Week 23 - Weekly Art Challenge - Blended Photos

I blended photos this week using my favorite photo-editing app, Pixlr, to create these compositions (except for the first one).

I bought a new Smartphone - my first one - Whoo-hoo!! In taking photos of my granddaughter (4 months old in this photo), I found this photo in the gallery! I don't know how I managed to get a double exposure without trying! But I love the way it turned out, so I had to share!

This photo is the brick work of our walkway beside our driveway, covered in Mesquite tree flowers and leaves. This is one of the original photos I used to create the blended photos this week.

I used filters in Pixlr Express to create this collage of the brick work.

My friend, Lynn, took this photo of wood in their barn.

I blended the original brick work photo with the barn wood photos.I added a green overlay. I think this would make a wonderful fabric for quilting or a background for mixed-media artwork. 

Another photo of the brick work and barn wood blended, but with an ombre overlay. Again, I think this is a great starter for mixed-media artwork or for digitally-printed fabric for quilting or fiber art.

I enjoy exploring photography editing with the Pixlr app. I love to see what I can create!


Keep creating!
Lynnita

Week 18 - Weekly Art Challenge - Blended Photos

These weeks seem to be going by quickly with having our daughter, her boyfriend, and our granddaughter living with us!  I'd rather hold Lydia and care for her than do much of anything else!! She's so adorable, tiny, and a good baby. Also, I'm the taxi to take her to all her doctor appointments of which she has several due to the congenital heart defect. Making time for art can be daunting sometimes!

This week, I played on my tablet some more blending photos with the Pixlr Express app that I've mentioned in previous posts.

Floral Garden Sunset. I blended a floral garden ZIA that I created (see post dated Mar 12, 2015) with a sunset photo I had taken a year ago. This is the "difference" blending. I added some doodle stickers to complete the photo. I like how the garden color changed when blended with the sunset.

Floral Garden Sunset #2. This is the same floral garden ZIA and sunset as in the first photo. This time I "added" the two photos. This blending created a whole different look. The mauves, purples and blues of the sunset were kept. I added an bubble overlay which created an interesting texture.

Floral Chickens. I blended a photo of two of our Americauna chickens with a flower photo
I took in California last year. I like how the color of the flowers affected the chickens coloring!  

I'm still learning much about blending photos in the Pixlr Express app. I've made some blended photos that I did not save as they look terrible, but it's fun to experiment and find what I like and don't like. It's helping with me understand composition and design better, too.


Keep creating!
Lynnita

Week 14 of Weekly Art Challenge - Blended Photos

I've been out of commission for a few weeks now with my weekly art challenges. My granddaughter was born premature the beginning of Feb and spent 3 weeks in the hospital. She along with my daughter and son-in-law are now living with us, so it's been an adjustment. She is a special needs child with a heart defect and Down syndrome. She's a little angel and such a blessing, but she's keeping us all busy with appointments and not sleeping at night - all the things newborns come with!

I've decided not to do the Documented Life Project 2015 by Art to the 5th Academy, that I originally wanted to do. Initially, I didn't get started on time, as the journals were back-ordered. By the time it arrived, my granddaughter had been born.  Unfortunately, I do not have a dedicated studio. I use either the kitchen table or cover my quilting table to create art. I cannot leave all my paints out every where with the kids living with us, like I could when it was just my husband and I. He didn't mind having my artwork spread out everywhere.  It's easier for me at this point to continue with sketching, doodling, or creating digital art every week. So this is what I'm going to concentrate on for the time being to help me get back into the habit of being creative each week and posting a weekly "sketch" each week.

For this week, I'd been working on digital art by blending photos. I used Pixlr Express photo editing software on my tablet. They added blending photos to the app, which I'm enjoying exploring. This is what I've created this week.

Tree taken on a foggy morning in Ohio blended with a sunset in AZ. Used the additive blending mode.

This is the same blended photo as the first picture. Added a special effect overlay.

The same blended photo with neon light overlays and firework overlays added.

Same photo again but with various light overlays and flower stickers added.

Pixlr Express is a fun photo-editing software with the basic editing features. It also has many added features, such as special effects, overlays, stickers, various brushes to create painting effects, fonts, etc. Right now I'm focusing on experimenting with the blending photos, overlays, and effects features.


