le grand mouche – the big fly!

A strong dry wind has been blowing through our area for so long, even the palm trees have been wind burnt on their north sides, and our natural beaches have lost much of their lovely dune tops and are now smeared all over the place!

Taking a good camera into such sandblasted conditions, is at best foolhardy, but I’ve always been a bit foolish and just put it under my coat when not in use!

Here I am, cowering from the wind, bending over the camera, trying not to get sun flair on the lens, all very hit and miss.

The great thing about the sun on the sand is its huge natural light reflection, so back at home in Raw mode, I was able to knock back the blown-out head sun halo, and pull up the light recovery 100%, thus giving a kind of flash fill-in effect.

If you mouse-over the image, you’ll see the base image after i’ve already done this, or you’d just see a dark silhouette effect.

I then duplicated the image and used the Photoshop filters to add first a slight watercolor effect, a slight poster edges effect and finish with a paint daub effect, to give the image its graphic quality. I’ve also been playing with my new Intuos 5 touch graphic tablet, and with it I painted the eyes brighter, giving the whole picture a kind-of strange illustrative German expressionistic feel.

The finished beach – blow fly image fully earns my French nick-name; le Grand Mouche or the Big Fly!

Texture packs used were Summer Painterly and Tex Box 1

Dawn Grunge – Overlay @ 68 %

Touchstone – Overlay @ 100% brushed from head area

Necropolis – soft light @ 100% desaturated and brushed from head area

Raw linen – Soft light @ 100%brushed from head area

Finishing with a slight overall color desaturation to knock back the red wind burned skin tones and bright blue sky.

Autumn Painterly Pack

40 rectangular (4000 by 5000 px) Textures

$40

Spring Painterly Pack

40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only

$40

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Complete Flypaper Package

Texboxes 1&2, Fly edges, Spring, Summer and Autumn painterly

$220

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal

$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

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Hydrangea Blues

Paul always manages to write such interesting posts when he blogs, but with my flowers I struggle to think of anything to write, I'm just getting over a nasty bout of the flu at the moment which probably won't help my blog writing.
I especially like blue hydrangeas and have been trying without luck to find a nice pastel blue bush for my garden, the problem is you really have to see them in flower to know exactly what you're getting as they're very variable. The other thing to think of when you're growing hydrangeas is the soil, acid soils help gives a blue coloured flower, while more base soils will give pink, a side dressing of Aluminium sulphate will help keep the flowers blue.
In the meantime I'll have to keep appropriating flowers on my travels :-) 
Enough gardening and onto the processing...
Aquaflore @multiply 53% gently masked from the flower and bottle
Vieux Gris @ soft Light 100% masked as above
Aotea Mist @ colour burn 26%
Aotea Mist @ Soft light 33%
Scotch Mist @ Overlay 100%
Scotch Mist is from the Spring Painterly pack, the other textures are from the Autumn Painterly set.

See it slightly larger on Flickr

Autumn Painterly Pack

40 rectangular (4000 by 5000 px) Textures

$40

Spring Painterly Pack

40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only

$40

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Complete Flypaper Package

Texboxes 1&2, Fly edges, Spring, Summer and Autumn painterly

$220

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

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Trees Through the Mist

As its abnormally freezing cold outside, here in the French Mediterranean,
I thought I'd go through the old pictures that never reached the blog, mostly this happens because the tutorial is either too complicated, lost layers or was produced with pre-released textures. We then forget about them and they tend to get passed over..

Taken last winter, in the early morning mist, the first image has already been treated with Nik Bi Color Filters, number 1, the first yellow brown on top of the list, opacity @ 50%.Before this, and now I'm guessing, I believe it was put through something like brilliance/warmth, also in the Nik Color Filters. I also believe its had lighten/darken center applied. Special care should be taken in not allowing the whole thing to become too muddy, and because of this I brightened the horizon line through the trees. The final effect has a French impressionistic painterly feel!
Textures were quite simple after the basic colour correction. Just two were used, firstly the famous Orange Blossom, from our Spring Painterly set, and then apple Blush from the classic grunge texture Box 1.

