Foto Art Friday - The Photographer

 

Welcome to this week’s “Foto Art Friday”.  This weekend, I am lucky enough to be visiting some good friends in San Diego.  I know I will have some great photo opportunities waiting for me, and that made me think about an image that I captured a couple of years ago.  I was at White Sands National Monument, here in New Mexico, and I saw another photographer positioning himself to capture one of the beautiful sunsets that happen there.  I decided to capture him in the creative moment.  As a sort of tribute to the wonderful photo op this weekend will give me, I decided to make that image the focus of this week’s art piece.  I used some vintage handwriting and music text as a background, and then some brushes found in PhotoShop Elements to add some texture and color.  A simple piece filled with the promise of what more there can be.

 

Enjoy!



Foto Art Friday - Primrose Portrait

Every spring, these beautiful flowers make their appearance in one flower bed in our front yard.  I kept thinking that perhaps we planted them, and therefore, I should know their name!  But, Jeff reminded me that we didn’t plan them – they just appeared one year, and took up residence.  They are so charming, I look forward to them each year.  I created this piece to honor their appearance again this year.  The background is a blend of vintage music, special paint brushes, and a CitraSolve paper.  I added the images and a few extra paint brushes completed the piece.  By the way, the flower is called a Mexican Evening Primrose.

 

Enjoy!



Foto Art Friday - May 27 - Always Flowers

Always Flowers

For this week’s Foto Art Friday piece, I used an image of a columbine flower from our garden as inspiration.  The flower is just so soft, delicate, and, in its own way, fancy.  Because of that, I chose very fancy handwriting as a part of the background, along with some CitaSolv background paper, merged together.  I then blended in the columbine image, added some special paint brushes by soulpoison, and then an appropriate quote from Henri Matisse.

 

Enjoy!



Foto Art Friday - Postcard from Spring

 

For this week’s Foto Art Friday piece, I used an image of an iris from our front yard garden that I took earlier this week.  I decided to go with a more traditional collage approach rather than using the blending technique I’ve been using lately.  I’m still using some vintage papers – handwriting and music, and the top part of a vintage post card!  I added a piece of the CitraSolv background, various brushes in PhotoShop Elements, and this is the result!  I chose fancier handwriting to match the fanciness of the bloom – likewise with the post card’s font!  I like the soft feel to this piece.

 

Enjoy!



Foto Art Friday - May 13, 2016

 

Memories

 

I'm calling this piece "Memories" because from time to time it's good to just sit back and remember where we've come from, those that we've loved, hated, or even felt indifferent to, places we've been, just to appreciate how far we've come.  Thinking back also helps us to review what we've done and how (perhaps) we could do better in the future.  It's not about regrets, but about learning more about ourselves, so that we can better live our present and look forward with excitement to our future.

 

 

 

Enjoy!

 

 

 

 



Digital Photo Art – Doors

I played around with the theme of “doors” for this series of digital photo art pieces.  I truly love playing with combining my photography and collage in this manner – come take a look!

Guardian of the Keys

This piece has a cemetery door and angel from the Cemetery at Ricoleta as its focal points.  Ricoleta is an amazing place – almost like a small city that happens to also be a cemetery.  Eva Peron – Evita – is buried there in her family’s mausoleum.  The angel is one of my favorites from the cemetery, as she seems to be so full of sorrow, it practically oozes from her.  The foundation of this piece, as is the case with all of these pieces, is background pages I’ve created using CitraSolv and magazine pages.  I then blended some handwriting pages into that, added my door and angel images and finished off the piece with specialty brushes in Photoshop Elements from Falln Stock.

Laundry Day on the Balcony

When we were in Palermo, Italy, last fall, it seemed to be laundry day – many of the balconies had the residents’ laundry out to dry on their balconies.  This balcony seem particularly photogenic, and is one of my favorites from that day.  Can’t you almost feel the soft breeze drying the clothes?  This piece, again, has a CitraSolve background as its foundation, with special brushes added from Photoshop Elements. 

Palermo Church Door

I took this image thru the window of our tour bus while we were in Palermo, and at the time, I worried that glare from the window would wreck the image.  However, I really liked the way the glare caused a sort of reflection that added a nice bit of texture to the image.  For this piece, I blended my CitraSolv background with some vintage sheet music.  I purposefully selected the background with some red tones in it to pick up on the handles of the church doors, and then added specialty brushes by soul poison and ss to pick up on that reddish tone and the underlying grey tones of the bricks in the image.  Coffeering brushes by on thin air complete the piece.

Southwestern Keys

The inspiration for this piece lay closer to home – in the small town of Gallisteo, New Mexico, not far from where we live.  This door, or gate, leads to someone’s yard, and just seemed like a great fit for my “door” theme.  This time, I blended vintage handwriting with a CitraSolv background and added special brushes by jh and Falln Stock in Photoshop Elements to finish out the piece.

Enjoy!



Foto Art Friday - Farmer's Daughter

This week had us driving thru lots of farmland in the Midwest and Plains states as we headed home from our 2 month journey.  I was struck by how wonderful some of the older barns and farm houses looked, and began shooting them from the passenger seat in our RV.  This week’s piece is a tribute to all the farmers in our country who provide much of the food that we put on our tables.  And, of course, many of those farmers had daughters, so the connection was inevitable!  This piece has some Citra Solv background as the foundation with several different pieces of vintage writing blended into it.  I added an image of a farmhouse that I enhanced in Photoshop Elements, and the lovely vintage photo of a sweet young lady (who happens to be my Mom when she was in her late teens, I believe!).  Added to all of this are some specialty brushes in Photoshop to finish off the piece. 

Enjoy!