playing around with pictures

I'd been looking at the cover design for The Bald Blackbird, and not been happy with it but couldn't quite work out what to do. It just looked wrong, and lacking in something.



So I did this picture of hawthorn blossom
And then I removed the background from it, and copied and rotated and resized it a bit...


...and cleared some space behind the foreground things....



...and then stacked all the images up in layers, and ended up with the final version that I put at the top here. Fairly happy now. Paintshop Pro is really very useful.

On the other hand, it would be nice to create pictures that were finished entirely on paper, too. I was looking at some of David Inshaw's pictures the other day and thinking how nice they are. Bet he doesn't use PSP!

splashing paint around

I'm getting on with the new book I'm doing with Geraldine. I'm still having trouble with skies, as it were. I was quite pleased with the way the grass turned out on this picture: masked the birds, branches and Geraldine with latex masking fluid, then painted over it with that big soft brush. Then rubbed off the mask, and the green looked really good, but the details needed retouching because I'd rubbed half the paint off along with the mask.

And then I dripped a tiny drop of water onto the green.

And tried to smooth over it.

And the patch got bigger

And bigger

And I ended up re-masking the picture and repainting the grass.

And bought the Right Sort of rubber for removing masking fluid. It's sort of crepe rubber, just so you know.

And then I totally goofed on the sky and ended up replacing it with a sky that I'd photographed up on the Skirrid on Christmas Day.

O well, onwards and upwards. Still learning.



Richard is getting into gear ready for the Norwich reading next week, and here is a story about our walk across Wales, on his blog.