Week 3, Day 7: It's a Wrap

What a week!  It's been busy, but I've loved it all!  I had forgotten how much I enjoy playing with color, making color schemes and seeing what looks good together, and what just does not work!

New this week on the side bar is a link to a page where you can download each card.  Since I'm still learning web design -- I been in print design for years -- I haven't figured out exactly how to do it, so it goes through another site.  The main thing is that you can get them now!  YAY!

To recap Week 3:


Sunday, Day 1: Inspiration from Another Artist

Monday, Day 2: It's a Little Sketchy!

Tuesday, Day 3: Creative Tuesday, Playing Clay<

Wednesday, Day 4: Color Scheming        

Thursday, Day 5: Going Graphic, Part 1 and Part 2

Friday: Day 6: Freebie Friday

If you want to take this challenge with me, or even just parts of the challenge, please post your photos to the Visual Tapestry: Creative Journey group on Flickr.  I love seeing what you can do.

Three weeks down, forty-nine left.  What do you think?  Have you been inspired to find your creative side? 

Do you have any photos you would like me to use for my weekly inspiration?  You can post them to the flickr group.  Then, let me know the story behind the photos.  

Week 2, Day 7: It's a Wrap

This has been a good week.  I am really enjoying the process, but I've continued to have challenges finding time to complete the projects every day.  They are taking more time than I anticipated -- I attribute that to my perfectionism and wanting everything to be perfect.  I am trying to let go of that, so we'll see if I can do better in the coming weeks.

Part of the challenge that Donna and I talked about was getting something posted everyday.  This past week I have failed.  My schedule this week is not as busy, so I hope to stay on track.  What do you do to work things in when your schedule is full?

Sunday: Inspiration Photo January 30, 2011

Inspiration Photo:
Iron Fleur De Lis

The week started with a trip down memory lane.  I chose a photo from my vacation in New Orleans for my High School Reunion. I chose my inspiration photo for the architectural details, not the quality of the photo.

Sketching Monday

Sketch: Architectural Elements

On Monday I focused on sketching the architectural elements. Since this photo was not the best, it was a bit of a challenge this week.

Creative Tuesday: Part 1 & Part 2

Watercolor Painting

Tuesday is about creating in a different medium or format. I chose one of my old favorites, watercolor painting.  It's been many, many years since I have actually painted so it was fun.  The hard part was not being able to control the image like I used to.  I spent way too much time doing this one, but I really had a bunch of fun with the paints.

Colorful Wednesday

Neon Glow Filter

On Wednesday, I played with different filters in Photoshop. 

Graphic Thursday: Part 1 & Part 2

Graphic Image

Thursday was a bit of a challenge finding time.  I had some freelance work, doctors appointments, and kids functions, so I actually posted the a graphic image of a Fleur De Lis on Friday. I tried a couple of different shading styles in Illustrator and Photoshop.

Freebie Friday

Fractal Image

Friday I actually caught up with Thursday's challenge.  I learned a new process in Photoshop called Fractal design.  I used my Fleur De Lis to create a Mardi Gras Card for anyone to download.

I also sent a shout-out to my friend JoLene on World Cancer Day.  She is in the process of kicking some cancer-butt and just finished the second step of her treatment. She lives on the other side of the country so I don't get to see her enough!

If you want to take this challenge with me, or even just parts of the challenge, please post your photos to the Visual Tapestry: Creative Journey group on Flickr.  I love to see what you do!

Two weeks down, fifty left.  What do you think?  Have you been inspired to find your creative side?

Week2_Day4_Photoshop Filters

Inspiration Photo

Tonight I got a chance to take my inspiration photo and play with some Photoshop Filters.  There are so many ways to enhance and edit photos in PS.  A great way to learn how the effects can change your photos is to just try them out...if you don't like what it does, Command-Z OR use smart filters and just delete them or hide visibility.  You can also layer the effects to create more options for your images.

