A Scribble of Paint...

and a Stabilo pencil, and I'm a happy camper.  I'm posting two more of my 100 faces challenge by Dina Wakley.  I do scrape a coat of gesso on the page before I draw.  That way if I make a major blunder, I can use a baby wipe to "erase".  No gesso, no "erase".  The goal is, however, to scribble away and not worry about perfection.

#13 above and #14 below…

The paint came first and then the drawing.  I promise you I did not plan the eyes to be as they are -- one over the blue paint and one over the green.  It was just one of those serendipitous things.

Makeup Brushes

I was looking through my files for an image to process for Texture Tuesday.  I found this image of makeup brushes.  It's a full color image, but I decided to experiment with it in Lightroom.

I added Kim's Dark Day and Quiet Dreams presets.  Then I took it into Topaz Adjust to return a bit of detail and add a border... then back to LR for a slight vignette and a bit of grain.  I wanted it to look like an old Hollywood photo.  

Below I added Kim's Word texture blend mode color burn at

52% opacity.

More Texture Tuesday here.  You'll get to see Kim's post about her  article in Stampington's "Artful Blogging" publication.  Congrats, Kim! 

More Joys of Lightroom

Texture Tuesday seems to arrive before I know it.

This week has been heavy on the Lightroom learning curve.  Some days I seem to spend a lot of time figuring out why something doesn't go as I planned.  As my friend says, it's almost always a selection problem.

In Kim's Start2Finish class I've been working in the print module learning to make a contact sheet.  I edited one of my photos four ways and managed to create a contact sheet of them.

I did a still life photo shoot, something else we've been working on in S2F class.  My kingdom for some light in my house.  I discovered if I set everything up about 10:00 to 10:30AM I have a window of about an hour where I get some light in my bedroom sliding glass door (depending on the whim of the sun).  That time frame is going to get a lot shorter as daylight hours dwindle.  I uploaded 47 photos to Lightroom, culled them and then worked on a couple.  I really like working with LR presets.  Since LR and presets, it seems textures can almost be an overkill depending on the look I want.  Kim has some beautiful presets, and I've made a few of my own. A project I completed for S2F…... set up a plant or flower or? using a paper bag as a holder.

I used only a preset here, but for my Texture Tuesday entry below I used Kim's "Not Too Shabby" texture on the same image.

and…..one final image…clean and simple.

Is It Fall Yet??

I'm pretending it's fall, but it's really more like Indian summer…..hot enough to sizzle the best of us.

Here goes though.  I have been dabbling with Topaz's latest addition - Topaz Impression.  

This image of white pumpkins was edited in Impression "Impasto".   

I'm so delighted I don't need to buy Corel Paint (which I've been sort of lusting for after seeing the incredible work Karen Burns does.  I drool over her art.  I know she used Corel Paint at one time.  Whatever she uses, she's very adept at it.   

Another Impasto "painting".  

Have you noticed how many different colors and styles of pumpkins appear every year?  They just get more and more spectacular……even the blue are interesting.  Oh, and the warty ones..beautiful in all their quirkiness.

Enjoy the season with friends.  Also be sure to see all the Texture Tuesday entries at Kim's.  I used her "Autumn Burst" on the image below.

and finally, a montage.

Love Affair - Part 2

Another thing I love about Lightroom is the "Print Module".

It makes preparing layouts so fast and easy!!!

I put these images together in about two minutes.

What's even better is that I can save the template and use over and over without having to create a new template.

I do need practice because there is much to think of when creating the layout…things like do I want a border between images or an outside border or stroke,  do I want a color for that border, do I want to "lock to photo aspect ratio", etc.  I find new techniques only become second nature after I repeat the exercise a few times..  If I'm lazy and don't burn it into my memory, I have to go back and revisit how to do a particular technique.  It took me a few tries to get my blog header together. You may be seeing a few of these in the coming days while I practice!

~ Calm ~