The Shattered Monarch

Wandering around the web as you do I stumbled upon and artist who was creating artwork with butterflies. Actually using butterflies! They print using a inkjet on to the wings. This is amazing but part of me thinks perhaps a little cruel. The page is here ... Butterfly Mimesis.

The artwork did however get those cogs in my head turning. Inspired I set about finding photos from Google to manipulate with photoshop. As a result, The Shattered Monarch was born.

Juliet

This is a still from the end of the 5th season of Lost where Juliet sadly dies. Not before, however, exploding a nuke that throws everyone back to the right point in time.

Again I used photoshop to combine textures, different photos and used different blending modes.

The awesomeness of Lost

So I'm wandering around the Internet and as usual end up at youtube. However, whilst refraining from looking for videos of cute cats, talking cats, angry cats or sociopathic cats I stumbled upon some videos that I liked ages ago... The final few scenes from lost.

I'll not go to in depth as I wouldn't want to spoil the Show for people who haven't experienced its undeniable awesomeness. But my reaction to the videos quite shocked me. Tears streamed down my face (especially the bit with Vincent the dog).

 This all lead to me losing about an hour to video clips where the shows characters remembered their lives on the island. What a truly amazing show and story! I'm so pleased we stuck with the show through the complicated parts; so worth it.

So here are the final two scenes...

With fresh inspiration I decided I wanted to create some Lost related artwork. I've every intention of doing some drawings but to begin with I found some stills and played around with them using Photoshop.

This still is of Jack and Vincent and an incredibly powerful moment in the last scene.

The Lighthouse of the Abarat

I've been using my recently acquired photoshop skills; merging texture and and photos.

This piece is inspired by Clive Barkers books The Abarat quartet (tho I think he's expanding the story beyond the initial four planned books). In the first book The heroine stumbles upon a derelict lighthouse on dry land far away from any sea. Its this lighthouse that calls forth the shores of the Abarat.

If you haven't read this book its very good and epic modern fantasy. So far two in the series have been published, I think the third book is due soon.

Related Post

Related Post

Dahlia

I a photoshop sort of mood so flicked through some magazines and had a go at merging textures and photos. All the files for the tutorial were on the CD but being me I couldn't be bothered to go upstairs and find it. So I used Photographs from the net instead and textures from media militia.

It wasn't particularly difficult nor did it take very long. I'm liking the result and already have Ideas of how I can use some of these techniques for other projects.

Related post

Sunset

I took this photograph yesterday evening just as the sun was setting. I was in my pjs and glanced out the the window and ran for the camera.  Such a lovely cloudscape with amazing colours :-).

I sorted the light levels in photoshop but other than that it's as it was... breathtaking.

A sight like this demonstrates  the beauty that is around us a unique sight temporary unless the moment is captured by an artist.

Playing With Photoshop

Went for a lovely walk today and took some photos; most of them of flowers but a few of paths and disused roads. It was beautifully sunny and bright a most enjoyable wander.

When I got home I played around on Photoshop. I wanted to make a bright looking image of a disused road that leads to an old quarry look darker... as though it were taken at night.  I think I managed.

Orchid

One of my orchids. The bottles there to support the weight of the bloom.

Photography

Photography isn't something I'm into in a big way but I've been playing around.  What I'm quite enjoying is then further tinkering with them in photoshop.  

I've found that photoshop is great for sharpening images and for also blurring the background components. This is allowing me to get effects I'd ordinarily only get with an SLR camera. Photoshop also allows me to crop images slightly altering the composition and positioning of focal points adding interest to the resulting photograph