October 03, 2006
Quiet
A photoshop illustration . . .
Posted by lorigrace at 09:13 PM | Comments (1)
September 10, 2006
Down on the Farm
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A few summers back DH and I visited a friend of mine who lives on a farm. We posed for a photo in the Grant Wood iconic pose and I later photoshopped the famous background into it. Today I played around with the liquify filter.
Posted by lorigrace at 04:23 PM | Comments (5)
August 17, 2006
Play
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I had a lot of fun playing with this illo.
Posted by lorigrace at 06:20 AM | Comments (0)
August 01, 2006
Clean
I can't clean a thing without my yellow rubber gloves!
Posted by lorigrace at 07:37 PM | Comments (4)
July 10, 2006
Skyline
Photoshop manipulation of a photo I took of the Chicago Skyline.
Posted by lorigrace at 08:52 PM | Comments (2)
July 04, 2006
Sticky
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No bubblegum popping here. No sticky buns. No post-it notes. What other things are sticky?
Straight pins! One of the key tools a seamstress uses are straight pins. Way back in a previous life, I used to sew--making a lot of my clothes. At the pinnacle of sewing life, I made a tailored blazer from a designer Vogue pattern--complete with a perfectly notched collar, pad-stitched roll lines on the collar & lapel, and bound buttonholes.
I drew the pin cushion from sewing kit using Painter IX--pen and digital watercolor. I assembled the digital collage in Photoshop.
Posted by lorigrace at 01:44 PM | Comments (1)
June 25, 2006
After the rain, there are puddles
How appropriate that it is actually raining today. I took this photo of a puddle a few years ago. Photoshop modifications.
Posted by lorigrace at 09:02 AM | Comments (2)
June 18, 2006
Dance
This illo began as sketch of an image from stock.xchng
using Painter IX. I found a quote in my collection. I moved it into Photoshop to play around with the background using one of the artistic filters and to add the text.
Posted by lorigrace at 12:04 PM | Comments (2)
June 10, 2006
Under the (Digital) Sea
I did this dgital collage in Photoshop for Illustration Friday and for Inspire Me Thursday's topic of "Let's Go Digital" a few weeks back but didn't post it in time.
Posted by lorigrace at 03:59 PM | Comments (2)
Jungle
Corel Painter IX.
Posted by lorigrace at 10:56 AM | Comments (3)
May 28, 2006
Someone Left the Cake Out In the Rain
This is cake ordering season. I called some bakeries at the local Dominick's for details on ordering a graduation cake, but none of them could tell me exactly what size a quarter sheet cake was (we have a side-by-side fridge).
Here is where I found out my answer: http://www.cakesacrossamerica.com/our-etiquette.aspx
Digital collage done in Photoshop with a Dover stock image of a cake and a girl from Teesha Moore.
Don't leave your cakes out in the rain . . .
Posted by lorigrace at 09:23 PM | Comments (2)
April 13, 2006
Speed
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Just a quickie in Photoshop.
Posted by lorigrace at 07:46 AM | Comments (0)
March 20, 2006
Feet
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I started this as a doodle--it was very difficult trying to draw these mis-shapen feet from memory. My grandmother would always talk about her feet hurting her with the phrase, "My puppies are barking."
Once I found a full length photo of her showing her feet, I used Photoshop to manipulate it. The close up doesn't really show how bad her feet were--I'm guessing this photo was probably taken in about 1949 at my parents' wedding. I scanned in my doodle.
I had intended to complete it in Painter IX, but it crashed on me and I haven't been able to restore the PAINTER.SET file yet (it's not on the original CD, I can't get it to use a version of this file from the Painter that came with the Wacom). I finished it up in Photoshop.
Posted by lorigrace at 08:40 PM | Comments (3)
March 07, 2006
Insect
I had intended to skip IlloFri this week because the subject didn't do much for me. Unfortunately, I started a doodle in my sketchbook.
When I got home from work I decided to color it with my newly acquired Caran d'ache Neocolor II crayons (the water soluble ones), The results was horrible since I don't have any decent brushes yet. By then, though I was bitten by the bug (pardon the pun). I redrew the insects in Photoshop and started playing around with the composition and colors.
Definitely Photoshop is a better tool for me when I'm playing with a composition idea. I like to print it out, then leave it alone overnight (or at least a few hours), come back to it again. Somewhere along the line, the elements in the illo start to guide me to the finished illo.
