Lost Aussie on the loose

Postcard Love

I've been playing with paint (the real stuff) for the last few days as I need to make some mixed media postcards for a Postcard Swap that I have signed up for.

Although I don't have too many painterly skills to boast of, I have lots of fun slapping watercolours, acrylics and inks across a page to make a colourful mess.
Best of all, I know that I can scan said "mess" and create lots of other goodness from my paper based fiddles and leverage them in many ways in Photoshop.  I can also alter the large scanned images endlessly, make new art, create brushes, play with text and well .... you get the idea.

If you are interested in Postcard swapping the sign-ups are open until January 20th!  It's an International Swap so you might get some cool art from some far flung places and the stamps alone will be fun to see.
Click on the Button above to go and check it out.

Snippets of Inspiration

In the last few years my goal has to always use my own imagery in my digital artwork.  A lofty goal no doubt, but not always realistic, as I shoot many pictures, but not so many that include portraits or models which are often a key component in the digital art that I like to make.  So, like many others, I resort to stock imagery to incorporate into my work.

There's a host of places to find good stock but my "go to" place is Deviant Art where the generous and inspired commumity of artists there often have good fodder to peruse. Case in point being the model featured here from THIS artist.

There's always a little "piece of me" in my work, be it a layer of texture, a background shot or some other worthwhile snippet from my camera which is not always visible, and then there is the face, generously derived from another source, reinvented, painted or otherwise manipulated that finds it's way into what I am doing.

My thanks to all those who take the time to share, give and inspire in our digital art world!

You ROCK!!

Trash or Treasure

Click and Mouseover the image for the before and after edits.

I'm probably not the only person who takes masses and masses of photos with my digital camera.  The bigger my memory card gets, the more pictures I take and then of course you have a spare memory card for when the main one gets full .... and then of course there are all the pictures that you can take with your phone too .....
Storage and back up of all these images becomes an issue too ... so where do you stop? What do you throw out?

That for me is a major issue as I can usually find some small point of redemption in even the poorest of shots - even if it's just a photo to be kept as fodder for the shape and texture folder. I have a hard time putting any images in the Re-cycle Bin.

The Red balloon is a good example of something that "nearly" got tossed but then I hummed and hawwed over it some and decided to give it a 2nd chance.  The terrible angle of the initial capture meant that just straightening the photo was not an option.  Enter the handy dandy "Puppet Warp" tool which did a fairly decent job of fixing the bad line of the original.  The balloon is still a bit skew-wiff, but by creating a bi-tonal image and ramping up the focus on the red of the balloon, it's less than perpendicular string becomes less of an issue.

I over sharpened the image a lot (on purpose), so that the reflection in the balloon would show up better.  Added some grain and pumped up the grit factor with a gradient map.

All in all I'm pretty pleased with how the photo turned out and it just goes to show that what so easily could have been "Trash" turned into quite a nice little "Treasure"!

What do you think?  Are you a hoarder or a culler?

And A Little More ...

Thanks so much for the fabulous response to my thoughts on a Painterly Class.  The more I think about it the more excited I get!!

 
I love to find creative ways to use my own photographs as well as stock material and I think this class will be just about PERFECT for combining the two.

The above image incorporates some stock from SenshiStock over at Deviant Art as well as my own photos of Caumsett Park, personal textures and a couple from Shadow House.

Hm'hmm humming to myself here as thoughts percolate inside my head :-)
(You rather have to be here :-))!

On another and less savoury note, my blog has been targeted by spammers of late.  Typepad does not seem to be able to help very much and so for a while, I have instituted the dreaded IDIOT CODE for comments.

I am sorry about this but lewd, rude and porny kinds of stuff are not the links/comments I want on posts, whether they are old or new.

I appreciate your patience in the mean-time.

Pondering on Painting

 

I've had a lot of emails recently, kindly and gently asking me when there will be a new Online Class.  And the answer is probably quite soon.

I've been pondering long and hard about what I would like to do the next class about.  The classes take a lot of work to prepare and I like for them to be special, with lots of key learning and also appeal to the mixed media photographer/artist kind of person who is looking for something special and different.

The pondering usually takes as much time as the making of the class.  Once I have the syllabus nutted out in my head it does not take long to formulate class samples and then do the videos.... but it has to be straight in my head first.

So ... as a preliminary hint, I think the next class will be about Digital Painting - in Photoshop. 

I have lots of programs and plug-ins that will paint for me digitally but really you can do quite a lot in Photoshop without resorting to expensive plug-ins.

So let me know if this might float your boat!  The class should work with Elements just as well as Photoshop ....

Stay tuned!

One Perfect Day

You would hardly believe that it's Winter in the North East.  62F today and the beach was packed with folk strolling along the boardwalk at the Sunken Meadow Park.  It was lovely to take the air, with our coats flapping in the breeze, scarves and gloves left abandoned in the car.

The roller coaster of temperatures in the last week or so has been crazy, but sunshine abounds - so I am not complaining, no siree, not one little bit.  And the camera loves the magical light that comes with fading sun and cooling sky.

Aside from walking on the beach I also did a little window shopping today - spying out some new camera equipment as in February I am going to take a photography workshop with the talented and reknowned David Nightingale. 
One of my goals this year is to learn a little bit more about my camera and how to take "proper" photos so I am hoping this workshop will help me along in that directon as well as being something of a "dream come true" experience.

The Blue Night of Winter

"The Blue Night of Winter"
 

The cold chilly wind rips through branches bare,

winter's light falls on hard ground.

Snow missed but not lamented

knowing it will come soon enough.

Time to enjoy the sparkle of stars

that kick at cold clouds

dancing across the bright night sky.

Marie Otero © 2012

 

(Mixing media - a photo reworked and incorporated into an encaustic painting - with the painting then scanned and digitially altered in Photohsop.... with a few added words!)

A Little Art to Start

Faces of Eve © Marie Otero 2012

Welcome 2012