Reflective collage of pixel magic

Bonnie suggested collage as the theme for PhotoArt Friday.  I’d taken several photos of wonderful abstract patterns caused by light on the water so thought they would be a good starting point

The I played with using one as a texture on another and after some experimenting with blending modes I put them together as a collage and added an outline to each image – i like the movement in this collage

Then I decided to try the pairs of images again but this time only overlapping part of the image – and blended all into a rust background (because |I like orange with blue-grey) after much swapping around of image pairs and blending modes I came up with this

I like how the lines seem to join together as one image

and then I remembered some digital stamps I have in my collection which create a square collage look (I can’t find who created them, sorry) and tried these as a texture level. The bottom left is the stamp by itself.  I love how it looks as if there is a tiled layer underneath the water

I had a lot of creative fun trying these different ideas all prompted by the idea of collage.  Looking forward to seeing what others have created.

why did I leave it so long?

I was looking through images that I created last year, to choose some to have printed for Liberate your Art 2014  postcard swap. I realised that I had done very few pixel magic creations in the latter part of the year once PhotoArt Friday stopped being a weekly event.  I also membered how much I enjoyed creating pieces from a photo, some images and PSE and how much I enjoyed the pieces that I created.

So when Bonnie posted the subject for February – angular and geometric, I immediately thought of a photo I’d taken of railings and set to work.

Why did I stop for so long?  I loved the process and I love, love this image.

For those of you happy to enjoy the pixel magic, stop here.  For those who like to see behind the scenes, here are the ingredients I used

I created the 4 images, rotated them so the top right of the photo was in the middle on each and then cropped and rotated.

I started with 10 different textures – mostly ones I remembered having success with in the past – tried each and kept the 4 I liked the best.

I always apply textures in this haphazard way, waiting until I see something I love.  I was wondering – does everyone do it that way or do some people have an end result in mind and know which texture will provide that result?

Getting wet for PhotoArt Friday

Water was Bonnie’s suggested theme for this month and I have plenty of images of water to play with.

I decided to use the water spray created by the boat when I was on a Seabird Safari in July

I love the sculptural shapes and so I layered all of my images together to create one super, refreshing, colossal spray

I did play with some textures on top but didn’t find anything that improved the image so I stopped.

Looking forward to seeing all the wonderful water based photoart in the gallery.

PhotoArt Friday is back–dreamily

Bonnie has opened her gallery again after a well deserved break.  Her first challenge was to create a digital photoart piece on the theme of dreamy or ethereal.

These words evoked ideas of things that you can only just see and I created two very different pieces, on different occasions.

First some barely there flowers, seen through glass – I love the soft colours

and then, a few days later I captured a wonderful sunset, in itself a fleeting wonder, and decided to use it for another ethereal piece, using the chalkboard techniques which are so popular in digi scrapping circles at the moment

Lovely to be back in Bonnie’s gallery and looking forward to seeing what others have produced.

PhotoArt revisited

No PhotoArt Friday on Pixeldust PhotoArt at the moment as Bonnie takes a well deserved break.  Faced with no link up deadline and no suggested theme, I didn’t create anything last week.  so this week I decided to set myself a theme because I find that easier.  I went back to the first items I created for PhotoArt Friday and revisited the approach.

My first item was to create an abstract piece using 4 photos

I used the same format and chose 3 photos from my recent trip to South Sudan and created what I think looks like a grouping of bejewelled eggs using different blending modes and the find edges filter

Then I used 3 photos from my garden and walks – I think it looks like a modern stained glass window

I liked the pattern here so I added some filters and created a tryptic which I think I’ll print to put on my wall

So glad I thought of a way to set my own challenges while Bonnie has a rest.

Do you prefer to have a theme when sitting down to create?

Photo Art in the shadows

As I’m away from home this week and using my notebook, and so a small screen, I only created one piece to hang in the PhotoArt Friday gallery this week.

I’d read Bonnie’s suggested theme of shadow (and light) before I flew so when I was looking our of the plane window and saw the wonderful shadow under this lone cloud I snapped it. 

I turned it black and white, duplicated the image and used overlay blending mode and added a texture to produce this lovely image

PhotoArt Friday creates timetravel

As soon as I read Bonnie’s challenge for this week ‘collage’ I was transported back to my Art class at around the age of 12 or 13 when we created a large collage, using fabrics and other media, from an image that we had drawn – mine was a large elephant. 

So I went with that idea and rather than draw an image I googled free colouring in pictures and chose one that had lots of distinct shapes that I could ‘cut out’ and fill.  I used a range of texturally interesting  photos that I had collected a couple of years ago for a class.  Much easier than my school experience but the process of cutting out the patters for each stage was still frustratingly dull.

 

The cat is covered if 2 images of carpet; the flower pot is the sea.  I added a bevel effect to some layers for variety.  It does remind me of the elephant collage and was a fun process

I then decided to play with using a simple shape and filling with some photos – I used images I’d taken of the spring flowers in my garden to fill a bunch of heart shaped balloons – another fun image

looking forward to seeing how others approach the idea of a collage in PhotoArt Friday. 

PhotoArt Friday graffiti for Easter

I had Bonnie’s suggestion of creating photoart graffiti in the back of my mind when I was wandering around an Easter display in Covent Garden in icy wind and occasional light snow.  I snapped this lovely image of giant daffodils while wondering when spring weather would arrive around here.

and slowly an idea for my graffiti creation took form.  Back home I created this using the selection tools, artistic filters and the bored schoolboy font

Still waiting for some nice weather but glad to make the statement. 

and a version with Bonnie’s latest lovely texture gift as the background (I do love the magic eraser tool that enabled me to easily remove the white from the flattened image)

Looking forward to seeing the graffiti others present.