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Posted by lorigrace at 07:14 PM | Comments (3)
February 26, 2006
Tea
The sketch on the left I did Friday night of my favorite tea cup, which I've had since college. Tea and Salerno butter cookies were my favorite comfort combo of childhood. I colored in the sketch later with watercolors. I didn't use waterproof ink, so it got a little bit smeary after the watercolors.
Here's another tea sketch from November.
Posted by lorigrace at 08:15 PM | Comments (1)
February 20, 2006
Song
I scanned in a bunch of my recent sketchbook entries an manipulated them in Photoshop to create a digital collage.
Posted by lorigrace at 09:09 PM | Comments (2)
February 09, 2006
Take Me Home Flying Friend
Once upon a time there was a young girl named Susan who used to ride her kitchen step stool into Wonderville. She had adventures with her many friends, Wolfgang the bear, Caesar the penguin. But in her heart of hearts, she loved Mr. Pegasus the best. When she was ready to return to her ordinary life, she sat on her red stool and said, "Take me home flying friend, take me home."
I warmed up by sketching the table and chair in my sketchbook. I redrew them in Painter and colored them in. I added the background. I converted it to photoshop to add the lettering and save it as a .jpg. I had to do a little research to refresh my memories:
Susan's Show
Posted by lorigrace at 08:22 PM | Comments (2)
January 24, 2006
Cat
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The cat pose in Yoga. Started in Corel Painter with a Wacom, finished in Photoshop.
Posted by lorigrace at 12:00 PM | Comments (3)
January 15, 2006
E is for the End of the Road
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This actually started out as an illo for imagine, then sea, but I never quite finished it. The photos were taken in Michigan a few years ago on an October trip.
This is a manipulation in Photoshop of some original photographs.
Posted by lorigrace at 09:15 PM | Comments (4)
January 03, 2006
Salad Mandala
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For most of my life I did not care for broccoli, either cooked or raw. My DH of two years introduced me to fresh broccoli and spinach in salads.
We like to make our salads with spinach, leafy green lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, broccoli, mushrooms, cucumbers, and almond slivers. DH and DS also add black olives. DS does not like any kind of salad dressing. The only thing he adds are bacon bits. Try your salad undressed sometime and you will discover some wonderful flavors!
This is a digital photo collage manipulated in Photoshop.
Posted by lorigrace at 07:54 PM | Comments (6)
November 23, 2005
Free
For this, I used some images from Teesha Moore.
In Painter, I painted the background using oil pastel brushes. The font is Quincy. Happy Thanksgiving!
Posted by lorigrace at 09:27 PM | Comments (4)
November 13, 2005
Strength
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The Tarot card Strength came to my mind first. I've been drawing my own tarot cards as a tool to learn about Tarot. The strength card is generally depicted with a woman and a lion. Who better to exemplify strength than Tina Turner!
Some other places to learn about the strength card:
http://www.psymon.com/tarot/11-strength.html
and http://www.learntarot.com/maj08.htm
Simple photo manipulation in Photoshop.
Posted by lorigrace at 08:32 AM | Comments (0)
November 09, 2005
Night
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There is no day without night
There is no night without day
Posted by lorigrace at 07:57 PM | Comments (4)
November 01, 2005
Broken
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Since Jacque and I were on the same wavelength
I did a little Photoshopping for fun.
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Click for full size. I drew this in my sketchbook on the train yesterday.
Even when you get the extra hour back in the fall, everything seems out of sorts the first work day after the time change. Wall clocks are wrong. Stepping out of the office into darkness is a rude reminder that winter is closing in on us. We think we can manipulate time twice a year, but we really can't. One season's parade into the next is inevitable.
Posted by lorigrace at 07:57 PM | Comments (2)
October 27, 2005
His 'n' Her Remotes
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I created this for Illustration Friday--the two remotes on my key chain, one for my car, the other for my DH.
I started this in Corel IX first sketching it on my Wacom. I added digital water color in Corel IX. I moved it into Photoshop and added the green outline with a Wacom brush and saved it as a .jpg.
I've unwittingly managed to complete Week #37, keys, for Every Day Matters' Yahoo Group, as well!
Posted by lorigrace at 05:03 PM | Comments (1)
October 10, 2005
Lost . . . in our new kitchen
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We moved into our new home two weeks ago, and I'm still lost, trying to remember where we put everything in the kitchen. Maybe a diagram would help?
