Photoshop Essentials Course

I'm just nipping in here to let you know that the very talented Kim Klassen is offering her Photoshop Essentials Course again starting on Tuesday this week.  If you missed out when Kim did this course earlier this year it's well worth brushing up your skills now.  Kim is an excellent teacher and she'll soon have you using Photoshop with ease.  You can link to Kim's site from the button in my side bar or by clicking here.  You can also sign up to receive her email newsletter and benefit from her free textures.  I don't have any affiliation with Kim, I'm just delighted that I have had the chance to learn from her clear and entertaining videos otherwise my Elements 6 would still be languishing unloved and neglected on my computer.  

I'll be back soon with a catch up but I must get to bed now.  Mum is happy and settling in well in her care home.  Her forgetfulness has its funny side, I went to see her on Friday around lunchtime.  The carers brought her lunch in to the lounge and after she had eaten half of it she suddenly got up and left the room.  When she didn't come back I went to look for her and found her in the dining room eating a pudding and drinking tea!  She'd forgotten all about me and her dinner!  Pudding was much more interesting! LOL

Belton House where we had a lovely visit with some friends today because I can't do a post without a photo :-)

MY heart goes out to the poor people of Japan who are facing such a terrifying time.  So many natural disasters in recent times.

Photoshopping

Not sure if I've posted this one before but I found a little time last week to catch up with Kim Klassen's Art of Texture class.  This peonie photo (courtesy of Kim) above started out as a bright, bold image and has been softened into this subtle, delicate flower.

This is a Thai Buddha statue that I have in my conservatory that I have been wanting to have a play with in Photoshop for ages.  I cropped the original image down and inverted it before applying some colour adjustment layers and a texture.

This 'Speedy Sheep' was a quick, fun project from Kim and was very easy to achieve with just a few adjustments.

Next, this is the famous 'Roger's Door' in St Ives which is actually a lovely flaking green colour.  With Kim's help the door has been changed to red, although I think I prefer the original patina.

This little angel came from a graveyard  near us and is my own effort.  I cropped the image, blurred the background, added a texture and text and stamped a few flowers.   The possibilities with Photoshop are endless.

I'd like to thank everyone who has left messages or emailed me with friendly and supportive words about my mum.  Sadly she has been having a really difficult time since we left her at her own home and is now in hospital, hopefully just for a few days, while they check out what is going on.  Her confusion is terrible and almost complete, to the point where she didn't know who I was when I spoke to her on the phone last night, even though she had asked the nurse to call me.  I am hoping that it is just worse because she is out of her home environment but I am very fearful for her.  We are taking each day as it comes and hoping.

We have had a very low key Valentine's night tonight and SH cooked tea (again) and made a lovely ice creamy, apple ricey, white chocolatey dessert.  He knows how to win a girl's heart :-)  I hope you've all enjoyed a Happy Valentine's Day with someone you love and care about.

There and back

If you wondered where I was we've been to Essex to take my Mum home and settle her in to her new routine of 're-enabling' carers who are going to come in 4 times a day to help her with the things she finds difficult, which is just about everything now.  My DH and I don't think living alone, even with carers coming in, is going to work and fully expect to be sent for quite quickly to make the ultimate decision about residential care.  Mum has dementia (isn't that an awful word when someone says it about your loved one?) and I cannot tell you how it feels to see a very special lady lose parts of herself and the things she used to love.  At least she is calm and still smiles sweetly in the face of her lack of understanding. 

Creativity has left me for now and I have to rest and recover my resources after the last weeks of looking after Mum.  I did make a little texture while I was away though inspired by my classes with the lovely Kim Klassen.

I made this texture from one of my mixed media paintings layered with the frozen pond I photographed in the winter and a white colour fill.  I then added ink splashes that I had made from Kim's workshop and brushed out the edge.  The next step is to use it over an image.

Kim Klassen Texture

I've been doing a little more work with Kim Klassen's  Art of Texture course.  Kim is a very competent and generous teacher and I am learning so much about Photoshop.  I have been playing with one or two of my own photos and incorporating the tips I have been learning.

