Welcome to my blog! This is a sketch book of things I'm drawing, photographing, writing, or just thinking about when I'm not busy designing fabric.
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www.inthebeginningfabrics.com
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I’ve been celebrating the beginning of spring by going out and taking pictures.
There’s a crow in this tree.
Here’s a blurry close-up.
And another one.
This crow is apparently celebrating spring with a serving of catsup.
I’d want fries with that.
I had so much fun making my Rose Garden Panorama — letting Photoshop do all the work — that I wanted to try it again.
So. Tom and I had been walking, walking, walking along Elliott Ave. W., with constant traffic whooshing by. After a while of that, we turned left on W. Mercer Pl. and saw this little pathway into Lower Kinnear Park. Traffic sounds fell away…and look…a vertical panorama!
This was made from three different shots. Before they were photomerged, I rotated each picture 90 degrees clockwise and saved the file. Then, Photoshop merged the three into a seamless whole. Magic! At which point I rotated the merged version 90 degrees counterclockwise, returning the whole thing to an upright state.
We used to have a strange-looking eye magnet that Tom found somewhere. It disappeared, as did several other refrigerator magnets, soon after Emma arrived at our house. Emma? Do you have some explaining to do?
I just read “The Art of Racing in the Rain,” by Garth Stein. The narrator is Enzo, a loyal, wise, and funny dog who believes that in his next life he’ll be reincarnated as a human.
Meanwhile, Enzo’s current family includes a little girl named Zoe — who has a lot of stuffed animals.
I know that this dog doesn’t look like the Enzo described in the story, but if you buy into the idea of one Enzo, it’s not much of a stretch to start believing in others.
I’m still working through Photoshop tutorials. This one was really cool: “Vintage Typewriter Keys,” by Felix Nelson, in the March 2010 issue of Photoshop User magazine. I’ve never actually seen typewriter keys like these…it almost seems like I’ve seen jewelry with this kind of look though. Maybe the jewelry was made from old typewriter keys?
Anyway, the typewriter keys were pretty impressive, but they still seemed to need something more. Like maybe a picture of Toby? This is the head-shot that Toby submitted when he auditioned for the lead role in a local stage production of “The Great Gatsby.”
…look what Photoshop can do — all by itself — to a handful of photos.
I went to the Rose Garden at the Woodland Park Zoo last weekend with the vague idea that if I took a sequence of pictures — making sure that they overlapped each other — that Photoshop could assemble them into one scene. How Photoshop would do this, I hadn’t a clue. I just thought I’d read about it somewhere, and I wanted to try it.
So I took some pictures…visually lining things up as best I could (no tripod was involved), and went home thinking: this is going to take me hours to figure out. I sat down at the computer, downloaded the photos, made one quick trip to the Photoshop Help menu, and 2 minutes later (I’m not kidding) I had a seamless panoramic shot of the Rose Garden. Photoshop is frickin’ amazing.
P.S. To make a panoramic image in Photoshop CS4, go to File>Automate>Photomerge. Select your source files (I used 5 different photos), choose your layout (I used Spherical), click OK, and Photoshop does the rest.
I’m still addicted to Photoshop tutorials. The deal with this latest one (in the March 2010 issue of Photoshop User magazine) is that the tutorialist, Corey Barker, had recently taken a cruise to Aruba, where he shot a beautiful sunset-over-the-water scene. He then floated some type over the whole thing, reflected the type in the water and…coolness!
I had to try it, but what could I substitute for Aruba? How about…
I think this is hysterically funny. This might be one of those “guess you had to be there” jokes though.
P.S. Shot taken from the Ballard Bridge, Seattle.
Toby is making movies right and left, but it’s not like he’s the only talent in this household. Emma has been hard at work writing her memoir. Here’s the cover.
This will be one drama-packed story. First, she is born. Then she is named Fluffy. That’s a chapter’s worth of insult and injury right there. Next, teenage pregnancy. Cast out by family. Finding refuge in the shelter/foster care system. Surgery. Infections. Drugs. Finally…adoption. A new name. And, OMG! Living with Toby!
It’ll all be in the memoir. Candid. Frank. Uplifting. Enlightening. Emma.
Suddenly, I’m spending all of my free time working my way through Photoshop tutorials. This one is “Light Beams Through Text,” from the March 2010 issue of Photoshop User magazine.
Tom saw my finished poster (it could go on a bus) and said that “Toby” is an edge-of-your-seat espionage/thriller and you don’t know whether Toby is a good guy or a bad guy until the very end. And I thought: Now that’s a movie I’d pay good money to see.
Also, Toby himself is in the poster. He’s the silhouette at the base of the letter T. Tom didn’t see him until I pointed him out. I guess that’s part of the whole espionage thing…and it shows just how good Toby is.
Here’s the results of another Photoshop tutorial. The tutorial (in the March/April 2010 issue of Layers magazine) was on creating a retro poster background. In their example, they made a poster for a train exhibit. I went in a different direction.
This is Toby’s campaign poster. I don’t know what office he’s running for, but I’m pretty sure he has the support of the catnip lobby.