PhotoArt Portraits

Bonnie’s challenge for PhotoArt Friday this week was portrait.  So many possibilities and ways to take this subject. 

first off I played with putting my face in an unexpected place in a photo – and after playing unsuccessfully with several ideas I merged together a wall, a spotlight and my face for this rather disturbing but fun image

Later I took  different path and experimented with creating a portrait which looks as if it has been painted.  I was so pleased with the effect that in each case I felt it wasn’t finished until each looked as if it had been mounted

I’m pleased with both – much more than the original photo (which was taken sitting on a train using my tablet)

 

I’m looking forward to seeing how others interpret this challenge.

Keep pushing those abstract ideas

Bonnie is keeping us on our creative toes with her suggestions for PhotoArt Friday.  For this week she suggested creating abstract using only her textures.  ‘Do you mean only your textures and photos@ I asked;  ‘No’, she said’ ‘I’d thought just textures’.  Ok, I thought let’s give it a try – and what fun I had

I started by cutting scruffy quadrangles from 7 textures that I chose pretty randomly.  i turned them all black and white so that the texture was the focus and then arranged them in an abstract, pleasing to me, way.

Nice, I thought but Bonnie has suggested trying something new, again and again.

So I thought I’d add some textures to this and keep the resultant colours.  And I created 4 which I liked and rather than just have 4 items in the gallery I put them together

Even better, I thought so perhaps repeating them some more would make it even better

Still looking good so may as well keep repeating

Not so keen on this last one so went back to the one before and again I was tempted to stop there but thought ‘what would happen if I added the original on top and blended that in different blending modes?’

Really pleased with both of these so decided to stop.

Thanks to Bonnie for the prompt and for the suggestion of trying it again, and again, and again.  Interested to see how others respond to the challenge.

Vintage pictures

I had some fun playing with painting pixel magic for Bonnie’s theme of ‘vintage’ for PhotoArt Friday.

I love this technique – much easier than actual painting due to the undo button!

[postcard template from The CoffeeShop Blog]

I particularly enjoy the very modern architecture in an image that at first looks vintage.

Following my muse

For PhotoArt Friday this week I intended to follow Bonnie’s prompt of ‘connect’ but then I came across this sight on my walk

and had to follow the ideas that immediately sparked on ways to use the reflection of the abandoned bike.

For once the pixel magic ideas that I had while continuing my walk actually worked once I was back at my computer.  I’d taken several photos from different angles and combined them then added Bonnie’s starburst texture and I adore the results.  I saved three using different blending modes – which do you like the best?

 

colour burn blending mode

luminous blending mode

difference blending mode

looking forward to seeing the connections others have made this week.

embracing what I usually avoid

After stretching into minimalism and abstract photoart, Bonnie has returned to more familiar ground for our PhotArt Friday challenge this week – we were asked to use one of her textures – Bamboo Dream.

Usually I shy away from textures that contain anything that looks like script so my first thought was to use just the bottom part of the texture. 

But I decided to continue to challenge myself and embrace the top part of the texture.

here using the difference blending mode and added a border.  I think this would make a lovely card

Then I decided to concentrate on the scriptesque part so I duplicated and flipped it to create a frame

the same photo, wider crop and the colour burn blending mode.

and here with linear light blending mode.

Looking forward to seeing the full range of ways that others use this texture.

pixel magic goes abstract

Abstract collage was Bonnie’s challenge to us for PhotoArt Friday this week.  She provided one texture to use and invited us to add one or more image and another of her textures.  I appreciated having these rules as it cut down on choice possibilities.

I’m really pleased with this piece and will have it printed large. 

I know you can’t tell but the image is of black, red and white currants – one of my most used images in digital photoart pieces.  I used 3 copies, each enlarged and rotated over each other in ‘darken’ layer mode, to provide the overlapping circles.  Then I addedd the proscribed texture which gives the lines and then tried most of Bonnie’s textures over the whole image and didn’t like any.  So I added a texture over just one of the rectangles – the darker grey one

 

Then I decided to create another where it was easier to see the image from the photo.  After playing with several ideas and perusing some abstract art on the internet I stumbled upon this image, using a self portrait and created 3 versions

 

Rather disturbing (as opposed to pretty) but that seems to be one theme within abstract art. Here is how I did these

 

Thank you to everyone for your comments on my minimalist pieces, I do appreciate all those who take time to say something.  Now I’m off to see what other abstract art has been created to hang in Bonnie’s gallery.

a Minimalist challenge

a real challenge from Bonnie this week for PhotoArt Friday when she invited us to try minimalism.  Choosing a photo that might work was the first challenge but I found a few that seemed to meet the remit of being uncluttered and showing the essence of something.  I went with a bleak seascape (the only kind I see at the moment with the grey weather) and a string of geese flying overhead.

I cropped to remove distractions and then faced the challenge of how to process them. I felt that texture would move away from the unadorned nature of minimalism so I turned to photo filters and layering duplicates of the image.

I think they fit within the minimalist fence. 

I found this challenge hard, but then minimalism doesn’t call to me.  Thanks to Bonnie for encouraging me to try something other than my norm and interested to see what others do.