A Walk in Beaufort

Yesterday I was in our neighboring town of Beaufort to visit an outdoor Arts & Crafts show. I came home with a small piece of pottery, and a print, from a couple of artists I know. I also wandered around town with my camera. Here are my favorite shots from the day.
Two scenes from the Beaufort Old Burying Ground:














A statue from the Old Burying Ground, and a rocking chair on a front porch:















My favorite flower shots of the day:











And, lastly, some picturesque shrimp trawlers at a local dock:

A Walk on the Beach

Last weekend I took a walk on the beach and shot about 120 pictures. At least half were deleted as soon as I got home. I cleaned up the rest in Photoshop, and some of them I worked on turning into what I call "Digital Art." I'll show some of the photos with their accompanying art. (Click on images to enlarge.)
One of the piers:















Another pier shot:
















A woman and her child standing in the water:















A surfer:















A man walking on the beach:















The last piece combined two pictures - one of the waves and one of a seagull.











You can see more of these pictures on my Facebook page. I understand that you can look at photo albums on Facebook without having to be a member. If someone would try this and let me know if it works, I'd appreciate it! I'm learning as I go....

Exhibiting My Artwork

I'm a member of the Arts Council of Carteret County (North Carolina). A couple years ago, the Arts Council started a program called Adopt an Artist. The program matches up local artists with businesses in the county. It gives artists an opportunity to show (and sell) their work in various venues. This is my first time participating. My work will be displayed at the Country Club of the Crystal Coast during May and June. Partly because I had so much work on hand, I have the venue to myself. I'm exhibiting 26 pieces, 18 of which are art quilts. The other eight are paintings or mixed media. I didn't get shots of everything, but these photos will give you an idea of what some of the display looks like. (click to enlarge)

Magnolia Blossom

We have a beautiful magnolia tree in our backyard that is beginning to display its floral finery. These are two shots of one of the first blossoms - at least one low enough on the tree to be within reach! My husband came outside with me and hung onto the branch while I took a slew of pictures.

Needless to say, that was followed by a few hours in Photoshop. Here are some of the images that I developed. You can click on any of my images to see an enlarged version.

I'm a northerner by birth (Connecticut), and though I've lived several years in North Carolina, I still find the magnolia flowers a wonder that's hard to believe.

And two more....

Playing with Pattern

Here's a picture that I took on one of my walks on the golf course.
In Photoshop, I made three duplicates of the photograph, changed their orientation, and put them together in a new image. (I described doing this with tree fungus in my last post.) Here's what the new image looked like, before and after I merged the four parts together.
My next step was to make three copies of this picture, and put them together in a new image. I then changed the color to make it look more brown than gray.
I next selected the "Palette Knife" filter in Photoshop, and got what I felt was a more painterly-looking image.
My last step was to again make three copies and put them together in a new image. This one looks an awful lot like a quilt pattern to me! It's fun to take a bit of landscape and come out with a complicated, colorful pattern like this one.

Fabulous Fungus

Guess I'm into tree stumps these days.... On one of my walks, I came upon a stump that had marvelous tree fungus. (Click on any image to see an enlargement.)

I took lots of pictures and then played with them in Photoshop.



Changed some colors...


It got to be really interesting when I started duplicating some of the shots and making new images with them. I took this last image and duplicated it till I had a total of four images. I flipped some of them so that the same part of the image was located in each corner of my new design.When I merged the four parts together, this is what I got:

I couldn't believe how beautiful they came out. I made about 10-11 of them altogether. When I was showing them to a friend, she starting seeing aliens, turtles, monkeys, and other strange creatures. Here are some detail shots that show what we saw.

Since I sell notecards in my Etsy Paper Press shop, including notecard sets that contain five different designs, I picked my five favorites out of the images I had generated. These five are listed as individual cards, named after fruit. (Okay, sometimes it's hard to come up with names....) These cards are also part of a notecard set that I named "In the Abstract." Here's a picture of the insert that goes in with the set.

To say I had fun with this project is an understatement! Here's a link to the notecard set. The individual cards are Banana, Boysenberry, Grape, Kiwi, and Plum. Makes me hungry, just thinking about it....