Posted by lorigrace at 07:37 AM | Comments (5)
October 07, 2005
Float
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Whew! Just in under the wire. We moved into a new home last week. This is a countour drawing of a sugar maple leaf that "floated" to the ground in our new back yard. I did this on the train yesterday morning--it's not always easy to draw or write on an express train.
Our new home has a wonderful garden. I know zilch about gardening. What a wonderful challenge I have ahead of me to learn about gardening this upcoming year!
Posted by lorigrace at 06:45 AM | Comments (2)
September 17, 2005
Escape
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This is a digital collage done in Photoshop.
I was fascinated with some collage images I had. I think this one is from Teesha Moore.
Posted by lorigrace at 09:38 PM | Comments (1)
September 04, 2005
Moving Day
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Click for larger size. Original photo manipulated in Photoshop. Twenty four boxes packed and three weeks, twelve hours until moving day.
Posted by lorigrace at 08:55 PM | Comments (3)
August 26, 2005
Dream
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Digital collage in Photoshop.
Posted by lorigrace at 09:03 PM | Comments (10)
August 22, 2005
Hello Gorgeous!!!
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I've always loved the movie Funny Girl. This was the film that propelled Barbra Streisand into stardom. Although only twenty five at the time she made this film, she can belt out songs like "I'm The Greatest Star" or give you goosebumps with "My Man."
And then there's comedy--Barbra as Fanny Brice making a grand Ziegfeld Follies entrance as a pregnant bride.
This is a simple Photoshop manipulation.
Posted by lorigrace at 07:04 PM | Comments (3)
August 14, 2005
Wisdom
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This is a simple Photoshop manipulation using a stock art image that comes with an older version of PS.
I experimented with poster edges and diffuse glow. The font is Ice Age.
Posted by lorigrace at 04:35 PM | Comments (2)
August 06, 2005
Empty
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Photoshop manipulation using a photo that came with Photoshop. The font used is called Dragongirl Meander from this website: http://alternika.worldzonepro.com/downloads.html
Posted by lorigrace at 09:50 AM | Comments (4)
August 03, 2005
The Handwriting on The Wall
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This is a Photoshop manipulation. The quote that I had in mind was "How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?" attributed to Satchel Paige.
Speaking of aging, Jenett is the originator of the ageless project.
I knew I wanted some kind of urban wall as the backdrop. I knew that Jenett has quite a few interesting urban photographs in his collection. This one caught my fancy. (used with permission, of course).
I was fascinated with the blue face in the mural and decided to duplicate it a few times. Here are some experiments:
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Posted by lorigrace at 06:35 AM | Comments (4)
July 23, 2005
Sea of Tranquility
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Thirty six years ago man set foot in the Sea of Tranquility on the moon and made a dream a reality. What are today's mysteries that will fuel this century's wonderers?
Posted by lorigrace at 07:36 AM | Comments (5)
July 16, 2005
Karma
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Photoshop collage.
Posted by lorigrace at 07:29 AM | Comments (6)
July 10, 2005
Metropolitan Chicago
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Chicago is my kind of town. This manipulation is based on a photo I took last summer from the Shedd Aquarium.
Posted by lorigrace at 04:17 PM | Comments (3)
July 04, 2005
Runner's Bouquet
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I didnt' think I could come up with anything quickly. It's a holiday weekend, I didn't want to spend a lot of time on this.
This is done in Photoshop, starting with an image of a running shoe sole. Turned into flowers. This is quote is on a running poster in my basement.
Posted by lorigrace at 07:39 PM | Comments (2)
June 29, 2005
Blueprint for a Hero
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I've always been fascincated by mythology and The Journey of the Hero.
A good exploration of The Journey of the Hero and its use in the works of George Lucas can be found here.
Campbell's contribution was to take this idea of archetypes and use it to map out the common underlying structure behind religion and myth. He proposed this idea in The Hero With a Thousand Faces, which provides examples from cultures throughout history and all over the world. Campbell eloquently argues that all stories are fundamentally the same story, which he named the "Hero's Journey," or the "monomyth." This sounds like a simple idea, but it suggests an incredible ramification, which Campbell summed up with his adage "All religions are true, but none are literal." That is, he concluded that all religions are really containers for the same essential truth, and the trick is to avoid mistaking the wrappings for the diamond.
Posted by lorigrace at 09:29 PM | Comments (2)
June 27, 2005
Heroes WIP
Here's more Blueprint of a Hero work-in-progress.
