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

See all our packs and deals on one Page

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

Albion on Sea

From Jill and I, 'Paul' hope you all had Happy Holidays! :-)
As its now midwinter, I thought it might be nice to revisit the summer,
last August on a balmy evening on England's Eastborne beach at sunset.
One good thing about post-processing is its always possible to go back and redo images with your new skills and textures, and I must admit I don't do it enough!

So armed with our new Flypaper Autumn Painterly and last Summer's Painterly Set,
I happily came across this unprocessed image.
Firstly to zap up the colours a little I used the new Nik 4
From now on I'll also try to include my NiK colour settings, and here's the first!

To get a nice green tone in the blue sky, I used Nik 4
Bi color filters no.1 (yellow brown) @18% Opacity, 100% Blend.
At this stage I also removed text on the red signs and blurred the guys face,
with an eye to selling the image without a release, this saves loads of later re-processing!

Textures
Orris - Soft Light @ 100% blue at top cleaned up with noise and dust
Stonehenge - Vivid Light @ 20% over sky area only
Pans Sky - Soft Light @ 65% over sky area mostly
Ambergris - Hard Light @ 17%

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

Sheep on the Hill

First of all, we'd like to thank you all for your support over the past year and to wish you a peaceful and happy Christmas.
I've just finished wrapping the presents, the baking is done and it's Christmas eve as I write this. I'm looking forward to a family BBQ followed by a relaxing holiday.
Now back to the photo, my woolly friends were in a paddock just up the river from our country hut/cottage and were watching me closely as I walked up the hill towards them.  I think these ones are used to being handled as they aren't as flighty as sheep usually are.

I processed the photo when were were still trialling the new autumn Flypapers, and at that stage they had names like "November 10 gold" and "messy" and as we've said before, it's when we finally come to give them their proper names that they take on personalities, so to speak.

Processing was fairly simple in this case, I only used two textures both from the new Autumn Painterly Pack.
Demi Jour @ soft light 100% blurred and masked from the sky using a graduated mask (this layer was more for the tone than the texture. )
Capability Brown @ Soft Light 100%
I then merged visible and to increase contrast used
Nik Efex Contrast colour range filter.
and it was done!
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

Roman bridge into mist

Welcome to the Autumn seasons textured images! Here's another from my misty morning set, our local ancient Roman bridge into our little old Beziers! Of our several crossings Its my favorite bridge, its both narrow and winding and takes just one lane of light traffic.
Its also historic as its the bridge that the medieval army of crusaders crossed to slaughter most of the Cities inhabitants kicking off the start of the bloody Albigensian Crusade, all of which was chronicled in Kate Mosse's recent blockbuster mystery novel, Labyrinth which was recently filmed in our area for a big UK based studio TV mini series, due out next year!

The image was shot in portrait format, the excess sky being cropped off the top, which might be very useful negative space if used as say, a book cover for Getty, but for its pure drama, I felt this was the right crop.

There are two post processed versions, this is the final darker one, the other is much paler and more ethereal but also stands on its own.
In this new rectangular Autumnal set we used many French names to enhance its seasonal perfumed motif, here I used just two, Quelques Fleurs - meaning, some flowers. And Contre Jour, meaning fittingly, against the light!

Quelques Fleurs - Soft Light @ 45%

Contre Jour - Overlay @ 100%

I then flattened the image and was happy with it, but decided to push the processing by doubling up the image and used Multiply to beef up the image and bring out the blue tones in the 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

Only $40

See all our packs and deals on one Page