Gotta Love Creative Market

I signed on to Creative Market to get free fonts. I am looking forward to making money again so that I can buy some of the font bundles. There are amazing things here for font geeks & foundry freaks. More than fonts, there are digital packs for a huge variety of illustrative elements. I just whipped this up with today's free download.

it's a bit busy bit you get the idea
Haarlems cursive font and Es Kalapa Muda at the border

Every Monday the Market offers 6 free downloads. Last week I hit the jack pot 5 out of 6 offers pertained to my interest. Today's yield gave me three things in my style. Restraint is difficult to achieve with these guys. There are literally thousands of graphic designers making things to make it easier for you to make things. 

And lots of information. 

I linked to the blog page for Creative Market because I have been reading the backlog of articles all week. The information is astounding. And I can not wait to get started on my new ventures. Though productivity is going to be an issue as I keep drooling over all of the goodies that these designers have to offer. 

It's been a hard two years for the art work. I realized this a while back. As with all things though, sometimes you have to step back and find your direction again. I can get crazy making things across a very wide spectrum of mediums. Reigning that in and figuring out what exactly I am going to do with all of the skills I have and which direction is the most fulfilling requires time. And I guess that is what I have been doing for the last two years that the art production has been low. 

It will still be a while before I know how and in which direction to progress. In the meantime I am indulging my love of typeface and enjoying the ease with which Windows lets me install those fonts. And as always, PicMonkey is right there making life so much easier.

Long live Pic Monkey and Creative Market!

Little Church Again

It has the quality of looking like it's made of lego plastic. But it doesn't have the play set size. The towering building behind it must confuse the focusing in this one.

Little Church

Still not sure that I got this effect nailed. 

Inspired by Childhood

When we were kids we had gotten a bunch of Fisher Price play sets. When I got the Castle for Christmas my sister got the Village.

The village set opened up to reveal the interiors of each shop on the street sides. The halves could be configured so that they faced each other to create the effect of a real street. The fire station sat at one end of the set and a theater/restaurant stood at another. Back in 1976 those sets had retained a lot of the character of decorating themes that were popular with the parents. The theater retained Victorian charms. It always fascinated me, not enough to want to be a theater major but enough to be enamored of this theater in Grand Rapids the second that I saw it.

It also is the perfect venue for this filter effect.  I just needed to change the wording on the marquee to reflect something closer to the toy than the brick and mortar building.

Turning Photos into Diaramas

So Picmonkey added a new filter feature. Imitating Tilt-shift photography, this filter lets you turn just about anything into a setting inside a diorama. The effect looks like the opening in Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. I'm not sure what practical application there is in turning your town into a toy but it is fun to do.
This is a sample of what I worked on today.

This photo was taken a couple of years ago from the second floor of our city library. The park on the east shore of Boardman Lake is very real and very lush. Here... it looks like bits of plastic trees on a flocked cardboard lawn.

This is the south shore of Betsie Lake in Frankfort. The effect didn't really take here like I wanted it too. I still see too much reality in this one.

The water in this picture of the West Bay marina looks as phony as I could hope. The yacht in focus looks like a borrowed battleship. I think I might have too much effect in this one since the marina itself has become so blurry. But it still looks like a diorama.

This photo, taken from Wayne Hill, started out blurry and diffused because the day was so hazy. The Park Place Hotel stands out here with the same quality as the Mr. Roger's opening. However, I think there is too much scenery to make this work the right way.

The goal in tilt-shift photography is too start out above, but not on top of, your subject. A 45 degree angle is preferred. But that isn't always going to be possible. So long as you are above the subject, you should be able to get a good shot that is easy enough to manipulate. Because you are boosting blurs and colors, you want to make sure that you also have a crisp shot, clear colors and haven't added any other effects before you apply this one. I think this would have better if it had not been such a hazy day.

 Since I am not an expert, I am not certain what I did wrong with this one. The effect seems flat and the little out building that is in focus doesn't quite have the toy quality that I was going for.
This one is of my dad's birthplace. To me it still seems too lifelike and real to be the diorama that I was looking for. Even in the next one, the effect seems diminished compared to what I was looking for. But then, I wasn't above my subject either.

