I was just playing around in Photoshop, feeling creative but not wanting to get into anything to serious. Mostly I just wanted to play. I found this tutorial by Carine Ma It was very fun to do and I found myself, as I always do, learning a bit more about Photoshop. Even though I have been using it for more time than I can remember, it never ceases to amaze me how much one can do with it...limited only by imagination.
This painting was a bit of challenge for me. Dottybacks are pretty tiny little fish and trying to keep the scale and proportion correct on a rather large canvas was not easy. They are diminutive little guys and had to make sure they didn't compete to much with a large background. Good thing they are very bright. Next in the series will be a ribbon eel. Not a big fan of eels but I will do my best to make it look good. =)
My son sent me this photo of Julianna, our grand-daughter. I loved the photo of her, but not the background. So I removed the background in Photoshop and put the photo away to "let it rest" while I mulled it over. I reopened it this many months later and it being nearly easter I started playing around with those types of colors and worked on a little page for Juli. Happy easter to sweet Juli.
So my clown fish looks pretty good, but I had it well underway yesterday when my computer crashed and I lost it. I couldn't find ANY part of it. So with a heavy sigh I began again late last night and viola! I like this one better anyway. So now I am a day behind and I have to do two fish to catch up.
So I went back to the east coast for a few weeks, and while I was there I began talking to my husband's cousin who is the owner and operator of a pre-k school. We talked of the lack of beautiful, and educational books on the market. Simple books without dumbing down preschoolers. So we decided to see if we could bring our vision to life. This is the first picture I did for the first book on Tropical fish by Alphabet. I am excited to start the next one now.