xenophora's photos

Collage on board. Originally posted 11/14/06. The original image was lost in a fiery laptop explosion years ago, and the original card was already out of my hands by that time. Since then, its ghost revenges itself by crashing my current computer at random intervals. There's a Paint Bucket, plus a bit of brush, pencil, Blur and Smudge in there. It's very close to its lost original, our painful personal issues aside.

Lots of screwing around here with the Art History and other paint brushes, along with the Clone Stamp and the Smudge tool, etc. Chaos, I tell you! But the giant disc of cranberry jelly at the bottom made it somewhat seasonal for its original posting date.

Collage and decollage on board. Originally posted 11/13/06.

The filter is "Brush Strokes: Sumi-E," on a low setting and the "Lighten" mode to create the shadowy effect on the figure and box mirror. Some of the clutter was removed with Clone Stamp, which was also used to tone down the texture on the box. Then the squares were added using the Paint Bucket on its pattern setting. The blue checks were added with brushes. Other minor modifications.

Collage, decollage, and colored pencil on board. Originally posted 11/12/06. The almost 3D effect of the triangular blue "chip" is cool, but the similarity in size of all the objects makes it too cluttered. Oh, well.

Same card after alterations. No filters this time. Just a lot of fooling around with correcting tools, mostly Sharpen and Smudge. Also Paint Bucket, Sponge, Dodge, Burn, Clone Stamp, Pencil, and various brushes.

Collage on board. Originally posted 11/11/06.

Same image, post-alteration. Brushed some clouds into the sky to create texture before running the whole thing through the "Artistic: Colored Pencil" filter. Worked several areas over with the Smudge tool. A little Desaturate sponge on the wedding-cake couple to make them less garish color-wise. Other minor adjustments.

Collage on board. Originally posted 11/10/06.

Same picture, run through a filter called "Sketch: Plaster," in either "Darken" or "Difference" mode. (I forgot to remember which one.) Some other adjustments using Paint Bucket and a few brushes, etc.

Collage on board. Originally posted 11/9/06.

Same card as before. First it went through the "Artistic: Sponge" filter. The clouds were added with a brush and the Smudge tool. The Clone Stamp was used to move the sign letters around. Other miscellaneous changes.

Collage on board. Originally posted 11/8/06.

Same card, run through "Pixelate: Color Halftone." Used the smallest setting available, with the "Exclusion" mode and a low opacity percentage (less than 20).

Collage on board, with some colored pencil added. Originally posted 11/6/06. For the record: "Tidbits" are boneless, cooked pigs' feet.

Same card. First the "Hues" option got tweaked to alter the colors. The Paint Bucket tool did some smaller changes. Then the whole thing went through the "Pixellate: Halftones" filter on a pink dot setting, which added some texture and a pink undertone to some of the clouds.

Collage on board. Originally posted 11/5/06.

I worked over some of the sloppier areas with the Smudge and Clone Stamp tools first. The shell pink hue on the brush bristles in the original collage was sucked out with the Sponge tool, set on "Desaturate." That particular pink is apparently the result of the acids in old papers interacting with the gesso or polymer I use to put these things together. Sometimes it looks appropriate. Sometimes not. The truly odd thing is that usually after a year or so, it disappears from the composition and leaves the original white as it was before.