To me it doesn't look all that different than the real life town of Suttons Bay.

This is a picture of down town Grand Rapids from my Urban Hike a few years ago. The hills that Grand Rapids sits on gives enough variations in height to make this work better than it otherwise might have.

Not too bad for a learning experience eh?

Point and Shoot

In support of the point and shoot camera to learn some skills while you save up for the big DSLR.
These photos were taken today with the simple GE Digital Superzoom I have. Again, you have to understand how the zoom works, account for the distance and where the thing you are aiming at is in the range and shoot. You have to learn what your settings do, how they do it and then select the automatic settings accordingly. This robin was about 15 feet up the tree. The first photo is with the zoom only half engaged.

What I liked best about this particular shot is that the buds didn't get in the way of the bird. It was framed fairly well. The picture follows the rule of thirds, just not in the way they mean. The subject should be in the two thirds margin. Instead, I have the background divided by thirds with the blue sky slicing between the grey of the trunks. The bird is not perfectly centered in the mid section of the rectangle. And it is not crowded.

For the next shot the zoom was fully engaged which brought in the details of the bird's feathers. It also brought the buds in closer and out of focus to partially obscure the all-important red breast. I like his attitude, bill pointed high. He had just finished a song.

I would also like to point out that I did not have to edit these photos. No darkening the shadows. No adding contrast. No sharpening. No adding clarity and no adjusting color.

This is what can be done with a point and shoot if you take the time to learn how these cameras work. Nothing wrong with making these types of cameras your learning tool. Better to spend a couple of hundred dollars until you find out if you really want to do this than the hundreds and hundreds it takes to buy the SLRs.

Botanicals

Taken on Silver Lake. It's funny. But I forgot that there were several kinds of swans until I went looking up the scientific name to make the placard.

I'm sticking close to home this Summer so the inspiration for art, digital and otherwise, will have to come from close to home.

There is little in life more confusing to a person than wading through the scientific classification of things. The internet is a great place for information. But sometimes it is too full of information. I miss the days of a World Book encyclopedia where I could look something up by a common name and have an easy informative graph or table for the short reference in addition to the long complicated description in the body of an entry. World Book knew how to keep things succinct and pertinent to a search. Britannica however is every bit as verbose as your typical arch criminal who loves to hear the sound of his own voice.

EDIT: as it turns out this is not a cottonwood. The fissured bark is at the base. There is smooth bark at the top. It is an Aspen. But in all the information about identifying Aspens no mention was made of "mature" bark. Apparently, trees age wrinkled too. 

It started with the Blue Jays screaming at the pew pewing Cardinals. The Jays stood still and actually let me take photos. The Cards not so much. So I filled the feeder and sprinkled a seed/nut/fruit mix on the ground. I got chickadees this morning. I could have had a very pretty red headed sparrow with an Eye of Horus brow line but the camera didn't cooperate.

The female Cardinal was on the ground foraging so I think I need to consult some pros about what types of feeders the bigger birds would prefer. The shallow tray is only going to make the finches, sparrows and thrifts happy.


When did I turn into such an old lady?
I'll blame Midsomer Murders for this one. It surely isn't a Sherlock kind of habit.

Swans on the Lake with a GEDSC

Playing with photography still. Taken today on Silver Lake, south of Traverse City. The camera is a GE digital superzoom which some people think is not worth buying and is only good for toasting bread. I beg to differ.

I've taken some really great photos with this thing. You have to know how to compose a shot. And you have to understand how things focus for each of the settings on this camera. Once you understand that there really is no reason that you can not take good or great pictures. Can you do what Ansel Adams did? Maybe. Can you do what the NatGeo guys do? I don't know. My guess is probably not. But if you are going to learn then this was a really inexpensive camera to start with and no reason to be ashamed for the purchase.