Orange Blossom - Normal @ 73%
Apple Blush - Soft Light @ 68% - Flipped vertically, slightly smoothed in PS.

Autumn Painterly Pack

40 rectangular (4000 by 5000 px) Textures

$40

Spring Painterly Pack

40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only

$40

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Complete Flypaper Package

Texboxes 1&2, Fly edges, Spring, Summer and Autumn painterly

$220

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

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Jug and Bowl

I've always been fascinated by large austerely decrepit houses,
hankering back to my student house-rental days in Yorkshire.
Later in London, after seeing a big Gwen John retrospective exhibition,
I was reminded of those poor desolate student days where we'd burn furniture and even old platform shoes to try to keep warm!

Gwen John's small Parisian attic room with her pet cats were her world after her long affair with Auguste Rodin finished.
She was a master of the small austere three quarter portrait scenes on small panels and canvases.
Its said she slowly starved herself and finally disappeared in the coastal port of Dieppe, where she was perhaps trying to get back to England at the outbreak of the War in September 1939.

Now, years later I also find myself living in France, where these three quarter scenes must have come back to inspire me subconsciously, as I've not seen her paintings for years!

Getting back to the image, shot in daylight only from a right hand window, in my small austere house. The first raw image was given a little 'glamor glow' with a program such as Nik Color efex. Then using our Spring Painterly textures, I quickly attained a passable Gwen John painterly look!

Creme Anglaise - Screen @ 70%
Sisley Pin Light @ 7%

Autumn Painterly Pack

40 rectangular (4000 by 5000 px) Textures 

$40

Spring Painterly Pack

40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only

$40

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Complete Flypaper Package

 Texboxes 1&2, Fly edges, Spring, Summer and Autumn painterly

$220

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

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Mist trees

It's always nice rediscovering forgotten photos on your hard drive, this one is from this past winter. It was taken early one morning as we were travelling to our winter hut. There had been a frost and the morning mist had just lifted. Scenes softened slightly by mist are like gold for textural artists!

So the processing
Sissinghurst @ soft light 53% (this helped soften and give a painterly touch)
Tapis Vert @ Overlay 53% masked from the foreground using a graduated mask
Copy of background @ Soft light 100% masked from the foreground as above.
Orris @ overlay 86% (added mainly to enhance the colours)
And it was done. All textures are from the new Flypaper Autumn Painterly pack.
See it larger on flickr

Autumn Painterly Pack

40 rectangular (4000 by 5000 px) Textures 

$40

Spring Painterly Pack

40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only

$40

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Complete Flypaper Package

 Texboxes 1&2, Fly edges, Spring, Summer and Autumn painterly

$220

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

See all our packs and deals on one Page

Sweet Peas

Sweet peas, I love them!  When I was coming home from a walk yesterday afternoon, I ran into a neighbour who was cutting back her sweet peas which grow on a  fence by the footpath and asked if I could have some seeds as hers are particularly nice ones and have looked wonderful for the past month.  Can't wait to have a display like hers!

I gave this photo the soft effect, I find it suits flowers especially selectively focused ones like these. When we were putting together the Autumn pack, I made sure we included some soft easy to use textures especially for my flowers :-)
To start with I improved the tones by using Nik Efex White Neutralizer
then...
L'oxygene @ soft light 100% masked from the focus flowers
Aotea mist @ soft light 100% softly masked from the flowers
Aotoea mist @ soft light 100% masked as above
I find that doubling the texture layer often makes all the difference even if the blending mode and opacity is identical.
All textures are from the Autumn Painterly pack
See it slightly larger on Flickr

Autumn Painterly Pack

40 rectangular (4000 by 5000 px) Textures 

$40

Spring Painterly Pack

40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only

$40

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Complete Flypaper Package

 Texboxes 1&2, Fly edges, Spring, Summer and Autumn painterly

$220

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

See all our packs and deals on one Page