Watching old artwork "pop!" in Photoshop. Nice!

The Barbarian was rendered original in Lux (which doesn't even exist anymore); the drowned city, the house by the sea, and the spacecraft were done in Bryce 7 Pro (!); Mr. Lace Shirt and the grieving warrior are raytraces. I've just spent a fascinating hour or so, running them through Photoshop. Nice! It's amazing to see the old work "pop" when it's given the proper treatment, which is why I keep posting selections of the old stuff. Second Life. The truth is, 12 and 14 years ago, I didn't do justice to the old renders. Many of them -- ten years old and more now -- are still delicious images even today. 

Having said all that, my fingers are itching to start Studio again, and get back into rendering. I haven't done this in waaaay over two years, and I'm trusting to "muscle memory" to get me going again, because I'm racking my brains for the details, and, um, it's been so long, I'm hazy, lol.

I did need to generate some book covers a few weeks ago, and I had intended to do a lot of the work in DAZ and Iray, but the way things worked out, time-wise, I ended up doing the whole thing in Photoshop. The author was delighted with the result, and now it's over to the publisher to decide which of these (if any) will jacket the book when it's published in a year or two...

See? I can still do this, lol, I haven't forgotten how! I just have gone somewhat hazy on the finer points of working with Iray, and figuring out how to get Studio to raytrace ... because I really, really, want to PAINT. Here's the thing of it: start out with a raytrace, and you can paint to your heart's content and end up with something beautiful. Start with an Iray render, and you really can't: it's like painting over a photo, and when you add digital painting to a photo, it looks soooo fake. You don't get "hybrid art," you get a bit of a mess, actually. So ... I want to paint, which means I need to be raytracing.

Luckily, the raytrace texture sets have been supplied for the props I've bought in the last six or so years, with the exception of the Iray shaders, which are (duh) Iray specific. But the thing is, I used to make my own texture sets (call them shaders) for the raytrace engine, and it was a lot of fun. So -- yes. It's just a question of getting the time away from a blizzard of work. I'm working on it.

More soon. I have some news, which I'm not yet at liberty to share, but it should be fine to share it next week. Hope to be back here sooner than that, because I'm aching to get back to art.

Life meets art in Photoshop ... a little PS magic

It was "Happy New Camera" time a short while ago. I blogged about it  here, (on my personal blog), but I haven't had the chance to post arty photos to this blog since I took the Canon EOS out of the box. I've been busy. Very, very busy. Am grabbing an opportunity to post a few arty pictures here -- I have about fifteen minutes going spare, so let's make the most of them!

Each of these shots is about 80% photograph and 20% Photoshop. Even with the Canon, the magic doesn't happen until it's been through the process to make it "pop." And of course, that process also works for images captured by the Lumix superzoom "bridge" camera that's been my workhorse for a long time now...

...it's just waaay harder trying to squeeze the quality out of the overall-soft images from a 1200mm zoom lens. Half of the Canon magic is that the landscapes are captured with an 18-45mm lens, and they're consequently that much crisper. Add Photoshop jiggery-pokery, and here we are!

Back soon with more ... and with some news! Got a smile on my face today, because -- 😀

Touching base ... with apologies to J.R.R. ...

Just a ditty to keep contact with this blog while there isn't much to talk about. Yeees, the art started its life in Bing, but I promptly cut it up, rearranged it, repainted it, did a lot of things to it. And yes, I would have painted from scratch, if I had the whole day to spend on this (I don't). And yes, I would have rendered it in CG, if I had a spare hundred bucks to spend on the props (I don't). So we'll embrace the concept of compromise: AI + digital painting.  In this instance, AI is saving me a lot of time and money, and it is being used as a tool, with reason. Argh.

Life has been interesting in the last month. I had intended to invest a tonne of time in art and writing ... nope. Not going to happen. I have done a whale of a lot of editing, yes. (I'm working with the well-known Sherlock Holmes novelist, Mike Adamson). And my romance with my new camera continues unabated. I've entered the wonderful world of Canon EOS technology, and it's amazing. Loving it. I've actually written (yes, written. Don't faint) an invitation guest post for the ANALOG blog (because Firegrounds is in the latest issue, which is out about now). But aside from this, Real Life has been biting so hard, so deep, that any creative juices that might have been flowing in June were quite literally turned off at the taps. Okay ... let's start yet again, right? Right. Never say die, and all that.

So, let's see if I can't get the reins back between my hands -- and possibly the bit between my teeth, while we're dabbling in metaphors. 

And now the aforesaid ditty --

With Apologies to J.R.R. ...

I sit beside the fire and knit
And all the sweaters that don't fit --
All the scarves that fall in mud --
Are made right here, although I could
Be off and roaming 'round the Shire!
But I'm afraid that something dire
Will happen if I leave this hill,
So here I am, and I'll be still:
Comfy by my hearth I'll sit...
And dream adventures. While I knit.

Merrie Yuletide!

 
A Yuletide Blessing

Long is the night and the stars are bright;
Cold is the wind, and sighing.
Bare are the trees -- there's snow in the breeze;
Silent, the land... but not dying:
Sleep is the cure when one must endure --
Lord, knight, lady and fool:
Here is the night when back comes the light:
Blessed be all, upon Yule.

ooOOooOOooOOooOOooOOoo

Merrie Yuletide to all!