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Posted by lorigrace at 09:13 PM | Comments (1)
June 26, 2005
Heroes Draft
I have a dilemma here. The topic this week is Heroes. Which immediately brought to my mind Joseph Campbell's Journey of the Hero. Two movies that particularly illustrate this are the Wizard of Oz and the original Star Wars. I started with that concept. And some Joseph Campbell quotes. The first rough draft of the collage after assembling some basic images for manipulation looked like this:
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I have two different things going on here: the Blueprint idea and the doorway idea. I don't think I can unite them well. The follow your bliss quote is too wordy for all the visual elements. I think it and the door should be a separate illo. Let's sleep on it and see what comes up.
Posted by lorigrace at 07:50 AM | Comments (0)
June 19, 2005
Black & White
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for full size. Just plain old Photoshop manipulation of photos.
Posted by lorigrace at 11:55 AM | Comments (4)
June 12, 2005
Summer
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There's nothing like the beginning of summer vacation for a child. Everything is possible, no school, no homework, just fun, fun, fun.
This was begun in Painter IX. I chose a picture of DS for the expression on his face to draw. I wanted to keep it a simple line drawing. I drew the watermelon slice in a separate group of layers. I drew a circle on a separate layer. I outlined the corona with the lasso. In photoshop, I added the text using a font called Pepita.
Posted by lorigrace at 08:03 AM | Comments (3)
June 07, 2005
Digital Still Life
The two ceramic pieces in this digital still life are key knick-knacks of mine. On the right is a black typewriter business card holder. It represents the first “keyboard” in my life--the one on which I taught myself to touch type. The broken manual Royal portable belonged to my mother. I whined enough to get her to seek out a typewriter repair place. I was fascinated with the mechanism of the keys striking the platen, how it physically shifted upwards to make upper case letters, and the fact that the ribbon had both black and red ink. The keys tops were flat, and you “threw” the carriage to change lines. There was no number 1, so you had to remember to the use the letter l.
The business card resting in it is for The Quote Maven website which was the website I created in a few years back that began life as a class project for an accelerated webmaster certificate course I took at the Illinois Institute of Technology. The quote on it reads: “All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times, but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, until they take root in our personal experience.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
The second ceramic piece is a small computer box. I bought it—and its twin sitting on my husband’s desk—in a shop in Galena, Illinois. It was the first present I bought him. Inside I placed a glass candy piece. He was my “computer sweetie” since we met via the Internet on Matchmaker.com.
My husband recently gave me the iRiver on the right—an mp3 player for my daily commute downtown. Back in my walking to work days, I used to make mood mix tapes for my Walkman. I have a huge (now obsolete) record and CD collection.. An mp3 player makes it so easy to change songs at the drop of a mood.
My Wacom tablet is a new addition to my digital tool box. I began drawing as a kid. My mother was an artist. When I expressed the desire to be able to draw realistic people, she began to teach me about drawing the human form with the “muscles and bones” lectures. The first graphics package I used on a computer was Corel Draw, in conjunction with Venture Publisher to create newsletters. I’ve graduated on to Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop.
The cordless phone completes the still life, although I could have easily used the cell phone. Naturally, I started with a snapshot from my digital camera. I did a clone in Painter and then sketched the main items. I used various brushes to bring in some color. I cut the face of the iRiver from the photo. The only splash of color in this gray digital arrangement was the red border on the business card. I brought in some yellow for sunshine. I sketched the items all on a single layer—in retrospect, I might have had more flexibility to rearrange the items.
Posted by lorigrace at 07:39 PM | Comments (1)
May 30, 2005
Envy
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This week's topic is envy. I had two different ideas I was working on.
This version was done mostly with Corel Painter IX. I drew a fence with a 2B pencil and colored it in. I used the furry cloner to create the grasses. The tree at the left was done with Image Hose Nozzles. The font is Gaggers. I moved it into Photoshop to add the drop shadow to the text and save it as a .jpg. Fini.
Posted by lorigrace at 09:40 AM | Comments (4)
May 21, 2005
Aquatic
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I didn't look at anyone else's entry yet. His Vitruvian man drawing has become a much used symbol in art and advertising.
In my first version of working with this idea I was trying to do something with concentric circles of blue around the man using Corel Painter. I didn't like the result and decided to go back to incorporating the full drawing.
