grow up with these drawings, so the stories are not familiar to me. What struck me the most was the detailing and the amount of work in these paintings.

My first thought was: water colours (the paint, you know)  and soft tones. It had been a while since I used water colour paints and I wanted to get started again with them! Even though I am not an experienced painter and certainly don't apply these classic rules, like you cannot use white opaque paint in a water colour...!

The mice in the drawing made me think of something I did years ago: making finger prints (with ink or paint on paper) and drawing a long tail and ears, eyes, add some whiskers, and there you have it: a little mouse!
With an inkpad I tried to make the prints - felt a bit like a criminal - but the ink did not transfer very well. So after three attempts - they looked more like cats than mice anyway - I stopped.

Then came the thought: I have water colour brushes in Photoshop, how can I use these in combination with photographs? I started stamping the marks of the brush down in Photoshop. Soon it resembled a sort of 'photo mask' and I put a picture of my daughter's dog in it.
What a coincidence: I took the picture the day the dog learned to swim in the river - again that water connection!

The next idea was developed when I came across the artwork of Stephanie Levy. She uses black to make line art illustrations of interiors and colours them in with paint. She then adds patterened papers as a simple collage. Very clean and modern.

This reminded me of the spread I did in Julie's Altered Book about Historical colours. For her book I made a drawing of a French antique chair and outlined it in markers in a suitable colour.
So some decorating magazines came out and I started to trace lamps and chairs. Using coloured or black thin markers to outline them, filling in the colours with water colour paint.

I can understand why Stephanie likes to make this kind of work, it is fun and quick to work with. And I would love to experiment with pictures of my own interior! Well, only the nice pieces of course. On the other hand, I can just leave out the cracks and the dust bunnies!

The water colour inspiration trail did not come to an end yet. The next idea that turned up was painting swatches with water colour and tearing them in simple shapes, like petals, to use in collages or turn them into an illustration. Maybe have these tall childlike flowers reaching out to the sun? (I must be longing for spring).
Or I could use tissue paper and paint those - that would crumple up the paper and make a nice texture too.

So this is just an example of how one image can trigger the imagination and inspiration, if you just try looking behind the image itself. Even when that image has no special meaning to you.
I think that concentrating on inspiration these last few weeks made me so much more aware of how the things I encounter in everyday life can trigger so many new ideas.
And all I need now is the time to try them all out!

More photographs processed

It seems that the holiday in Norfolk is my most productive holiday photograph wise! I took so many (different) photographs and still have not all images processed! I shoot always in RAW, a digital format which you could see as a digital negative that has to be processed (adjust colour, colour balance, contrast etc.) before you have the final picture that can be shown on the web or be printed out.
Creake Abbey was a wonderful place to be. I liked the tranquility of the place, these old crumbled down buildings, still standing as a testament for the people who lived here and tried to make life easier for the older people.
The abbey was built in as a home for several old men who needed care. The building was extended over 300 years till a plague killed all the inhabitants except the abbot, who was the only survivor.
How devasting this must have been. The abbey was abandent and left to fall apart.
This goes not so quick with these old buildings with those thick walls.
Lucky for us that they are still there - to enjoy them.

Since there were hardly any people visiting here, I had loads of opportunities to take pictures from all angles. This one was taken with me lying on the freshly mowed grass, a lovely experiece!
A perfect afternoon: feeling the spirit of time, beautiful structures with such a beauty, ever changing weather with gloomy skies and rays of sunlight spreading out.
How do you capture the essence of such a wonderful place?

Well, this is one of my efforts!

Bird with Attitude

Normally a photographer won't take a picture of a bird who has turned his back to the lens. Because without the head, the eyes, there is often not much to look at.
But this was not true for this bird. Look at him, can you see how he is walking? Like a model on a catwalk. This is a bird with attitude, I'll tell you!
I was working at this image while the radio played the song: "I am walking away from the troubles in my life" by Craig David.
The perfect title for this image.

Three Wise Owls

Yesterday I uploaded this image that I made from my photographs to Ephotozine.com and it was awarded with one of the EPZ awards: the HC!
Quite an honour! This is only the third HC I received on the site for my photography (and digital manipulation).

The first HC I received was back in 2006 when I mainly photographed flowers with a macro lens.
The second HC was for my (reworked) version of the waterfalls of the Buachaille Etive Mor (Glencoe, Scotland). It was only after removing some branches that the picture was awarded the HC...
It took quite a while to clone away the branches in Photoshop without any traces. You can find that picture in my blog in the entry of 1 december 2008:
http://exploringart.blogspot.com/2008_12_01_archive.html
Scroll down the page to view the picture.

