I love cracking open a new program and getting to know it. Playing around with the buttons and menus and figuring out how to get the program to do what I want is enormous fun. It scratches my curiousity bump and taps my creativity in completely different ways from story-telling.
Most people I know can think of nothing worse than being forced to learn how to use a new piece of software. I guess it’s my geeky side that likes it so much.
I’ve been semi-competent when manipulating images since I got my first computer. Most of it is self-taught.
However, when I see what graphic artists can do with a few clicks, my creative muscle twitches. I love colour and the story-suggesting possibilities of images and the idea of making those images say what I want them to say has always appealed to me.
Recently, I dumped all the graphic manipulation programs I have been using for years, and finally caved and subscribed to Adobe Photoshop.
The learning curve is huge, but I carved out a couple of hours to play around with the software. Over time, I’ll expand my repetoire, but my early attempts were encouraging.
My daughter-in-law is an artist. (I have so much trouble saying ‘daughter-in-law’ — I’m in denial that I’m old enough to have one!) Robyn has had her work displayed internationally as well as selling locally.
While I was playing around with Photoshop, I grabbed a couple of photos of her work from her Facebook page.
Here’s the first one:
This is Baz, Robyn’s dog.
First I cleaned it up, and squared it up:
Then I played:
Robyn is an equestrian, too:
So, pics of horses are her specialty!
I messed with her painting (she forgave me afterwards):
How do you stretch your creative muscle in unexpected directions?