I drew an outline of the man using the trace feature, filled it with water, then used a layer mask to remove the water from the head.
I wanted to use a handwriting font for the quote. I discoverd there is a daVinci font out there, but it wasn't a free download. Instead I used something I already had called Chiller and applied a Photoshop default style to it. I like the ability to move back and forth between Painter and Photoshop.
There is a wonderful book by Michael J. Gelb, called How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day. He elaborates on the seven principles he categorized: Curiosita (an insatiably curious approach to life and an unrelenting quest for continuous learning), Dimostrazione A commitment to test knowledge through experience, persistence, and a willingness to learn from mistakes), Sensazione (The continual refinement of the senses, especially sight, as the means to enliven experience), Sfumato (literally "Going up in smoke"--A willingness to embrace abiguity, p=aradox, and uncertainty), Art/Scienze (The development of the balance between sicence and art, logic and imagination. "Whole-brain" thinking.), Corporalita (The cultivation of grace, ambidexterity, fitness, and poise", Connessione (A recognition of all things and phenomena. Systems thinking).
Posted by lorigrace at 07:17 AM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2005
Nourishment
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I really didn't think I was going to go with food imagery, but . . .
Monday was one of those days. A cold, windy miserable morning. How can you want to wear bright springy summer clothes when you're wearing a winter coat? I was late for work because the train was late.
In my desk drawer, I keep some envelopes of flavored instant Quaker Oats. Come to think of it, I pass their headquarters every morning on my sprint from the train station to my job.
I've loved oatmeal in the morning since I was a kid. There's just something about the way it goes down and fills you up. Even in summer, the warmth of that comfort food is a simple pleasure that harkens back to childhood.
I began by trying to draw in Corel Painter, but I didn't like my result. Once I decided to scan in the box and use elements from it, I moved in the direction of a collage and it started to take form.
Posted by lorigrace at 09:33 PM | Comments (3)
May 11, 2005
Mischief
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I started my entry with the caption: Emily's evil twin sister was always getting her into mischief.
I'm not skilled in drawing children characters from memory so googled some images to get some ideas. I drew each character on a separate layer in Painter IX using a Wacom tablet and the number 2B pencil. I used digital water color to color the skin and clothing.
The font is something called BaaBookHmk which I downloaded from a free font website. I created the ovals and rectangular shape around the image.
I moved it into Phototoshop to add the drop shadow and save to a .jpg.
Posted by lorigrace at 08:36 PM | Comments (3)
April 30, 2005
Ambition
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Since my ambition is to develop fluency in Corel Painter, this will be an exploration of different brush strokes, rather than doing a representational sketch. As a first step I created a palette from from another image that had colors I liked.
I layered the canvas with diagonal strokes using a wet impasto brush. I then created four circles and filled them with gradients. Then I used the Jeremy's Distorto Paint brush to stroke through the circles. This brush comes with the bonus CD in Jeremy Sutton's Painter IX Creativity: Digital Artists Handbook. The font used for the text is Spirit Medium. I had done several other brush layers before I decided to keep the impasto brush layer. Then I moved it into Photoshop and saved it for the web version.
Posted by lorigrace at 10:30 AM | Comments (2)
April 27, 2005
Daring
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This illustration got me thinking about daring things a few weeks ago.
When I was a kid, I used to like to parachute from swings--actually pretty daring of me since I was afraid of most of the other items in a playground.
As an adult, the most daring thing I ever did was to complete a firewalk at a Tony Robbins seminar about ten years ago.
To create this illustration, I took a photo of my feet, and then drew an outline in Painter. I sampled some burning charcoal and made a pattern for a pattern pen to create the background.
Posted by lorigrace at 06:06 AM | Comments (5)
April 17, 2005
Reinvent
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I didn't want to look at the other entries yet, because I'm sure someone else has used this concept.
My original idea was to create something with Madonna, since she is the master of reinvention. But I didn't have the time to pursue this. The caterpillar was done in Painter IX using a Wacom Intuos 3--the rest was done in Photoshop CS.
Posted by lorigrace at 08:27 PM | Comments (0)
April 14, 2005
Alone
A friend of mine suggested that I really don't need the scrabble tiles in the image. I added them after I removed the face, because the image seemed to need something. It looked too lonely. Hmmm. Maybe that's a good thing. ![]()
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I'm not happy with this one.