Keep creating!
Lynnita

Week 6 - Weekly Art Challenge - Blended Photos

I'm late posting my Week 6 art challenge. I'm hoping life will return to a normal routine soon. We finally got to bring our granddaughter home from the hospital on Wed, after spending her first 2 1/2 weeks of life in the neonatal ICU at the hospital. She was a preemie - born a month early. She's doing well now and steals the hearts of everyone who has seen her. The nurses and doctors were wonderful! We are working on a signature quilt for her - the medical staff were so happy to sign a block for her. Waiting on a few more people to finish their blocks, but I'll post a photo of the quilt when it's finished.

With spending so much time at the hospital, I didn't get to do any painting, so worked on blended photos on my tablet. I focused on blending photos of my grandchildren with nature scenes that I had taken. I'm still learning what all I can do with the photo-editing program, Pixlr.   

Photo of a foggy winter morning in Ohio highlighting a bare tree, blended with a closeup of our new granddaughter's face. A heart overlay was added. The face is difficult to see after the blending, but I like the overall effect.

An Arizona sunset with a starry night overlay blended with the same photo of our new granddaughter's face. A border of swirls was overlayed. This blended photo makes me think of her dreaming of  all the possibilities for her life - "the skies the limit"! 

Photo of a palmetto leave taken at a quilt retreat in CA last year blended with a photo of our 9-month old grandson. Added an overlay of  'xoxo' and a border of a key variation. He looks cute peeking through the individual leaves.

Some of my photos came out interesting and some not so good, but it's fun to try to blend very different photos, as well as similar photos. I like the various effects that can be created by blending photos. I still have much to learn, but it sparks my creativity. Eventually, I'd like to print some of the blended photos to use in mixed-media artwork and some to turn into quilts. I have more exploring to do before first!

Keep creating!

Lynnita

  

Week 2 of Weekly Art Challenge - Blended Photos

I am still waiting on my Dylusions Journal to start the Documented Life Project (DLP) by Art to the 5th Academy.  For 2015, DLP gives a prompt each week to create an art journal page. I've been wanting to do more mixed-media art journaling and thought this would be a fun way to meet that goal. Posting my results each week will also help keep me on track. However, I'm off to a late start, since my journal has been back-ordered. Thankfully, I've found another place to order it and hope to have it by the end of next week. (Thanks, Deb!)

In the meantime. I've been continuing to play with my photo-editing app, Pixlr Express, on my Android tablet. The first few photos are ones I took while in Ohio in December and played with the enhancements, effects, and overlay features of the app.

Foggy, cold morning. Picture taken from the driveway looking east.

The same foggy, cold morning. Taken from the front yard looking east. 

Looking out through the ice on the driver's window of the car at a tree beside the driveway.

The program was updated recently with a "blending photos" feature that I've been exploring. This feature allows 2 photographs to be blended with different effects - darken, multiply, color burn, lighten, screen, color dodge, add, overlay, soft light, hard light, and difference. I'm still learning what can be created with these effects. These are a few of the photos I've blended.

Combined the first foggy morning photo with the iced car window photo,
using the multiply blending effect 

Combined the 2nd foggy morning photo with the iced window photo, using the difference 

blending effect. More of the texture from the ice shows in this combination. This effect 

reminds me of an interference pattern.

I blended the iced window photo with one of the "Draw Happy" faces I posted
last week (see post here). This makes me think of a mixed-media painting. I like
the texture and color the iced window photo adds to the black and white sketch.  

Combined the tree from the 2nd foggy morning photo with a palmetto photo I took last
year in CA at a quilting retreat. I used the multiply blending effect.   

I combined the above blended photo of the palmetto and tree with another of the "Draw Happy" faces I posted last week (see post dated Jan 10, 2015).   I used the "add" blending effect. I really like the results of this combination. I can see printing this on fabric to use for an art journal cover or to create an art quilt. 

It's exciting to create new "photos" by blending them. I really like the results and can see printing some of the blended photos onto paper or fabric for mixed-media art, fiber artwork or quilts.  I'm just starting to explore the tip of the iceberg, as I haven't even begun to check out all of the "Overlay"and "Effect" features of the photo-editing software after blending two (or more) photos. The sky's the limit!!


Keep creating!
Lynnita

Week 1 - 2015 Weekly Art Challenge

I want to continue doing a weekly challenge this year, but it's taken me awhile to decide what I wanted to do. I thoroughly enjoyed Blue Twig Studio's weekly sketch challenge last year and want to do something again this year.  I can see in looking over my sketches from last year's challenge (see posts here), that taking time to sketch weekly helped me improve my skills. Also, it was also a lot of fun! I enjoy creating Zentangles, too, and thought about doing these daily, with a weekly sketch thrown in. Even though a Zentangle can be created in a short amount of time, I was afraid it would be more than I could realistically accomplish when I examine everything else in my life at this time.

