Regular pic and same pic changed. Is it ruined or made better?

Mexican orange flower is a nice natural pic. Mexican orange flowers with poster edges on a gradient background is a colourful art pic.

Its all in the eye of the beholder i guess.  I like both versions and think theres a time and a place for both. Maybe because its still so new and awesome to be able to do these kinds of things.

Quince flower with ladybug is a nice pic.

Quince flower with ladybug with posterized edges is an odd thing but in a good way nice pic.

The neat thing is that with Photoshop techniques the volume can be turned up or down as one feels in that moment. In creating real art i rarely use bright colours or hard lines or edges prefering to remain the pastel queen and my fav projects were the ones titled something like "white on white" and i'd turn every project into at least "all pale"
Now here i am all of a sudden enjoying making these rather garish pictures and wonder why is this?
Am i still changing and growing after all these years?

spring is still springing in my garden

Pink Dogwood. This is still a tiny shrub. A little late for Easter, but thats ok.

Mexican orange by the little pink dogwood.

Snowball bush. The flowers will be big and pure white in no time. A neighbours daughter came by one day many years ago dragging a 10' branch she had ripped from her moms shrub. Around here these plants have a tendency to grow multi-many branches from the base and grow into enormous clumps of tangled bush.

Well, i really didn't know what to do with it but knew i didn't want a plant that would be 20ft. in diameter.  So i stuck it in the ground and after it rooted made sure to keep it to just the one stem, like a tree. Now, nurserys do this all the time and call them standards. But i didn't know that at the time.

It does require  a little maintenance because its so top heavy otherwise a fuss free plant. I cropped it too tight but you can still just see the little stem that holds this big head up.

The wisteria flower buds are getting longer and in the right light from a distance you can see a haze of bluishness so it won't be long now till full bloom.

20's bathing beauty goes to Alaska

Another practice piece. Removing around the outside of the woman was hard enough but then the little cracks of daylight had to be erased with a tiny eraser. And of course lots of whoopsies and having to go back and fix. Finally i was satisfied and saved it.

Thats when i noticed all the dirty marks on the sky.

Turns out it was a poor pic to use because the dirty sky is actually a dirty window. I took this pic from the restaurant on our cruise to Alaska almost a year ago and didn't even notice the stained window. Probably one should clean the dirt off in the original image first and then go ahead and add other images.

Learning!

First digital collage and more oranges

Out of the folds of woman

An old art piece and silly new digital fun pics

                                      This is an old re-worked piece i called Melting

                                     Can you guess or do you know what the next pic is?

Hubby loves them so he buys a bag once a week or two. I eat a couple of the black ones and thats it; i save up my for my sweet tooth to have chocolate.
The first pic was done with the liquify filter and i went wild "like a kid in the candy store" Liquify is one of my favourite filters to play with so i go overboard.
The 2nd pic was done with the filter craquelure. 

I've been experiencing a few scattered days lately, and i guess a little depressed too.  My brother passed away on Easter Sunday.  It wasn't totally unexpected, but still a shock. I feel sad but trying to fill my time with productive things but not having much luck with getting anywhere with anything much, and the least of all is Photoshop.... i heard that Elements was easy....not!  As you see i'm still playing with the filters!
I bought a couple of how to books but my concentration is so bad i just get upset and feel like i'll never learn. I've decided that all photoshop books do is show you things that can be done.  But not enough info to actually do it for this beginner.  I feel they've left out an important button and that's the OK button that would give me the ok to save what i did, or to move along into another technique without opening and closing the program a million times.
So i just play with the filters and its fun but i really have to and want to move on to something else soon.

When i tire of filters, blog surfing and tv i play the oldest Nintendo Super Mario game; circa about 1990 i think. Sold my wayyy too advanced for me Wii game and have gone back in time. Back in the day i could win and rescue the princess but now i'm stuck in world 3; went to world 4 a couple times but got beaten back. It never used to scare me but find this game sort of scares me now sometimes and leaves me breathless especially when swimming.  The bees in world 4 sure are giving me a terrible fright also. I guess thats what happens when you get old!
So my Marios' life has been in world 3 for wayyy too long and it's passed being fun; now it's just annoying.  Think i'll have to resort to looking up the cheats soon. And that's what happens if you quit playing for 20 yrs or so!