Colored Pencil

Crosshatch

Fresco

Glowing Edges

Neon Glow....now we just need a little green
to celebrate Mardi Gras!

Patchwork Texture

Plastic Wrap

One of my favorites is the glowing edges. You've gotta love the black with bright color outlines!  If you feel inspired and experiment with your photos, please share them on the Visual Tapestry Flickr group. Donna posted some great photos last week using color adjustments. 

Colorful Wednesday!

As a graphic designer, I use photoshop a lot.  Even though I even consider myself an expert in PS, I am always amazed at how much I don't know. So Wednesday's are for playing with color in photoshop, although I may change that to playing in photoshop.  Some of the effects are amazing.  

I took my inspiration photo.....
and applied 9 different color adjustments to the photo colors and channels....for those not familiar with color theory and color process, here's a quick lesson:

There are 2 basic color  models -- CMYK and RGB.  

RGB is what we see on the monitor & tv screen, basically light and photos (which are created from light exposure).  It is an additive color model.  The 3 colors, Red, Green & Blue are combined together in various way to create a color spectrum.  If you have all 3 colors of light on top of each other, they make white, and if you don't have any color/light, you have black.

Inversely, the CMYK color model is used in color printing.  It is a subtractive model.  The colors -- 4 in this model: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black -- when all mixed together, make black, and as you subtract color from it, you can get a broad spectrum of colors.

So why did you need to know this?  So that when I talk about channels, and colors you will understand that I am  adjusting the red layer, the blue layer and the green layer (how much light gets through).  Hopefully this helps and I didn't just totally confuse you.   

The Finished photos:

Adjustment Used: Hue/Saturation.
Had to use the full saturation to get the red into the fungus.
I think it's stunning!

Adjustment Used: Selective Colors
Interesting that when I played with this function,
most of the adjustments only affected
the background and the branch, not the fungus itself.

Adjustment Used: Posterize
I love how this limits your color palette and makes big color blocks.

Adjustment Used: Threshold
This is similar to posterize, but black and white.

Adjustment Used: Invert (Negative)
I love the new colors.  This filter definitely makes
the background less distracting.

Adjustment Used: Channel Mixer
To see the effects of the channel mixer, I  only changed
one channel at a time, this time it was red.

Adjustment Used: Channel Mixer
Green.  I love the bright colors and the contrast here.

Adjustment Used: Channel Mixer
Blue.  Purple and Green.  I love these colors together.
Unfortunately they only work in a photo.
Clothes, room colors or furniture would be just too much.

Adjustment Used: Photo Filter, Cooling
This applied an orange-ish filter over the photo.
I love how it added depth to the color of the fungus!

Which one do you like best?  How about giving it a try and sharing it with us?  If you don't have Photoshop, there are plenty of other photo-editing programs that can do some if not all the same effects.
You can join the flickr group and post your photo there.. 

Inspiration Photo January 23, 2011

The Inspiration photo for this week is:

I chose this photo because I love the shapes 

 the fungus makes, it is also interesting and has great light and shadows.

The Story Behind the Photo:

This afternoon I took my daughter Katy and went to the park near our house so we could take photos.  On the way into the park, there are a couple of horse farms.  One had a pony & a horse in the yard. We stopped so Katy could see them and take some photos.  Because we were so far from the road, she got out and went up closer to the fence.  The two horses just came right over.  They were so friendly, I even fed one of them from my hand.

Katy named them Chestnut & Fluffy

Chestnut eating from my hand

Katy wanted a photo with the horses....

.....but Chestnut wanted to eat her jacket.

I ended up taking over 200 photos, and if I may say so myself, some were pretty good.  It was really hard narrowing down to 1 inspiration photo. These are the other photos that were in the running:

This was my 2nd choice

I can't wait to start sketching tomorrow.  I just need to get my scanner going since it hasn't worked since I upgraded to snow leopard.  If you want to see any of the photos in a higher resolution, I will post them to my Flickr account.