Lately, I've been hard at work in the studio working on some mixed media art pieces that are taking a great deal of patience and concentration. This evening, I decided that I needed to take a bit of a break and begin to play around with Adobe Illustrator--a nemesis from my past that I am determined to conquer now once and for all.I found a sketch of a graphic design that I'd done years ago--the motif of a craftsman-style rose. I had scanned in the sketch years ago and it had stayed in its sketched state until now.
Braving Illustrator and its "scary" vector drawing tools, I managed to convert the sketch into a clean and smooth one.
I then imported the graphic into Photoshop. Again, being brave, I started playing around with some of the techniques I've been learning with the Adobe Photoshop CS3 Classroom in a Book that I've been doing. I turned the crisp new rose graphic into a mask that I could apply to a recent photo I took of the "Raspberry Ice" bougainvillea.
Voile! The "Hawaiian Rose" was born!
It reminds me so much of a Hawaiian quilt block that I decided to feature the new design on some home accessories at the Rosehaven Cottage CafePress store. If you want to see what it looks like on the different home accessories currently available just click here.
That was a fun AND productive "break"... but I think I'll truly take a break now because my eyes are beginning to ache.
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