But let me tell you, even if you can't get the "perfect pro shot" with this one, you can get a good substrate for digital manipulations. Take the about shot of swans. The camera zoom was set as high as it would go. They were still out of focus and with the angle of the sun they were in a glare with the light radiating off of their backs. There is still depth in the shot. The mid ground where the tree trunks are is distinct. The top of the frame where the silvery branches are is full of texture. It wasn't the "perfect" shot. It did need help with some photo editing. Enter PicMonkey.

Adjusting the shadows and contrast sliders brought things into focus through visual trickery. It didn't really sharpen the features but it cut down on the feather glare. It also made the bare branches stand out a little more. But it was still a weak and uninteresting picture. That means it is time for a filter. I used the Stock Film filter on the Reala setting and played with the slider until I got the look that I wanted. It looks more like it did live in this picture. But the glaring bright greens in the undergrowth on shore are gone so as to be almost monochromatic in appearance.


Of the 20 something shots I took of the swans while they were within range only one did not require any editing of any kind. That is this one of the pair digging in to get some good propulsion. Not a bit manipulation went into this one. They were just at the edge of the camera's range to take this. A few feet further out and there would have been no hope for it.

So you can, in fact, get a good shot with this "worthless" camera. When I am more confident in my abilities I will graduate to a :big girl" pro cam. For now, this one is perfectly suited to my needs and abilities.

Photography

It's my thing these days.
While things are all tucked up in storage I am playing with the tools that I have at hand. Tools and subjects. I've also been toying with the idea that I would leave off of art for a while and write. It's hard to do everything that I like to do and still make a living.

Honestly it is hard to do anything and make a living these days. Grief is rather closer than I like and gets in the way every time I sit down to do anything creative. Usually grief and other such high emotions make great fodder for art.

Granted, there has to be a cool down period, a chance to let things settle in the mind and heart so that you can concentrate and not be distracted by all the things that run through your head. The grief is still fresh enough that picking up the old tools isn't sufficient for keeping everything at bay. So there is this....

Learning better blog photography though online articles and then playing with effects in post takes enough concentration that I can start to forget the things that plague me. 

She's a great companion. But she isn't mine so her helpfulness is a bit limited where I am concerned. 

She has quite an intelligent face doesn't she. Sometimes I think that she sees through everything. And I wish that she could tell me what it is that she sees.

Playing with Picmonkey

I was going to play with the new fonts at picmonkey, and then I ended up playing instead with the textures while I've been listening to Benedict Cumberbatch in Cabin Pressure.

New Collage: New Technique

 

So here's something that I learned while playing around with picmonkey.....
I can stretch or squish letters. After you have the wording, the color and the blend mode set you can use the shift + cursor  to stretch or squish your letters. It gives the text a distortion that you don't normally get.

Edit your overlays by holding the shift key and grabbing the sides of your box and pulling in one direction or the other. Thanks for the heads up www.picmonkey.com

Swatches: Byzantine Colors

Apparently they are the in thing these days. I find them all over Pintrest. I have to admit, I love picking up paint samples and letting the colors seep into my soul.

Since the interest in Byzantine art is rekindled and I've been drooling over the Alhambra and Constantinople (Istanbul.... Yep. The song is in my head too.) I decided to make a swatch of the bold, beautiful colors used in mosaics and iconic paintings of the Byzantine Empire.

All the tedious research can be done here. If you have the National Geographic magazine from 1983 you are a few steps ahead of the curve, especially if you got to keep the map. Otherwise there is inspiration to be found right here.

The pun is just a bit of extra fluff.

3 in a Series

You could use your new found Picmonkey textures to create a whole post.

I saw a book for sale at Christmas that takes the right kind of humor and mixes it with my love of the German language. And I am going to steal the layout idea for my Wordpress blog on the subject of Words.

I took the same Tardis Blue™ texture I've been using and applied it to the facebook layout option under design and formatted the thing like so....

This is not the final draft for the blog project.... but an idea. It will be the only thing in the posts on this subject. So it is the post.

How can you use this idea in your own blog?