So these owls have received my third HC award. Now I even have to work harder to achieve the Premier Award, the highest award on the site. It might take a couple of years or so to achieve that top award!

A Little Bit More of Scotland

This is one of the landscape shots that I took in the Scottish Highlands. The mountain is called Bauchaille Etive Mor, or also known as the Black Sheperd. Depending on the weather, this waterfall is a small stream, or is a strong force of water.
On this particular day, the snow on the Bauchaille looked like powder sugar, the mountains far back in the background were completely covered in snow. The sky was often just gray, but because the weather changes so quickly up here, one can always wait (in the car) to see if the weather turns around. And it did! The rain was mostly gone and suddenly we had even an empty space in the sky where the blue came poking through. A magical moment!

I had found a spot, a bit lower, and balanced on a small rock which stuck out from the side. It was hardly enough space for my feet ánd tripod. But it gave me a good view on the waterfall itself and hopefully the viewers a sense of the power of the waterfall, the wideness of the scenery and the roughness of that piece of country.
It was only later when I climbed back that I realise that the rock I stood on was not very stable. Don't think that I will ever try to repeat that!


Getting lost in Scotland happens to us more often than any other country I have been too! But it has the advantage of taking you to places that you would otherwise not have found! This shot of horses as taken on one of our 'little detours' thanks to the Scottish way of using roadsigns...
We drove a while into a very deserted place and spotted these horses. At that moment is was so cold that I could not even keep the camera steady - I was trembling of the cold.
With an iso of 800, and placing the camera on a wooden post, I was able to get some shots - but because of the amount of noise, I processed the image into Black & White and added a soft tone too.
I just loved the way they were interacting with each other - so playful, even jumping around so now and then. Too bad that they became a bit shy in front of the camera!

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.

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.

House of Sacrifice

Setting my first babysteps in 3D.... This photocollage started with the rendering of a 3D model in the software program Poser. I then added various photographs to create the mood of my theme I am working on: Religion and Faith.
A few months ago I felt that I needed something else to put into my digital collages. Since then I have ideas to import rendered 3D objects into my digital collages because sometimes it is so frustrating to have not the right photographs to express my ideas.
A few years ago I had been dabbling with an old 3D program called Amapi that came free with Computer Arts magazine. These last months I have been reading manuals, books and experimenting with software like Vue Esprit, Amapi Pro 7.5, Poser 7 and just recently Carrara 6 Pro.
There is loads to learn, which I love - but on the other hand I still want to work with my hands, paint, paper, textiles and glue as well!
Too much hobbies - too little time. Nothing new under the sun, right?

Editing photographs in Photoshop

I like taking photographs, but landscape photography is not really something that I can do well. I like to take shots when being on a holiday, but often I tend to take out a sketchbook and start sketching the surroundings. Maybe because sometimes I just feel lost in a landscape, or feel overpowered by the atmosphere. By sketching I can just pick out the things that I like in the scene and draw this - omitting the rest of the landscape...
But I think it is about time that I start doing something with all these landscapes that I have taken in the past. So here is a picture of last summer when we were in Bretagne.
In this part some of the houses are built near the rocks to keep them safe from strong wind and storms.
This photograph was cropped, the sky was replaced and the colours were turned into Black and White and then coloured in a cold blue tone.
The picture is very simple, but the textures come out very nicely, I think.

Portaitcourse

Last month I took a short portrait course. We worked with flashlight and soft boxes which gave beautiful light. Especially after trying out several positions and fiddling the camera!
This portrait was from the first lesson and I have worked it into this digital collage. The elements on the background were photos taken in France on a holiday.

Going to be famous?

This week, we received the book from the photography website http://www.ephotozine.com. The book: Guide to great photography, was created by the inventor of the website Peter Bargh and contains not only his photographs but a wealth of images taken by members of EPZ. Both my DH and I have two pictures in this book published, so I am mighty proud of that!
My images are featured in a portfolio on page 195, together with some text about my method of photography.

If you want a book with plenty of images, short tutorials, different subjects and styles, you will want this book. Never have I seen a photography book with so many inspirational images (even if mine were not in this book....). Especially since all styles of photographers are in here, this is an ultimate guide!