Another weekly challenge I had thought about participating in was a weekly photography challenge that would help teach photograph skills and editing photos. I would love to improve both of these areas. However, I don't have the required DSLR camera or Adobe Photoshop and can't afford either of them currently.  So that challenge is out for now.

Lastly, another area I want to improve is my mixed-media skills. I found an online challenge for a 52-week art journal called  the "Documented Life Project 2015" (DLP) at Art to the 5th Academy. They will be giving a prompt every week to create an art journal page. I thought this would help me explore my art journaling more, as well as, be fun to do.

After much thought, I've decided to to the Documented Life Project (DLP) 2015 with Art to the 5th Academy for my weekly challenge.  I'm going to be behind one to two weeks, as I'm waiting on my Dylusions Creative Journal to arrive via mail. It was supposed to be here in 2 days, but so far it's been almost 10 days. Hopefully, I can catch up in a short amount of time once the journal arrives. In addition to the DLP, I will post my sketches, drawings, Zentangles, photos and digital artwork as I create them - I am just not going to commit to having these done on a weekly basis.

With all that long explanation now out of the way, since I can't start the DLP without the art journal, this first week I worked on some digital artwork. I used Pixlr Express to create the following digital artwork made up of blended photos or photos and drawings. I took all of the photos myself and drew all the drawings. I hope to print some of these on paper and use in my art journal once it arrives!

Photo of a rose with the morning dew (see post dated May 21, 2014) blended with a photo of a palm frond. Both photos taken  at Vina de Lestonnac in Temecula, CA, May 2014. The palm frond creates an interesting texture across the rose and rosebud. Overlays added more color to the background.

Photo of winter berries covered in ice blended with a photo of a funny looking tree in the middle of a river. Both photos taken  in Toledo, OH after a snow storm on Dec 6, 2011. Overlays added the bubble texture, while the red lines bring focus to the berries and tree. 

Photo of the winter berries covered in ice (taken in Ohio, Dec 2011) blended with the photo of the palm frond (taken in CA, May 2014). I like the contrast of the radiating straight lines from the palm frond with the round berries and organic shape of the ice covering the berries. Overlays added more color to the background.

Photo of a carpenter bee blended with a photo of a yellow flower. Carpenter bee taken in Chandler, AZ  (see post dated Mar 20, 2013). Yellow flower taken at my parents in Lima, OH in July 2013. The flowers the bee was hovering over blended with the yellow flower to create a unique background. The carpenter bee seems almost transparent. 

Photo of sunset blended with Dragon Rider drawing. Sunset photo taken in Chandler, AZ 

on Dec 4, 2013 and dragon rider drawing created in Dec 2014 (see post dated Jan 1, 2014). 

I cropped the sunset photo and saturated the colors to make them more vivid.

Same blended photo as above, but the blending is reversed. I like the way the reversal 

changed the colors of the sky and changed the black/white drawing into colors. It 

creates entirely different emotions than the previous digital artwork. This one seems 

more fantastical and otherworldly to me.  What kind of planet has a green sky?

Another sunset photo taken July 16, 2014 blended with a fairy dragon drawing (see post dated July 30, 2014). The colors of the dragon are almost lost in the sunset colors and he seems transparent as well. I added a bubble overlay to give an appearance of a moon behind the dragon's head. 

Another sunset photo taken  Sept 17, 2013 in Chandler, AZ  (see post dated Sept 18, 2013) blended with Mesoamerican dragon drawing (see post dated  Jan 1, 2015).  An overlay created the starry sky. This was one of my favorite dragons to draw. I like how he appears to be soaring across a night sky, barely visible as the sun is setting and the stars are coming out. Only a select few that believe in dragons can see him!

I enjoy editing photos and playing with all the various features of the programs. The various overlays and special effects are fun to experiment with. I also like changing or enhancing the colors to create different moods with the digital artwork.  I'm beginning to feel fairly comfortable with Pixlr Express. The company keeps adding updates, such as this photo blending feature I focused on in this blog. I'm still learning all the possibilities with Adobe Photoshop Elements. I do not find this program as intuitive to use and I haven't found a good book to help with the learning curve. The company has online tutorials, but I'm always having to re-watch them. I'm learning this program slowly.