Also have my name on a waiting list for the old Legend of Zelda and looking forward to playing it and listening to its' haunting music. Back in the day i was only able to get to level 5, so not expecting to even meet or beat that.

My old chronic back problem (osteoarthritis) has returned so i'm spending time in bed watching tv again (hey Lalala we are watching the cooking shows but so far our food hasn't improved much) 

And we're in the playoffs, go Canucks!  I also need to get in shape soon as the hot rodding season is starting and i'd like to be a part of it. We have a '40 ford street rod that we show around the lower mainland of B.C. every summer.

Our little furkid Pavel is doing pretty good; at least not as constipated as i wrote earlier. Yayyy, the meds are working!  Also happy to say we have a recomendation for a good vet now just in case he gets bunged up again.

Some of you might remember that back in Feb. i made up a couple of erosion bundles and hung them out to decay/age. I was so enthusiastic back then but lately started to feel that it was a waste of good craft supplies and so i brought them in, dried them out and opened them today.
Anyhow they looked sort of like voodoo things and where i had them hanging wasn't very appropriate for the summer. So rather than find another location i decided to end my project.  I didn't actually join the group that was doing it, so nobody's the wiser but you and i. 
Well, there was a little rust, some mold and lot of fading but no transfers of dyes or interesting marks or damage.
Not that i was expecting fossils or petrifying or anything but guess 2 months really isn't enough time to erode anything significantly.

Well, thats about all i can think of right now here on the wet coast of Canada.





 

Spring is happening in my garden

The wisteria has a million flower buds again this year and should be showing colour by next month. This big old plant is at least 30 yrs old and hubby keeps it at about 30 feet in length. At one time it had branches going both north and south and must have been 50 - 60 ft. long.  

Unfortunately it kept wanting to swirl and twirl and twine up into the big spruce tree and so the northern branch was removed. I'm sure it would have been uptown by now otherwise. Its only allowed to go south now. 

The south end always wants to get under our neighbors shed roof and even went into her shed once or twice....you can almost see it growing in the summertime and it still runs away on us once in a while.
I believe it would go all the way to Seattle if we didn't keep an eye on it.

This species tulip groups nearby

The tree peony is showing a little pink. The flower will be almost dinnerplate size in no time

Mid way through the garden is a pearl bush; a rare and old  small shrub

You can see the new little pearls and last years black pearl

Near the far end of my garden is the deliciously fragrant Viburnum Caresii.

Why oh why did i plant it so far away!

Near or almost in the upper pond is this plant. Yellow is not my favourite colour in flowers or in any way so don't remember why i planted it where, from the patio it looks like dandelion, up closer it looks like common buttercup.....

But it thrives there so i let it be.

   

The legend of the dogwood

There is a legend that at the time of the Crucifixion the dogwood had been the size of the oak and other forest trees.

So firm and strong was the tree that it was chosen as the timber of the cross.

To be used thus for such a cruel purpose greatly distressed the tree, and Jesus, nailed upon it, sensed this, and in His gentle pity for all sorrow and suffering said to it,

"Because of your regret and pity for My suffering, never again shall the dogwood tree grow large enough to be used as a cross.

Henceforth it shall be slender, brittle, bent and twisted, and its blossoms shall be in the form of a cross;  two long and short petals.

And in the center of the outer edge of each petal there will be nail prints, brown with rust and stained with red, and in the center of the flower will be a crown of thorns, and all who see it will remember."

Happy Easter everybody!

Learning Photoshop techniques one baby step at a time

I had a bowl of oranges and thought "well thats a good thing to start with.
Placed the oranges in bowl and took the picture.                                                                                                       Oranges with glowing edges

embossed Poster edges  

Pink neon glow

Posterized

inverted pink neon glow

                                                                                   embossed orange (or was it plasticised?) 

Photoshop Elements is so much fun. These techniques were easy to do in the filters drop down menu. They're all just one layer....havent learned how to do multiple layers yet. Or cut or use masks or brushes and a million other things. I'm looking forward to making cool digital art eventually.

Sorry they won't stay in the order or the way i put them.