Creating Textures

Using texture in your photography, photo manipulation, digital art or Traditional Art can add dimension, depth and color to your work. Textures can be found every day in the world around us. Here are some examples of three of my own favorite textures; Rust, Peeling Paint and a Stucco Wall:

 From an old painted metal chair on my mom's front porch

Fading and peeling Fresco taken in Pompeii, Italy

Stucco Wall taken at DisneyWorld

Besides collecting images of texture you can also make your own texture. Using basic supplies that can be purchased at any craft store, you can create your very own texture in any color desired! Here's how:

All you need are a few supplies!

Take some cheap watercolor paper and cut it in half. Grab a paper plate and pour out two small piles of Acrylic Gesso. Tint the Gesso with Acrylic Craft Paint with two colors of your choice. I chose Lavender and Pale Yellow. Mix the paint in with the Gesso and using a 1" flat paintbrush, paint each piece of your watercolor paper. While the paint is wet lay the two colors on top of each other and then pull off. Viola! Two sheets of texture with light and dark areas.

In just a few minutes we created great texture that can be used as a background or overlay in our art!
You can find these textures and more available for your use in my DeviantArt Textures and Backgrounds gallery

Here are a few more shots of everyday images that have been enhanced and given an otherworldly quality by using textures:

Have an artful weekend!

Veiled Memories

Veiled memories of you dwell uneasily upon my dreams

Oh how I miss having the time to do digital art! I'm currently busy with preparing for a Pirates of the Caribbean themed Bunco party and most of my time has been going into making decorations, running errands and setting up, making sure the ladies of my group are going to have a great time (yes, pictures will be posted after the party...don't want to give away any of the surprises just yet!).

I've also been drawn lately to mixed media, which is very much like doing digital art and photo manipulation but only in a traditional sense. I have traditional art to finish: The Sketchbook Project 2011, digital painting to complete: Remember the Pinup? Ongoing tasks to tackle (My Exploration project) and new challenges on the horizon (Write a Novel in November)...but, digital art still calls to me and I was inspired to create the above piece last night after perusing the new issue of Digital Studios Magazine. So much creativity flows out of the pages!  And, they printed a thank you letter I wrote! It's on page 2. :)  I truly love the magazine and wish it were printed more than twice a year. All the artists that are showcased are talented and inspiring. Looking through it makes me want to do more pieces to submit for the Spring issue but alas, time is a constraint for me right now and not sure I'll be able to pull it off. We shall see! As long as I'm doing some form of art, I'm a happy girl. :)

Have a wonderful and artful weekend!

Resources: The castle, butterfly and postcard are from my own stock collection and are available in my stock gallery at DeviantArt ; Texture by Shadowhouse Creations and Vintage Woman by MementoMori-Stock .

The Week in Art

Hard to believe it's August already and that Summer will soon be over. I'm ready. It's hot. It's humid. The heat puts the kabosh on my desire to go out and do photography. The upside is that I can get processing done on some of the thousands of photos sitting in files on my computer and can dabble and play in both Traditional Art and Digital Art. Here are a few from this week:

Pages 6 & 7 of my moleskine for the Sketchbook Project 2011 following my theme of "below the surface":

Below the surface of my laptop lies the mother of all boards!

"Winter Reunion" is the next page of my Gypsy Journal:

Twilight

dreaming time

waiting for my hand

few moments when

something intimate

can launch a memory

sparseness

winter reunion

♥

Some fruit doodles in colored pencil combined digital textures:

And a fun little dreamer:

I did manage to do two photo manips for the 365 Photo Manipulation Group on Flickr.

Both images will be available in prints and note cards:

Out to Sea

Poetry

I also processed a couple of other photos including this one

of my beautiful friend, cousin and fellow artist and blogger, Missy

This was taken in Englewood Kansas during our hunt for Bigfoot. :)

Next up for the weekend is a Digital Art Day with Lita where I'm working on turning my friend Trena into a Moon Fairy and a day out shooting a Japanese Garden with my friend Martina. Hope everyone's weekend will also be filled with art, creativity and L♥VE!

Four Seasons

My latest digital painting attempt was to take an ordinary photograph of a single tree and transform it to reflect all four seasons. I followed a tutorial by Sam Hampton Smith. It took me about 8 hours of work and 25 layers.

Before

The key to this digital piece was to divide the starting image into four quadrants and work on each quadrant separately. For Spring, Autumn and Summer, I created my own brush of leaves and painted them onto the tree using colors to match the season. Each quadrant had one or more color adjustment layers. Autumn colors were adjusted to reflect warmer tones, winter cooler tones. Spring leaves were more sparse, with light floral blooms dotting the outer edges of the branches. Summer leaves were full, thick, dark with a wide range of green tones. I added some of my own touches including the birds flying through the setting sun and a photograph I had taken of the full moon some time ago. The final step was to blend in all the hard lines and make final color corrections.

After

Living in Southern Florida only affords me two seasons, Spring and Summer. But, through the magic of Photoshop, I can enjoy all four seasons!