Thanks for stopping by!
Keep creating!
Lynnita

October ATC Challenge - Wild, Wild West

I've been participating in Blue Twig Studio's ATC challenge the past few months.  October's theme was the Wild Wild West.  I searched online for photographs of the West and chose the following photos online as my starting place for my ATCs.

A lone horseman view the vast open land with its buttes and mesas.

The lonely buildings of a ghost town.

Main street of a typical Western frontier town bustling with activity.

Abandoned buildings and wagons from a ghost town in the foothills of the mountains.

I altered the photos to make them look like very old photographs using Pixlr Express, a photo-editing app. Then, I printed the photos onto fabric.

I added sepia tones and a white torn paper frame to age the photo. The actual photo I printed 

onto the fabric has a blue sky - I'm not sure why it appears green in this photograph. 

I darkened this photo and added a black torn paper frame. 

I yellowed the print, then added a bubble overlay, and a black rusted frame to this lively Old West town.

I also yellowed this photo and added a white scratched and torn overlay.

I felt this added to abandoned feeling of this town.

I, then, quilted the photos and embellished them with turquoise, coral, and jasper beads. Turquoise and coral were valuable for trading, and jasper can be found throughout the west.

 Lastly, I added an Old West Proverb to the back of the cards and signed them.

• "When in doubt, let your horse do the thinkin'." - Old West Proverb
• "Ride the horse in the direction it's goin'." - Old West Proverb
• "If you're riding ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it's still there." - Old West Proverb
• "Never approach a bull from the front, a horse from the rear or a fool from any directions." - Old West Proverb.

Back of one of the above ATC cards.

ATCs are a fun way to experiment on something small and try new ideas or to use up small scraps (we all know we have these, as we can't throw out something that we can use later in our artwork! lol!), etc.  Join in the fun!

November's ATC theme is Give Thanks. The ATC challenge is open to anyone. You only need to make one card and send to Blue Twig Studio to join! (see the link above for more information).  For each ATC you send in by the end of the month, you have a chance to win all of the ATCs from everyone that participated.


Keep creating!!

Week 28 of 365 Days of Art Challenge

It's been an exciting week and has kept me busy enough that I didn't get this posted yesterday as planned. My daughter came over yesterday to tell me she was pregnant!! It's her first! So she's very excited, but nervous, too.

On to the 365 Days of Art Challenge - Week 28! Time just keeps marching forward! I did some more digital art this week. I worked with my Paper Camera app that I mentioned in last week's post (Week 27 of the 365 Days of Art Challenge).  I chose a photo that I took of my 2-yr old grandson playing the piano and then used the different effects available in Paper Camera to show the features of the app. 

This is my original photo - a vignette of my grandson singing while playing a small electric piano. I had planned to use a flower image, but the photo of my grandson shows off the various effects better.  

Vignette of 2 year old grandson singing while playing electric piano.
I originally edited this photo using Photoshop Elements. 

 Following are the 14 effects available in the Paper Camera app. There are various choices in each effect (background, brightness, colors, contrast, edges, foreground, lines, saturation, quantization, shine, slickness, strokes, water, vignette)  that can be manipulated to change the final outcome of the photo. Paper Camera can take a photo to work from or use a photo already on your tablet to create digital art. I thin this app creates some interesting effects to use in digital art.

I tried to put these in a video format. The preview worked great, but every time I then saved the final version, the program would crash. The company said it's a bug in the program and they are working on it. Hopefully next time I have so many photos (especially of a series), I can put them in a video!  

Acquarello produces a watercolor effect. 

Andy Pop is reminiscent of Andy Warhol's work.

Bleaching washes out the colors.

Comic Boom creates a comic book look.

Contour creates a monotone drawing. The color can be changed. 

Gotham Noir creates a rich black and white image.

Granny's Paper produces a sepia-toned image.

Half Ton creates a dot matrix effect in color. 

Haystacks is reminiscent of pointillism (creating an image using dots of color).

Neon Cola creates an effect like a neon sign - bright, bold colors against the dark night. 

Old Printer - The image appears to have been created on an old dot matrix printer.
You probably need to be over 40 to remember the old dot matrix printers. Lol!
(I'm certainly dating myself since I remember using these printers!)  

Pastel Perfect gives the soft effect of pastels.

Pen and Ink produces a blue monotone image.

Sketch Up produces a pencil or charcoal- like drawing of the image. 

Thank you for checking out all the effects that Paper Camera can create with me. 

Keep creating!!