No Fear

Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid of only standing still.
-- Chinese Proverb

I just realized that this piece and the previous one that I posted are very similar. The girl with the outstretched arms seems to be calling to me. I'm exploring this in my art journal,too. I didn't intentionally set out to create two such similar pieces. The Muse is at work...

I loved the look of this water/sky background. Tuesday I participated in a Webinar on Photoshop actions. I always thought they were too complex to try. I probably will never have the expertise to create my own but I was thrilled to learn that there are tons available on the internet free for downloading. I am so new with this tool that I had to manually write down how to download and then use them. But the results are worth the extra time. I used this image of the dock going out into the water and hit the "play" button on the action. After prompts to adjust certain settings and choose different themes I ended up with the background I wanted. I added the girl later and that's when I realized that I'd just used a similar motif.

So I'm thinking about the young girl in the first piece and the older one in this piece and what my Muse is telling me. Don't be afraid to let go ... have no fear ... these are big issues for me and I wrestle with different fears all of the time. I'm deliberately stopping myself when I hear the words, "I'm afraid..." in my head. Stop! I'm so accustomed to writing things off out of fear and I guess I've finally gotten tired of it.

I am expanding my art, my knowledge, my circle of friends...and I want to keep growing in all of those areas. If I fear anything, it would be as the proverb says: be afraid of standing still. I think I've done that too long!

Magenta Muse

Still experimenting with the faces I'm drawing in Suzi Blu's Goddess and Poet workshop. I really liked this face but I couldn't seem to draw any suitable hair for her. So I didn't give her any! She's been sitting in the sketchbook for awhile waiting for something to happen.

I just began another experiment (this time in Photoshop): painting my sketches! Duh! The paint brushes are called that for a reason. You paint with them! I've never used the paint brush tool to actually paint something; I usually use it to bring in something I'm using in a layer mask. But I was in Barnes & Noble the other day browsing through digital art magazines and kept reading about how the artists would scan in their work and actually paint it in Photoshop. Then they would add all of these cool effects but I was more intrigued with the painting. It's not so easy with a mouse but I gave it a try.

This is why I love Photoshop: The photo below is what I started out with (scanned from my sketchbook with a few adjustments so you can see it better):

The finished piece at the top of the page is just my playing with painting her eyes, lips, face, etc. All of the elements in this piece, except for the font, hair and face came from the Somewhere Beyond collection at Scrap Artist.com. Love them for their cool elements!

I had this photo of these gorgeous flowers called love lies bleeding in my files and I thought how cool they would be as hair. Voila! Now I'm thinking I need (want) one of those Wacom tablets to help me paint better (no pesky mouse to maneuver!). Hubby will have to be convinced first, though. He's already promised to get me the new version of Photoshop so a Wacom may be pushing it. ;)

As for the actual sketch, I am thinking about adhering her to wood and working on her along with the first goddess sketch that I've put on wood. Next week's lesson will be dealing with our wood portraits. Right now she's still in the sketchbook. And I'll always have her in the computer if I ever want to give her a new look. We'll see what happens.