My Self Portrait

Fading and Peeling, by Mary Stebbins Taitt. Acrylic on Moleskine Cover, 11 x 8.5. This is a "Detail"--click on it to view the whole picture.

Not a flower Julia Flower

I "made" this on FractalWorks, thanks to Andree for turning me on to it. Then I fiddled with it on Photoshop a little, including posterizing it a little. It is the 3D view of a portion of a Julia fractal flower. FractalWorks is only available for Macs--and it is a real time sink because it is endlessly fascinating. I'd like to get that fractalizing filter for photoshop. What is it called? I don't have ANY of the cool filters. I just wanted to share this and to say that I am alive and well and took a ZILLION pictures at tthe Ford Museum and havne't had time to post any yet. Not sure if I should post them to themes somewhere or family friends and travel or? I also took some more water droplet pix.

Artrage discovery

OK, I haven't learned how to use artrage as a plug-in, dunno if you really can, but you can save files as photoshop files, but exporting them, and then if you have both open, you can move them back and forth for adjustments and it doesn't take as long as you might think.

I made this in layers in artrage (from scratch, not photos), and moved it to photoshop to delete the white background in the layer of rectangles. I also adjusted the layer blending.

I am only telling you this in case you want to try it with photos.

Artrage by hand

I downloaded the FREE version onto my Mac and did this with the very clumsy mouse. All the tools I've been using on the paid version are available on the free version. I think. (Actually, I'm not totally sure about that, but all the ones I was looking for were there.)

Turns out, I am wrong. I went back and looked. NO LAYERS on the free version, which are helpful when working on photos! Not absolutely necessary, but they make it easier.

Report on first test of ArtRage

I purchased the Artrage program from Ambient. There's a free download, but it's missing some stuff--but still does a lot--there's a $25 download. I got the $39 version that comes with a CD and an 80-page manual.

I had terrible insomnia last night, which gave me an opportunity to play with my new toy. I had thought it was a plug-in for photoshop (and I sort of wish it were! then you could use it in combination with other photoshop effects etc)--I thought that's what I'd read, but I'd misremembered, I guess (I read a review in the Photoshop users Journal). It is not, or, if you can do that, I haven't figured out how. It's its own fully functional program.

My first attempt, the red hibiscus, did not turn out all that well. Either did my second, the rose (recognize that rose?) I think the third is a little better--I did that this morning. The last picture
is the original of the fruit bowl still life.

You can load a picture, and then load another layer (yes, there are layers), and put a tracing version of it and paint into that layer and it makes it look like a painting. The oil paint is very realistic, as are the markers and pencils. More realistic (or closer to real paints and markers etc) than the photshop tools.

However, there are no shortcuts,a t least none I have discovered. Every paint stroke you have to make yourself. It took me a while just to begin to get the hang of it. You can change brush size and paint type and the way the paint responds. I just discovered that there is a slider for something I didn't realize had a slider. But so far, I haven't figured out any way to change the brush size other than typing in a percentage number, kind of a pain. But there is so much, that it
will take a while to figure out.

The palettes are in the corner and move out of the way when yr painting. Which is nice.

So far, I have to say, this program is not for the faint of heart. And my results are not that great for a lot of effort. But there are always learning curves. I will report back as I experiment.

You may have seen the red hibiscus before--I did a smudge painting of it on photoshop which came out MUCH better. However, when I did that last night, I hadn't yet learned how to change bush sizes or proper layering of the images I was attempting to paint.

You can also paint from scratch. I did one of those too, but deleted it. But I could see possibilities in it! These three are from photos.

I am not sure if there is any way to import the images into photoshop--that would be ideal What I did is save them as jpgs and then open those in PS. But the smudge brush in PS does NOT combine well with the AR brushes.

I recommend if you're interested you try the FREE DOWNLOAD first, see what you think. I recommend that if you decide to try it, get the image PERFECT in photshop first (as close as possible as to how you want the painting to look). Then load the image in the bottom layer, add a new layer, put the tracing image (same image) in the second layer and be sure the palette is set to paint from image colors. You can add other colors later. Just be aware the process is fairly time consuming, so don't start until you have a little free time.

Click on the images to view larger. Note the two black spots in the bottom corners of the still life with fruit. That's where I attempted to click on the palettes and missed. There is an undo function under edit in the drop-down menu.

Self Portrait with Roses

Are you gals working on your self portraits, LOL! Here's a layered one. I actually did even more with this, which I may share--later. Here's one of them with a detail.