I started it in Corel Painter. I had a sketch of a partial face included, but really didn't like the way it turned out. Then I moved it into Photoshop to finish it. One thing I notice is that text layers don't transfer as editable text layers. Maybe there's something special I need to do to the image before I save it as a .psd.
Posted by lorigrace at 05:43 AM | Comments (0)
April 04, 2005
Travel
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When the pioneers were traveling westward along the Oregon Trail, were the kids as restless as they are today in mini vans equipped with DVD players?
More experimentation in Painter. I was playing around with the image hose and some water color brushes. I didn't spend as much time on the kids' faces, because I wanted to finish this. I may come back to it later to do more work on it.
Posted by lorigrace at 09:09 PM | Comments (0)
March 26, 2005
Crowded
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It's opposite day today. DH took this picture in Michigan.
I cropped it and used a fresco filter in Photoshop. Then I moved it into Painter to play around with the text. I tried some brushes, but really didn't like the effect. Back into Photoshop to frame it.
Posted by lorigrace at 08:24 AM | Comments (0)
March 22, 2005
Bloom
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I started this image in Painter IX by cloning a flower gif I already had and using the tracing paper option. I wanted to experiment with repetition and pattern.
I colored it in using a sable watercolor brush. Then I duplicated the flower and arranged them in a 3x3 grid, leaving the center open for just the word Bloom. I did simple gradient circles and squares behind each flower. They looked very harsh, so I used Effects/Focus/Soften and I liked the result. It was starting to look like a tic-tac-toe grid, so I experimented with the Image Hose option to fill in the lines. I cycled through my fonts till I found one I liked.
It's been very cold for the end of March in the Midwest. So Bloom already, will you?????
Posted by lorigrace at 08:22 PM | Comments (1)
March 19, 2005
Fragile
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I recently got a Wacom Intuos 3 tablet and Painter IX. This image was started in Painter, and then I finished it in Photoshop.
I'm still learning my way around Painter. It's an amazing program. It really does simulate the way you would work with art tools. The Wacom is very sensitive, so you don't need a lot of pressure to create effects. I didn't quite do what I wanted to with this because I wanted to get it finished and uploaded this morning.
OK. I didn't actually catch the email about the change in topic day, so it looks like I can't actually post to that topic. Oh well, I'll have to get started right away on the next topic!
Posted by lorigrace at 07:10 AM | Comments (0)
March 11, 2005
Ancient
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At first I wanted to do something with the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, but I didn't have time round up images to use as models. Did these things really exist? I thought about Stonehenge and I liked the idea of connecting Stonhenge with a calendar or time-related quote.
I kept coming back to Spirits of Ancient Egypt, so I that idea for the image and played around with the Impressionist filter in Photoshop (which actually is from an "ancient" version of FrontPage).
Posted by lorigrace at 10:22 PM | Comments (0)
March 03, 2005
Jazz
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I've always loved jazz. Recently I used a quote from Miles Davis on The Quote Maven site.
I liked the silhoutte image and the colors from the Sketches of Spain album. The challenge was finding a way to use all of the quote, since it's pretty big.
Posted by lorigrace at 05:45 AM | Comments (0)
February 26, 2005
Sorrow

All right, it's Saturday morning. This took a lot longer than I expected.
I started by drawing the girl and scanning her, since it was too hard to draw her using a mouse. I used Photoshop to color it and add the quote.
At first I didn't like the topic and thought of skipping it. I didn't want anything so serious. Once I started looking at quotes, the Chinese proverb seemed a good one to work with, since it lent itself to a humorous approach.
Posted by lorigrace at 06:22 AM | Comments (0)
February 16, 2005
Graceful Exit

This is my first contribution to Illustration Friday. The topic is flight. I happened to catch these birds in flight. After some cropping and playing around with Photoshop, I liked the way the picture turned out.
I've always wondered how birds know how to do this thing called migration. There's usually one day when the scene outside your window is straight from an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Birds everywhere: on telephone poles, on the roofs, on fences. No matter how hard I try to sneak up on them to snap a picture, they scatter instantly. They're training like the Thunderbirds on the day before the air and water show at the end of the summer.
And then they're gone.
Some birds don't figure it out, they don't get the message. Maybe they're so used to midwestern winters that they don't care about the upcoming cold and snow. Maybe they've grown attached to the people who've been leaving them bits of food all summer. They're missing out on a fastastic journey.
Posted by lorigrace at 09:10 PM | Comments (1)