When I first got this weeks Photo Friday prompt “photoshop skills” I wasn’t really sure which set of skills would be most appropriate, but I couldn’t really pass up this topic, now could I?
I haven’t figured out a really spiffy way yet to do before-and-after retouching display, so you are getting a photoillustration instead; the final version of Space Koi:
Space Koi, 2010. Photoillustration
It’s not the most photoshop intensive of my photoillustrations (that would be probably be one of the fantasy/goddess photoillustrations) but it is the one that I hadn’t yet posted the finished version of to my blog or website. (oops)
I must say that I am pleased not only that a story which touched one of my pieces was published, but that it is such a good story; it snuck quietly under my skin and then sent prickles skittering along my shoulderblades when I realized where it was headed. I like the story a LOT.
Oh, you wanted to see the piece? It looks like this:
(And, uh, by Tuesday night many more pieces will have been added to the shop. Making art is fun. Remembering to try and sell it, much less so. Also, thanks to AnthologyBuilder for sponsoring the initial Match-that-Artwork contest, and for giving me the great pleasure of knowing books exist out there with my art on the covers, even if only in very small doses.
This video from David Yoon’s “Narrow Streets” project (which I found via photojojo) is a marvelous example of compositing, in this case to realize a vision of Los Angeles as a smaller city. I love that you can watch the “trial and error” process and all of the detail work into doing even this simple two=image composite.
(If I learned to make videos like this, would people be interested in seeing how, say, something in mode of Atlantis Vogue or Nigella Nebula comes together?)
So, a while back, I had posted that one of my covers up at AnthologyBuilder, then known only as “Anna in Red” (only a minor improvement over Untitled), had been used by Samantha Henderson as inspiration in their Match that Artwork contest, netting her the runner-up position.
Today, I found out that the story has been picked up for publications by one of my favorite sf magazines, Strange Horizons (to be published at some unknown future date).
I was going to have a special on orders of this print, but I realized that since I’m in the final two weeks of both shooting, printing and framing a show right now, that would be INSANE.
So I’m going to hold it until publication, and then there will be a SuperDuperSpecial.
But you should go check out Strange Horizons right now. It’s weekly, and chock full of goodness. I particularly liked The Duke of Vertumn’s Fingerling (by Elizabeth Carroll) this week.
Space Koi (work in progress). Photoillustration. 2009
This is not what I intended to create when I sat down at the computer this morning, but it just leapt right out at me. Fish do that, I guess. Now it needs to simmer for a few weeks.
The real problem with the space series is that there is so much subtlety in the deep shadows, and that just doesn’t show up in a web-size preview at all. I suspect this is going to be a big print.
Sometimes when I end up trawling through my hard drive f looking or things I make marvelous discoveries — like this piece, which had been sitting untouched in “In Progress” for close to 5 years because I couldn’t make it right. It took me less than 20 minutes to finish it, between the simmering time and my leveling up several time in Photoshop since then. Prints are not available yet, but will be be my next show (I’m debating this size vs. square for the prints; this version seems more book-cover-y. More on that (and the reason for the trawling).. later. Hopefully.)
Natural Woman 2050. Photoillustration.
Natural Woman 2050 (detail)
(Yes, this is an evolution of a Happy Pill piece, but with a more distinctly sf feeling.)
I still have a soft spot in my heart for the original Poseidon’s Bouncer; he was big, green, and mean, and very effectively communicated “keep your trash out of my ocean!” But with his vibrant color and significant size, no one seemed to want to take him home, so the planned edition of 100 turned into one print and one artist’s proof (ooh, collector’s items now!) and he’s just been hanging around intimidatingly ever since.
But when a discussion about print sizes and the recurring “we need more hot guys in fantasy art” discussions on a genre artists list I frequent came around again, I decided that perhaps he needed a makeover.
Now, in a more approachable (and old-time-y feel sepia) and more manageable 8×10 size, Poseidon’s Bouncer Redux:
I have not decided for sure if he actually gets a print run or not, though, so if you have an opinion (especially of the form “I want one, and I’m going to Confluence, Foolscap, Spocon and/or believe in online orders”) let me know.
The first version still needs a t-shirt, I think, probably with some more explicitly fish-hugger text.
Maybe it’s just all the summer flowers in bloom, but I started making my floral space whimsy pieces again and I’m not inclined to stop. Here’s how the latest one evolved: (more…)
I took the dandelion photos that are the core of this piece in 2006, with the intention to make pretty much exactly this piece (it was the height of the “Space Whimsy” period in my sketchbook). Why it has taken 3 years, I don’t know; it certainly isn’t the piece that I sat down to work on tonight in my chunk of free time.
There will probably be some tweaks in the printing stage, and I may still decide to swap out the digitally rendered grass for real grass, but for now, I will not touch it further, less it decides (like every other piece I’ve touched tonight) that it wants to be something hard and profound instead of sweetly silly and content:
Also, thanks to 