This is such a bittersweet festival to me, because the Winter Solstice also marks the anniversary of Mom's passing. And this year, it's more significant than ever. I can't believe that it's been seven years since she passed over. Seven years. She was born just short of the Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere, and she passed on the very eve of Yule, in the south. I told her story here, so in this post I'll just say that I miss her, and always will. Wherever you are, Mom, I hope you're happy.

This year, we decided to celebrate the festival properly, with a small tree and some little gifts, and a midwinter feast. Nothing vastly elaborate, but something to break up the winter, which is turning out to be very cold indeed. Most of the continent is in the grip of an acutely chilly snap -- temperatures well below zero in the early morning, as far north as Queensland --

Not my photo!!! Borrowed from ABC News, to make my point, because (duh) I don't live in Qld. 

 --a nd there's really no answer to that, is there? Well, actually, there are several answers, but most of them involve jokes and the practise of banana bending, and there's not especially appropriate. So.

It's been a very long time indeed since I posted regularly to any blog. Life has been a bit rough, but I'll set down enough here to at least patch the gap a little. March and April saw me insanely busy. I did a stupendous amount of work on a new website, and as a consequence neglected others. It still isn't 100% complete, so I'm not (yet) going to link to it. Then in May, Dave and I got Covid a second time ... and everything sort of...ran off the rails. Long Covid is no joke, and there is no other explanation for what's going on with my health. I'm just exhausted, achy and confoozelated, a lot of the time. What can you say? I have eight tonnes of projects waiting to be tackled, and I don't have the energy, inspiration or creative zeal to sink my teeth into anything. No gumption. I hope this will change soon, but right now I'd have to say that the last four months or so have zipped past in a blur. It's not just this blog I've neglected ... I haven't posted a line to Facebook in almost as long!

In fact, Facebook is rather a sore spot for me at the moment. The AI driving it rubbed me the wrong way just once too often. I was getting time bans (which I believe they call Facebook Jail) for NOTHING I had done, including a lifetime ban from something they call the "FB Marketplace," for "contravening their community standards" -- which was a bloody good trick, because I have never in my life even seen this FB Marketplace thing, much less clicked a mouse on/in it. Huh. The last time, FB banned me for a day for something I did "yesterday," when I hadn't even looked at a ruddy computer for a week!!! I saw that cheerful little message when I turned on my phone to get the time at 7:05am, one morning in March ... and I walked away from Facebook. Should I go back? Maybe. Will I? Possibly. If I have a good enough reason.

Actually, the good enough reason is probably sitting under the Yuletree right now, in wrapping paper. A new camera. Canon. Mirrorless, pro-level, with two lenses -- a digital revamp of the old SLR tech of yesteryear. This time, as a new chapter in my patchwork career as a photographer opens up, I intend to go out there as a landscape photographer, because I'll be able to capture wide shots in the equivalent of 4K resolution. The Lumix superzoom bridge cameras I've been using for the last five or six years are dandy for what they are -- I wanted to go birding at the time, and did -- but they have their limitations. I actually quit photographing landscapes, because the 1200mm zoom generally yields wide shots of such low resolution, in poor-light conditions, the work looks more like finger-painting than photography!

So ... if this pans out (and I'll soon know), I shall be able to go back to signing off and watermarking as "Jen Downes Photography," which is a luxury/arrogance I haven't permitted myself in years now. We'll see. But one thing is for sure: this is going to be fun.

So ... Merrie Yuletide to all!

And for myself, I should be making resolutions for the new year that begins as we pass the midwinter solstice. Get past the Covid blues ... be more creative ... write my own stories, as well as "just" editing for Mike (which is also tremendously gratifying, and a lot of fun) ... try and find some genuine optimism for the future ... get out there with the new Canon mirrorless camera, and capture this state in Ultra HD. 

There. Goals to strive for as we go forward.  

Second Life (again) ... more Photoshop magic

 

Photoshop brushes...

...and lighting effects

Dinokonda and reflections

Bryce sky, Photoshop birds and moon

Photoshop lens flare and lighting

Working through the old archives -- weeding out dead links from 2010 and 2011, deleting stubs that go nowhere, replacing artwork that has vanished -- I find myself wondering, where in the world did I get all that inspiration and energy, fourteen years ago? Twelve years ago?! It's true that sooo much has happened in the ensuing years, and I've pretty much had the enthusiasm knocked out of me, like everybody else in this world. But dang, looking back on the volume of the work I did, and the vision that drove it -- how did I manage all that?!

Jarrat and Stone, commanding NARC-Athena

Mike 4 struts his stuff

Even by by 2011, the images had enough substance that in 2024 Photoshop can process them through in about a minute each and give them a quality that's quite acceptable, and attractive, even today. I still have a lot of work to do in the early years ... I thought I was done, and then stumbled over a recurring issue that's taking some considerable tracking down and mending. But I'm getting there. Meanwhile...

Vickie 4 still looks good

What's next? Well, I'm editing at the moment. Turns out, this is a job I rather enjoy, especially working in cahoots with a writer of the calibre of Doctor Mike Adamson -- the well-known Sherlock Holmes novelist. A new chapter of life and/or career might be juiuuuust about to begin, and I have to say, I'm looking forward to what might happen here! So...

Bryce creation, for NARC Aphelion

...it's way past time to start up Studio and se if I can find my muse again. But not today. Tomorrow, perhaps. Or at the latest, next week -- thus spake the imperatrix of all procrastinators. Nudge, wink.