Susan Ewart

Thank you for your words. My heart is singing...and windows are breaking. yes, the behind and a bit to the side. I planted cosmos in pots (as a test to see if I could actually grow anything) and I have been able to move them around according to the sun. the sunflowers were in the garden and the big wind we had made them all lean over at waist height so I was able to photograph them before getting them moved back upright. I will use that idea of a wind break next year. I have been doing the cosmos like that too. I look out the window and see the sun shining through and run for my camera. My backyard has too much dappled light that is distracting since the neighbour cut down two huge trees that gave me beautiful deep dark shade in one corner. So the backgrounds are not great, I had to come up with a plan. Foamcore was first but it blew all over the place, even on lighting stands, so I went to a backdrop I have and put a weight on the stand base. I love translucency in petals and leaves.

that kestrel is so cute. I love that border and the what you did with the word strips, in and out of the frames and the punches (which I bought but havent loaded - scripting is taking more time these days).

Here's my take on the Sketch Challenge. No words, just pictures. It was fun to do. I did the silver frame with vectors, not sure why, just seemed easier to do it that way. the outer frame is one object and the 2 verticals are one object and the 2 horizontals as one object. It just occured to me to make it a preset shape. Wonder if it would be useful. The background is a patter I got of rusty metal. It only has a number name (02) but I think it came froim of the ...eezy website (Brusheezy, Vecteezy etc). Lighting by mother nature...background by a non-descript black background I dragged outside....and had to weight down because it was like sail on a windy day and kept blowing over onto the poor subjects.

We are slaves to our photos and we must obey.

Welcome Doska. Looking forward to seeing posts from you in the forum. Definately join the bootcamp in October, it's what got me using PSP after buying it for several years and not using it. Happy Anniversay by the way, that's a milestone event. I am also a member of DigitalScrapbook...although I've never posted in the forum.

The New York layout(at the top) is so cool. The loss of life is very sad.

Love the top tree, it's got an alien face, actually the middle one does too.

This is interesting, what to keep and what to throw out.

I haven't been to anything like this. I do know of them, they have them in Edmonton. I would love to go in person. I really liked the music in the video you shared.

I think it's just right. Love the color! And what you did with the gradient is really neat. I would not have thought of that, it sure put the focus on the girls.

I love the drawings, hand done ones, they are like art to me. My friend and I used to draw houseplans when we were 12-13 yrs old. I can imagine how bad they must've been. One course in drafting(in high school) told me, I couldnt visualize the 3D space. We had exercises where we had to draw the exploded 2D view of a cube with indents in the cube, or we have to draw the 3D version from the exploded drawing. I couldnt do it. I wished I'd paid more attention and wasnt so shy that I never asked for help. I never really was taught how to "see" it both in 2D and 3D.

I do love "naked" tree silhouettes. In "Tree Architecture" is that moon I see peaking through the tree on the left. AWESOME!

I think your magazine needs become a hardcover coffee table book. What beautiful photos and the architecture is like large permanent art installations. My hubby's parents were from Denmark.

I did a drafting elective in high school and penmanship was one of the things we had to learn. I love architecture. But I sure bombed at drafting. My Calligraphy teacher has the most amazing handwriting and printing. Calligraphy is considered drawing letter and not writing, that's probably why I was so bad at it, that and I was a heavy handed lefty.

Me too! Some came from my Grandfather and some I've collected. I was shocked to see the vintage (yikes, that's my era) SLR's are gaining in value. I used be able to get 70's or 80's SLRs at thrift stores for less than $15, now some are in the hundreds.

Day 7 Working more with blend modes with the same background paper. I might see if I can use that paper throughout. In the coming week(s). Work is still needed on this one (and most of the rest) but I wanted to get it up tonight. Tomorrow, back to my scripting homework and work on these layouts in between. Thank you for a wonderful workshop. I learned a lot about manipulating masks and really liked Day 7 mask technique.

Day 6 Thank you to Sue and Rene for giving me some ideas using the blending modes. I used a white layer above the paper layer (Brook Gazarek, DigitalScrapbook.com) and used a blend mode (I forget right now, sorry) and then reduced the opacity a bit so I could control how much of the layer below showed through. The red kodak word is a bit overpowering (as Red tends to do) but is the color kodak uses - perhaps I should have desaturated it a bit. The yellow frame is the other Kodak color. On to Day 7. I think it will be one page though. I didnt photograph enough cameras and the night is coming to a close. For practice, I did do the lesson where we made it one mask. here I used all 4 as it was better suited for this layout. I'll try and get these posted on FB in the next week as I finish them all. I see blurry Kodak and Cover Story, but they are arent blurry in the full sized image.

it has been such a pleasure to see your art. Your layouts are so consistant and the project as a whole is beautiful and cohesive.

WOW! Ann, this is really beautiful. What a diverse artist Debra is. And an architect, she must have beautiful penmanship as well.

That's why I want to get back to it too. But it's too laggy if I have more than one large photo open and my project open. Soon I hope to be using it again.

STUNNING!

these are really good ideas for me to try. going to copy/paste these posts so I dont forget.

I was flipping back and forth and they do stand out more. I do need more contrast in the background and the mask layers. I will try all the suggestions I'm getting...probably next week if I get all the workshop days done and caught up on the scripting. I'm quite behind now.

Thank you. I'm not sure why it didnt even occur to me. I was playing with opacity with the gradients that I tried (with white below or black below) but always seem to forget about the blend modes. I will play a bit with them...probably after the workshop since I'm a bit behind.

Excellent idea. Thank you.