Lois Ebyism

"When starting a new piece, I let the brush play over the paper or panel, sometimes with a delicate line, sometimes with a more explosive line, sometimes with a free play of color.  When the main line or color is established, my eye tells me where the work needs more:  colors, lines, dots, a circle or enso (a form from Japanese Zen ink painting), maybe some splotches of paint or ink, to create a rhythmic and energetic whole."    Artist Statement by Lois Eby 

What better place to start when producing a non-representational piece of art in Photo shop! Especially since I was dreading this assignment--drawing is not my thing! I looked at some of Lois's work after my first attempt from my memory of her paintings.  I then copied some of the lines circles, etc. from her work, while creating my own visual interpretation.  I did all of it on one layer in Photo Shop, using these various tools: pen, brush, custom shape tool and the eraser tool when I wanted something different than what appeared or when I didn't like what I saw.  My first attempt is pretty basic but I think the second image almost succeeds.  Best of all, I had fun!

First attempt

The real Lois Eby: Song for This Day

My Eby Interpretation

Their spirits live on

As I said in the first post of this composition, it is a very personal story.  My husband Bob died when my children were young and I think the picture of him and them carrying in the Christmas tree represents how vital he was to our family.
My grandmother Buchta took care of me when I was a baby while my mom was away visiting my dad who was in the navy at the end of WWII.  The photo is circa 1920. She remained important in my life as I grew up.
My dad was about 27 years old when the picture was taken of him holding me.  He died in 2008 at the age of 91. I was with him when he died.
Buddy was my granddog.  He was a sweet loving freckled face Husky mix,
I wanted to portray them in the dreamscape as spirits without giving a religious perspective.  I found a picture of sky that looked spiritual and used that as the bottom layer for the dreamscape.
Changing the final image to a black and white photo added to the spiritual perspective and is in agreement with the age of the photographs all of which were scanned into my computer. Tools used: cropping, move, quick mask to erase some background, adjustment levels for the histograms, brightness/contrast, and black and white adjustments.

Volcano and ice cream hopes

This haiku/postcard exercise is one of the easier assignments for the course!  When I think of postcard, I automatically think of travel. I love traveling, I love hiking and of course, I love Ben & Jerry's ice cream.  I found one of my photos of Scotland and cones came to mind as a haiku.  Here it is!

Grandma Buchta in color

I used the quick selection tool to select the white blouse from this picture of my grandmother from early 1900's.  I, then painted the area I wanted to protect.  Using the adjustment panel, I chose color balance.  This color was not as bright as I wanted it.  I then went back to the adjustment panel to change the hue and saturation so that the color was more to my liking.

 

Original Photo

Dreamscape deaths

This is a highly personal dreamscape that still needs work. I want to soften all the edges of the photos and tighten it up some. I will then re-post with more information about what it is and how I achieved it.

Success! (at least with Reversal and Composite Montages)

Our mid-term presentation turned out to be fun--it was nice to see our montages on the big screen.  Here are some of the reversal and composite images that succeeded for me. I have also included one surreal montage that semi-succeeded!

A composite montage is made by overlaying two different photographs to create a new visual image. Thistechnique works well with images that contain a strong texture or pattern, such as stones, ripples in sand, orgrasses.  Weathered wood, stucco and rock surfaces can also be very effective. Once you’ve collected anumber of suitable images, the process involves experimenting with overlaying different images until a pleasing combination is found

Original photo of water in the Bahamas

Original photo taken on Prince Edward Island

Composite Montage

Original photo of Clivea

Duplicate of photo changed to B&W

Composite Photo

 

A reversal or mirror montage is created when two copies of the same image are combined. One copy is flipped horizontally or vertically, and either superimposed or set alongside the other. This works best when the images used have simple shapes or subjects, and often results in a new geometric shape or pattern completely transformed from the original image. 

 Both of these photos are the finished reversal montages.  One is an icicle that was duplicated and reversed.  The other is an abalone shell that was also duplicated and reversed.

Surreal montage is the most complex of the 3.  It consists of combining an in-focus photo with an out-of-focus photo of the exact scene. The original way to get these two images was by using a tripod and a zoom lens in the 75-300 range. The first shot is very sharp (F16 for example), the second shot is taken without moving the tripod and with the aperture set wide open. The lens is then zoomed until the object is blurred but not indistinguishable. The two images are then combined in Photo shop.

However, there is a Photo shop alternative: Instead of doing the work in-camera you can use Photo shop to duplicate the photo and then use the Gaussian Blur to obtain your blurred photo.  This alternative method of doing surreal montages is from a book by Andre Gallant called Dreamscapes.

Surreal Montage done using gaussian blur

Successful surreals need the camera!

My mid term project is on surreal, reversal and composite montage.  I've been practicing for the past few weeks with making these montages--some have worked and others did not.  I am having trouble with the surreal montages because the blur effect in Photo shop doesn't seem to stand up to the effect when you take the same picture--sharp and then blurred in-camera.  I have been using the gaussion blur as prescribed by Andre Gallant in his book "Dreamscapes" and still do not think the final result measures up to ones I have done in the past using my camera to obtain two photos. I think in some ways it just looks blurred.   Here are some samples of the use of Photoshop to get the surreal montage by duplicating and blurring the original.

original photo

surreal montage

original

surreal montage

And here is a surreal montage from the past that I did in-camera.  I do not have the original photos but the photo looks like a soft painting and is not blurred!

Coloring Black & White

I've always liked the look of black & white photos that were colored with pencils. Photo Shop allows you to do something similar in the program by using an adjustment layer mask.  My original photo of a rose hip was part of a series on beauty and decay that I did to make November in Vermont more tolerable.  I use it here to show the masking technique.  I first changed the color photo to a b&w image in photo shop and then, using the adjustment layer mask and a brush, I painted in the rose hip and part of the stems so that they appear in color. In effect, erasing the b&w where I wanted color. The difference between photos may be subtle but I have now learned how to "color" b&w photos--a great possibility for experimenting and changing images in the future.

Original

B&W conversion

Fearless!

This post grew out of my ice loon photo.  The week's homework was to do a self portrait and I wanted to portray myself as I see myself--adventurous and willing to continue even under extreme circumstances and even though I might be scared.
The photo of myself was taken in the Grand Canyon when I was hiking at Havasupai. One of the hikes, climbing down to Mooney Falls, consisted of going out through a small opening in a cave, turning backwards and climbing down a chain ladder to the bottom.  I thought it would be interesting to make the portrait more extreme by having me climbing out of an ice cave.
The move tool allowed me to combine the photos.  I then used the eraser tool to keep only myself and part of the ladder chain in the photo. I moved what remained (me) into a position that looked natural.  I do think the ice loon looked more realistic.

Ice photo

Pat at Havasupai

Pat in the ice fields