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.

Cat Dreams

This is a picture of my cat Elphaba who loves posing for the camera. I'm pretty sure she watches America's next top model and takes notes!

I've manipulated the photo with photoshop and included elements of a viney jungle surrounding.

I kind of think that's the way she see's the world; as this amazing  playground to explore.

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.

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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.

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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.

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

Lights

This is a piece called "Lights";  named after and Ellie Goulding's album. This is part of the challenge/project I have set for myself where I produce 30 pieces based on album titles.


This piece is a photoshop composition. I found the image of the hand using google and placed the orb, which I created from scratch. I then tinted the hand using a tinted layer.


I found it hard to place the orb in a believable position. I'd like to play around with this some more.


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19

This is a piece called "19";  named after and Adele's album. This is part of the challenge/project I have set for myself where I produce 30 pieces based on album titles.


This album was difficult to come up with a concept for. After looking at numerological links and wikipedia results for the number "19", I was was still left unmotivated. What I opted for, in the end, was to simply present the number 19 in an unusual or interesting way.


In a magazine called creative photoshop I'd seen some impressive use of smoke brushes used to form a bird and an image of a lightbulb. This was something I wanted to have a go at; so I downloaded some royalty free smoke brushes and built up an image making the smoke form the number 19.


I'm really impressed with the way this turned out and  would quite like to attempt a  portrait made up of smoke at some point. This, I think, would give quite a ghostly effect.


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This is a piece called "The Defamation of Strickland Banks";  named after and inspired by Plan B's album. This is part of the challenge/project I have set for myself where I produce 30 pieces based on album titles.


It was a difficult piece to come up with a concept for. I decided to play around with Photoshop and used synonyms for defamation to produce this portrait. The photo all this is layered on being of a man who looks to have lost everything. I enjoyed producing this piece and it was surprisingly easy (with the help of online tutorials (google text portraits).


I'm relatively new to photoshop and the program at times is a little overwhelming but its fun to have an actual purpose when using it like I did for this.