The original photo below of cottages on the beach in St Ives was altered to remove the figure at the corner of the house and then textures and colour fills added in various layers to achieve the aged effect above.  I am not very good at keeping a note of where I have downloaded the textures from (sorry Kim, you'll have to slap my wrists).  There are a lot of free textures out there if you search the web.  I will try and remember to credit my source next time.

This image of hogweed (goutweed in America I think) is similar to the image Kim gave us to use in her course.

After a few adjustments it looks like this

The image was initially changed using the High Pass filter and then a texture and text were added.  I am really pleased with this manipulation and I can see a lot of uses in my textile work.  There is so much more to explore.

My final image is an aged-up photo of my beautiful great-nephew in a cable car with his Mum at New Year,

This was quite a complicated procedure where a photo frame was made, a texture added and the photo clipped to the photoframe. Additional colour fill layers were also added and attention was paid to the opacity of the layers.  I hope my nephew will forgive me for pinching the photo from his facebook page ;-)

2 for the price of one!

I have a couple more things to share with you today so thought I would put them in a separate post.  First of all I have joined a new monthly sewing group and thought I would like to have a project to take with me each month that I could work on over the course of the year.  I have been saving my offcuts and scraps for a long time and decided it was time I used some of them up in the spirit of reuse and recycle so I am making up scrap blocks with a view to making a bed quilt.  I must be mad!  I've only ever made a cot quilt before so I may rue the day!

I've made some squares at home too and I'm really enjoying seeing snippets of past projects and my hand dyed fabrics coming together.

I'm reproducing here an email that I received a few days ago from Colouricious who brought us the Talking Threads Series of videos. 

Talking Threads Series 1 -
Invitation to the
Private On-Line Viewing
Raise the profile of Textile Art

Textile Artists in our opinion, are unsung heroes of our time. The work they produce is totally outstanding and the passion and followings they create are contagious. There are thousands of creative textile lovers all over the world who crave more knowledge and understanding of the textile techniques that help unleash personal creativity. We at Colouricious have chosen some of Britain's top textile artists, to tell you their story. Where they derive their inspiration and how they became who they became may be something that you can relate to. Each artist will also share with you one of their favourite techniques, in simple and easy terms for you to follow.

As we so love creative textiles, as a Valentine's present to you, starting on February 14th 2011, we will be sending you one episode  of Talking Threads a week, for 10 weeks, running time approx 20 minutes, free of charge. All we ask in exchange, is that you tell everyone you know, so they can sign up too. Everyone will learn a great deal each week from each of our textile artists, not only about their life and skills but also about themselves as well. 

If you go to the Colouricious  website and sign up for their email newsletter you too can receive the free programmes for textile artists.  The original series was most enjoyable and informative so it would be good to support them in their bid to get more funding for a second series.

Talking of support, you may be aware that people are working together once again to make quilts for the people who have lost homes and possessions in the appalling Australian floods.  If you click on the link at the top of my right sidebar you will be taken to the blog of one of the organisers who has instructions for making very quick blocks.  This is next on my to-do list. 

I have slipped behind a bit in my work with Kim Klassen's Photoshop course and I am starting a new course tomorrow but this is my latest effort using Kim's source photograph.

I've even managed to make a stamp of my own name, not that I am claiming this as my own photo as the copyright belongs to Kim.  Kim's classes are excellent and her video instruction is very clear so if you've ever been tempted to learn more about photo manipulation don't wait for Kim's prices to go up as they surely will.  If you just want to sign up for Kim's emails and free textures just sign up here.  There are links there to Kim's other sites too.

Kim Klassen's Skinny Mini Course

While Mum has been sleeping and I have been feeling lousy with the cold of the year (!) I have been working through Kim's excellent Photoshop course.  If you have missed out on this round you have another chance to do the course as Kim is running it again at the beginning of December so just click on Kim's button at the top of my right hand sidebar.  It is a video based course and Kim keeps the videos short so they don't take forever to do and I have to say it's becoming more and more addictive.

To be fair to Kim I can't detail the steps I took but here are the results of my labours

 Above is the original photograph and below the altered copy (click on the altered one to see the details).  The aim was to change the image to black and white and then add adjustment layers to get the desired effect.

