New Florals in the gallery

Just added two new pieces to the gallery: Rose Bouquet and Allium Blossoms. I’ve been working on more of my ‘modern florals’ pictures in the last few days. I’m trying get enough done to submit the series to the local museum here in town that has an open call for submissions. The deadline is in March, and I’d like to have a large variety of images to choose from.

These pieces are photomanipulations. I work from snapshots of flowers and then transform them in Photoshop CS3 by adding line and gritty textures via halftone screens, textures and custom brushes.

Here you can see the original rose bouquet photo, and the final result:

I take the photo and enlarge it to fit on an 11 x 17 inch ‘canvas’. Then I draw directly on top of it in a separate layer. I use the photo as a base for the colors, but it goes through several revisions with curve adjustments, levels, color changes and then finally, I add the textures on top.

In many ways, when I make these photo-manipulations, my process is organic and intuitive, much like the process I go through when I create an abstract painting. Many ‘happy accidents’ occur while I’m messing around with texture and filters, and each change is a direct response to what I see as it happens rather than any pre-planned illustration. For instance, in my original vision of the allium picture, I wanted it to be all in warm colors. But nothing I tried worked until I cooled down the color scheme to cool blues. Even then it took me a couple of hours tinkering with the hue and saturation until I found something that became harmonious.

Please keep checking back as I add more florals to the collection.