Can't Stop.......

Somebody call the Photoshop police!!!!

I Wasn't Kidding - Addictive

Here is another one using the same bird drawing as the predominantly green one in the previous post. It is completely different.

 

Simple, but interesting!

Bye, I am off to do some more......

Kaleidoscope

One of the Yahoo! groups that I belong to have been working on digital art and I read a conversation about making kaleidoscopes and I had to do one. Several years ago, I was so enamored with these shapes that just about every picture I took, I turned into one of them. I was afraid I had forgotten how to do it, but after messing around for a little bit about an hour it came back to me.

I begin by selecting a 22.5º right triangle and then copying it and rotating it 15 times to come up with a complete kaleidoscope. In the one below I chose my original triangle from the picture of the bird I posted in my last post. I am loving the patterns in it.

 

I also tried one using a picture of bluebells along a white fence and this is the result:

 

 

These become very addictive and the wonderful thing is that you can make a dozen from the same picture and none of them look the same. As a matter of fact, depending on the beginning triangle, it is really hard to believe they came from the same picture.

I sure hope you like them because I am feeling the itch to try a few more. I am especially interested in trying another from my bird drawing to show you how different they can look.

For now, I'd better go get my first cup of coffee and get to work.

See you tomorrow......

Miscellany

I got home yesterday in the early afternoon, watched the first lesson of the free 6-month Photoshop webinar from Creative Techs, and promptly took a nap. The drive home was uneventful, very little traffic; the only problem was that I felt sooooooo sleepy. I ran the air conditioner on high periodically, turned up the music, sang along.....all the things you need to do to interrupt that sleepiness.

I watched the Tiger game - they won!!!

I took care of mail and such and then I played. I brought home an old picture of myself with four of my siblings to scan and had fun playing with it and finally adding a sepia tone. I am the one on the far right. My brother, John, who died of cancer last summer is the baby.



After that I couldn't help myself, I had to play with Photoshop for awhile. I decided it was time to play with brushes and my birds. I drew a bird in black using the pencil tool and then used brushes and layers to add the color. When I was satisfied, I put the black outline in the trash. Then I used the Custom Shape Tool to put a layer of diagonal lines behind the bird. The most fun was using the distort filter to warp the lines. I added a trill of notes also using the Custom Shape Tool and then selected all the layers that made up the bird and copied them. I then merged those copied layers. I then used the Transform tool to make the bird much smaller and then made three more copies. Voila!



Finally, while reading the blogs to which I subscribe I found the Friday Fill-in and had fun filling it in.


I am hoping to find time this weekend to play with clay and try to make a few clay pendants. My Mom gave me a toaster oven that was a gift to her years ago and has only been used a couple of times. She loved it, but her place is so small she doesn't have the counter space it requires. I had borrowed one from my dear friend, Nancy, but now I actually have one of my own.

Gotta go make coffee and get started on the day!

See you later.....

Hello from the Far North

I am sitting in the Driftwood Sports Bar in St. Ignace eating a piece of cherry pie and drinking a cup of coffee and taking advantage of their WiFi. This is a very familiar place even though it has changed tremendously over the last 30 or so years. When I was a youngster (late teens - early 20s) I worked in the bar with a wonderful older woman, Hazel Killibrew. Most people thought she was a total bitch, but she treated me wonderfully. I worked way too hard here and much too long hours (my shift was from 3 pm until close 7 days a week).

This is also the place where I met the hubster in 1976 when I was home for a visit, so it is special for more than one reason.

I have heard from the winner of the giveaway and will be getting her prize in the mail soon. I haven't had a chance to take any pictures since I've been here. My Mom has shingles and is miserable. She is 84 and doesn't get around very well anyway and now she is in much pain besides.

I spent yesterday in the kitchen. I made a large pot of zucchini soup and froze 6 servings and then when that was done, I made a pot of pea soup and froze 4 servings of that. When I get back to her house after taking care of online business, I am making a large pot of black bean and sausage soup and will freeze most of that. I was also planning to make some Navy bean soup, but I don't think there is room in the freezer for any more. I am not even sure how I am going to get today's soup in the freezer.

Just before coming here today, I went through three large boxes of pictures of my Mom's and sorted them and threw out all the duplicates and the pictures without people in them. I have 8 sisters and 5 brothers so needless to say, there are a ton of pictures from the early forties through today. I also went through my Mom's kitchen cupboards and threw out all the really old food (some of them had expiration dates of '05). Her cupboard is now better organized and she can see what she has without digging through it.

Later today I will make some corn bread and we will enjoy some of the pea soup I made yesterday and didn't freeze. We will watch a Tiger game today and I will get to see some of day 2 of the US Open.

I am missing my art room, not to mention the hubster and am planning to be home on Thursday. The first of the free Photoshop webinars is Thursday at 2 pm EST.

I'll try to post tomorrow, but won't have any traditional art to share. For now I am concentrating on the art of cooking and taking care of loved ones......