imcheryl
text, images, design CC copyright, Att, Non-Comm, No D, 2005-2009, With love, ...from the garden.
Cartoons and Colouring Pages
art (link back for visitors from Our Enchanted Garden)
I Just Love the way this turned out!
I've been playing with an idea over the past couple of weeks or so and messing around with some of my photographs to see if I can generate some new projects and to pass the time while I await the opportunity to get out and get some good winter photos. (We are finally getting snow that might even stay around a while!)
Besides, I'm keeping myself busy in between interviews...
I shared a bit of information about this at Flickr, where I've uploaded some of the images but can't remember now if I put anything about it here... (I did, but only elluded to it; saying I would add something once I worked out the MindSay uploading problem, ...and it appears that problem is now solved! YaY!) Guess I should keep better track but, what the heck, sometimes too much structure can stymie the imagination and that would be unpleasant for me!
The purple experiment on Mondays' entry seemed to fit nicely with my other project so I thought I'd play with combining them here. Besides this blog is my little "testing sandbox" where I play and then hopefully perfect and then add to my website!
It's quite amazing to see what sort of manipulation can be achieved with photographs and various editing software. And while I haven't had all that much exposure to them all, I was lucky to acquire a Photoshop editing package that has some great features. I've had the software for about a year now, I don't work with it all the time, usually just when I'm bored because it seems to be quite time consuming. Not because it takes a long time to do something, though it does in a way, it's more that it consumes me and my time - I become so engrossed in the play I loose track of time and "poof" my day disappears! Just like magic! he! he!
One of the experiments that has really charged me up is converting photos to colouring pages;
Like this one, below!
This is similar to the forest shot above, a texture shot of just the ostrich ferns with the colour removed but the edges "found" to give the appearance of a line drawing. The technique doesn't work on all images, I've learned through extensive trial and error! (ah ha - that's where the time went!) I like how it looks and it prints out quite nice. I'm now trying to find enough images that will work without too much tweaking and manual sketching or erasing to build up a collection suitable for a sort of combination comic / colouring book.
This came to me after reading about one person's experience with creating colouring pages for kids, that can be downloaded from her site. The images she offers are much simpler than this one. A comment had been made to her by one of her visitors, about an older woman who was using colouring as a form of therapy following an illness, and that it was an enjoyable activity for her. That got me thinking about the fact; most colouring books are aimed at younger children and if adults and older kids want to colour something there's really not a lot of options open to them - not of a more detailed and challenging nature at least. Making them downloadable is a very cool aspect to this project because the images can be printed and coloured again and again, unlike the colouring book that gets filled and then there's nothing left to colour! And I know there are a lot of adults who enjoy doing this sort of artwork but don't feel they have the skills to create their own line drawings...
If it all works well I'm going to visit with some of the people who work in geriatrics here in town to donate some images to the staff for use with their residents. And once I feel I've perfected it well enough I may even offer something for younger kids too, perhaps through the hospital or United Way or something...
I've hesitated several times over the past few days over putting them up on my website... Not confident enough yet I guess! But it's coming time to change the "free" download image I've had up for January and I thought replacing it with something like this fern sketch might be of interest to people, my visitors and others who might stumble upon the site. Or maybe the image below would be fun to start with; converted from a "macro" close-up shot of a monarch butterfly;
I apologize now if I've already covered this topic here - I've written a bit about it elsewhere too and sometimes lose track of where and when I've covered the subject!
(link back for visitors from Our Enchanted Garden)
I Just Love the way this turned out!
I've been playing with an idea over the past couple of weeks or so and messing around with some of my photographs to see if I can generate some new projects and to pass the time while I await the opportunity to get out and get some good winter photos. (We are finally getting snow that might even stay around a while!)
Besides, I'm keeping myself busy in between interviews...
I shared a bit of information about this at Flickr, where I've uploaded some of the images but can't remember now if I put anything about it here... (I did, but only elluded to it; saying I would add something once I worked out the MindSay uploading problem, ...and it appears that problem is now solved! YaY!) Guess I should keep better track but, what the heck, sometimes too much structure can stymie the imagination and that would be unpleasant for me!
The purple experiment on Mondays' entry seemed to fit nicely with my other project so I thought I'd play with combining them here. Besides this blog is my little "testing sandbox" where I play and then hopefully perfect and then add to my website!
It's quite amazing to see what sort of manipulation can be achieved with photographs and various editing software. And while I haven't had all that much exposure to them all, I was lucky to acquire a Photoshop editing package that has some great features. I've had the software for about a year now, I don't work with it all the time, usually just when I'm bored because it seems to be quite time consuming. Not because it takes a long time to do something, though it does in a way, it's more that it consumes me and my time - I become so engrossed in the play I loose track of time and "poof" my day disappears! Just like magic! he! he!
One of the experiments that has really charged me up is converting photos to colouring pages;
Like this one, below!
This is similar to the forest shot above, a texture shot of just the ostrich ferns with the colour removed but the edges "found" to give the appearance of a line drawing. The technique doesn't work on all images, I've learned through extensive trial and error! (ah ha - that's where the time went!) I like how it looks and it prints out quite nice. I'm now trying to find enough images that will work without too much tweaking and manual sketching or erasing to build up a collection suitable for a sort of combination comic / colouring book.
This came to me after reading about one person's experience with creating colouring pages for kids, that can be downloaded from her site. The images she offers are much simpler than this one. A comment had been made to her by one of her visitors, about an older woman who was using colouring as a form of therapy following an illness, and that it was an enjoyable activity for her. That got me thinking about the fact; most colouring books are aimed at younger children and if adults and older kids want to colour something there's really not a lot of options open to them - not of a more detailed and challenging nature at least. Making them downloadable is a very cool aspect to this project because the images can be printed and coloured again and again, unlike the colouring book that gets filled and then there's nothing left to colour! And I know there are a lot of adults who enjoy doing this sort of artwork but don't feel they have the skills to create their own line drawings...
If it all works well I'm going to visit with some of the people who work in geriatrics here in town to donate some images to the staff for use with their residents. And once I feel I've perfected it well enough I may even offer something for younger kids too, perhaps through the hospital or United Way or something...
I've hesitated several times over the past few days over putting them up on my website... Not confident enough yet I guess! But it's coming time to change the "free" download image I've had up for January and I thought replacing it with something like this fern sketch might be of interest to people, my visitors and others who might stumble upon the site. Or maybe the image below would be fun to start with; converted from a "macro" close-up shot of a monarch butterfly;
I apologize now if I've already covered this topic here - I've written a bit about it elsewhere too and sometimes lose track of where and when I've covered the subject!
(link back for visitors from Our Enchanted Garden)
The Caretakers IMCheryl & John the Lucky Dragon
...as the moon dances away!
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