Playing on Photoshop

Boy is this blog out of date! Have to spend some time catching up on posts.
If you want to keep more up to date on what I'm doing, check out my Facebook page.
Did I mention I had a baby? Hmm... I wonder why I haven't been keeping up with blogs and art.
Today though I was fiddling around with some images of my boys on Photoshop Elements and this is what I came up with...

Playing with Nostalgia

So sorry to have been gone so long, but my brain has just been completely fried this pregnancy.  I wasn't able to finish the portraits for the giveaway and I have been struggling the few times I have attempted writing something.

But I did a little something today!  With the impending arrival of our second child, I've found myself needing to return to the images of the arrival of our first child.  I started playing around with some images from that time and thought I'd share what I came up with.

I miss film, and the soft nostalgia that film grain imparts.  Although I'm kind of against 'faking' things like film looks and film grain, I still do go there at times.  And I've been forever dissatisfied with options that Photoshop Elements offers for adding grain.  So I looked online and found a random grainy photo to model my grain after.  And after much playing and tweaking, I turned this photo my husband took of me holding my son at 2 days old...

...into this:

I'm pretty pleased with it.  It's not perfect, and this experiment makes me want to just return to film to get the real beauty back.  Ahhh... film is just so beautiful.  But still, I kind of like what I achieved here.

[EDIT] I'm a little frustrated with the sharpening that I think Flickr did here.  It's softer in the version I made.  Looks better if you click through and view it larger.

Apologies and updates

So sorry to have been away for so long.  I have been dealing with some health problems and personal issues and all of my obligations (and art work and everything else) has been completely abandoned for the past 2+ months.  I'm trying to get back into it all now as I am starting to feel somewhat more human these days.  Huge, HUGE, HUGE apologies to all of you waiting on your artwork from the giveaway .  I will complete it and get it to you as soon as I can.

The only thing I have worked on recently is this new knitting project; it's easy to take along to doctor's offices.


I am interested in the idea of creating large, 2D art in knitting.  I also like how graphic designs look in knitting.  I'm experimenting for only the second time with intarsia for this, so it's a bit ambitious to say the least.  I haven't measured it, but it's approximately 50" in width.  I hope it will turn out good enough to hang!




The design is a group of crows in silhouette.  Did you know a group of crows is called a murder?

Here is the "design" I'm working with.  You can see, I am kind of making it as I go, and drawing in the stitches when I get to the section to be worked on.



You can read more details about the project and see the latest update on it also on my ravelry project page .

Sketch for 2nd giveaway winner

I started off thinking this might be a finished portrait but I'm
definitely calling this a sketch. It's a start but Jacira is much
prettier than this. Some proportions are off and I think the messy
colored pencil look doesn't work for a portrait. Or at least not like
this. Back to the drawing board!

Warm and Fuzzy