This photograph of the Magnolia Yellowbird was taken at Alnwick Gradens in Northumberland and the aim of this lesson was to reduce the strength of colour and add a texture to make a bit of a dreamy atmosphere.  I decided to add some text too and changed the colour of the text.

This was the original photograph of St Ives rooftops on which I altered the saturation and added adjustment layers. I then added a photograph of nets to which I applied more adjustment layers.  I think I would have liked the net lines to be dark where they're light and vice versa so I need to have another play with this.

I have paid a very nominal $5 to have continuing access to the instructional videos and still have 3 more to work with including how to make brushes which I glimpsed today and which I have done a little of previously.  There is still a mountain of stuff to learn but in terms of finding my way around Photoshop this course has been wonderful.  I'm going to play some more!

More digital fun

Linda Matthews has again posted a Photoshop tutorial today and I have given it a go and am very pleased with the result.

This was the brushed border I made following Linda's very clear instructions.

I combined it with this berberis, or is it cotoneaster?

Having combined the two images I decided to apply a 'difference' adjustment and I'm really pleased with the result.  What do you think?

Linda links to a great site where you can download all sorts of fun stuff to use in Photoshop.  It's Obsidian Dawn.  I think I may need one or two lessons in computer technology as I seem to be challenged when it comes to unzipping files and loading the contents.  Now, where is that computer expert better known as my brother when you need him? ;o)

PS  Here's another Photoshop thing I did all by myself!

Just altered a beach photo with a difference blend and added the St Ives view and reduced the opacity.  Simples! 

Digital Playing

I have been promising myself for ages that I will make the effort and get to grips with digital photo manipulation as I want to incorporate my own images into an art quilt.  In the course of my blog hopping I have been following Linda Matthews' blog and she is very generous with her tutorials.  This evening I finally got round to tinkering with one of the tutorials on her blog.

I took this photo along with the following two,

having decided to use my own images, although the text image came from the site Linda links to. (It think).

The result, after a couple of attempts is this

It's not perfect and I couldn't do it again without Linda's instructions but I am chuffed with myself and I shall be trying a few more.  :)  Baby steps!

Textures and Patterns

~

Another shadow photograph which I will be having a play with in Photoshop.

~

~

Before we got distracted by the deer I found some lovely leaf litter which has great potential for manipulating.

~

~

There are some lovely shapes here (above) and I've adjusted the colour compared with the previous one to a more realistic colour (as I remember it). My camera seems to have too much blue in its original images and usually needs tweaking.

~

~

I've had a little play with this last image. I think I inverted the colour and then used a colour variation. I really must keep a note of the steps in my tweaking!

Take it Further Challenge September

The subject for the September TIF challenge was 'lists'. As you will see from the photo below I am a great list maker! I make shopping lists, which I either lose or leave at home; lists of which present came from who, if I can read the label before my DH throws all the wrappings out; to do lists, which I then forget to consult as I dash from one creative moment to another; exciting lists of things to buy at exhibitions, people whose work I don't want to miss, and then do because I've got toally distracted by all the other wonderful things on offer! Then there's the lists I make when my brain doesn't want to work for me, the lists that remind me to do the absolutely vital and carry forward the less vital to the next day.
~

~

How to translate 'lists' into a piece of textile work? I started by scanning a selection of lists into Photoshop and then isolated just one list.

~

~

The next step was to play around with some of the filters. Unfortunately I didn't write down which I used but I think they included cutout and spatter. While I was thinking about maybe printing this onto fabric and embellishing I was thinking about fabric with lines in it and remembered I had some rusted fabric that I had dyed.

~

~

These lines were actually on the diagonal on the fabric as the cotton had been wrapped around hacksaw blades. This piece of fabric will give me 4 ATCs.

~

~

So, here we have the first ATC on a theme of lists. I have used some of the annealed tin that Anna gave me last year and I've sewn on some fancy trim and yarn. the colours are slightly stronger in reality - slightly more orange. Hopefully I will get the other 3 ATCs made. I have already done some machine embroidery on one but it needs some beads added.