C-27 // Light exercise

I had a late night last night, and as a consequence haven't been able to get my thoughts focussed on my work today. In frustration I thought I'd just do something different for a while, and found this interesting looking Photoshop tutorial. It turned out to be great and I learned several new techniques for dealing with backlighting. Here's my version of the finished image... meet weird TV girl.

C-26 // A New Zealand paradise

Here's my afternoon's work - an image for a cd cover I'm working on. Combined elements from 5 different images. 44 layers in Photoshop. Not finished yet.

I particularly enjoyed working on this one today as I have recently purchased a small Wacom drawing tablet. It makes such a difference! I've only had it a few days and already I can't imagine doing this kind of stuff without it!

C-20 // Things to do with a scanner

Hi folks! Sorry it's been a while since my last C-post. Busy busy busy. Not sure exactly what I've been busy with, but I seem to have spent an awful lot of energy lately on... something?

Anyway. I've got a bunch of photo restoration to do over the next few months and so I have finally got myself a decent scanner. I've struggled by with the crappy one in my multi-thingee for ages now, always getting frustrated with it's inability to actually scan things properly, so I finally spat the dummy, saw the light and got a dedicated one. It's a CanonScan 5600F, and it's wonderful!

I unpacked it tonight, and here's the first thing I scanned...

Yes – it's part of the packaging. It seemed appropriate, somehow, to christen the scanner with something printed in it's place of manufacture. This piece was carefully placed so as to highlight attention to the fact that the scanner mechanism is locked for transporting, and then needs to be unlocked before use. Of course, I was so excited about scanning something that – yep, you guessed it – I forgot to unlock it. Never mind. It politely told me that I was a moron, and to please try again after unlocking the scanner. :-)

Then I scanned...

...a piece of foam that was lying around my studio. This would make a fantastic texture for something if it was blurred and blended with something else. Maybe even a cool desktop?

One of the things that had never worked for me on my old scanner, but which I desperately wanted to do, was to be able to scan 3-D objects. One artist I very much admire is Maggie Taylor, who makes incredible surreal images by scanning objects and old photographs and manipulating them in Photoshop. My old scanner had such a horrible depth-of-field that all you would get was a few almost in focus points where the object touched the glass, and then a mess of grey blurry lines. So I tried scanning an object on the new scanner with baited breath...

Woo hoo!!!! Scanned with the lid up - hence the black background. Man – I just about did a somersault when I saw this image appear. Good colour, crisp detail, nice edges. That's more like it!

C-19 // Graph paper doodle #3

Graph paper + tracing paper + 2 pens = this. I drew and scanned each colour separately and then blended them in photoshop.

C-17 // Alison

Thursday saw the passing of my wife's grandmother, Alison Duncan, aged 93. 

She was a lovely lady - very dignified but with a wicked sense of humour. A lot of fun. As a young girl she lived on a sugar plantation in British colonial India, in the north, within sight of the Himalayas. She was very proper in many ways, but also very caring and kind and slightly eccentric. (She always carried a spare dog biscuit around in her purse in case she met a friendly dog!) Her house was filled with interesting objects - she had a thing for teapots - and lovely artwork. She was a great host - there was always a guest bedroom made up and ready to go, and always lots of food on the dinner table! I was glad to have had an opportunity to get to know her a bit over the last nearly 20 years.

Her funeral is being held on Tuesday at All Saints in Palmerston North and I have been charged with the task of finding/creating a suitable image for the front of her order of service. She didn't like having her photo taken much, so finding a nice portrait of her was difficult. Many of the more recent 'photos' I have been given of her are actually colour ink-jet prints, which scan terribly. However, we did have this photograph, taken with a point-and-click camera about 15 years ago which I used to create the final image. It's not terribly sharp, and it has bright yellow splotches all over it - presumably from the developer not being rinsed off the print properly - but aside from that it's a nice image.

I opened it in Photoshop and worked away for a couple of hours - masking out the background and carefully removing all of the unwanted yellow marks. I did a bit of selective sharpening around the eyes and mouth, then added the white vignette and - voila! - a pretty good portrait of Alison Duncan - aka Great Grandma.

I think it captures her character well - stylish and elegant, but fun.