Getting A Grip

So at last after many a moon struggling with Photoshop and not even being able to cope with "Photoshop For Dummies" (I have to admit to not even being bright enough to class myself as a dummy) I have now been able to start to get to grips with it. I have a new book. Another package from Amazon full of promise! "Digital Expressions" by Susan Tuttle.
At last I can do things I want rather than having happy (and sad) accidents with my photos!
This lovely parrot was in a cage in Stafford's Botanical Gardens. He was tying to look very menacing whilst eating a piece of maize.
The budgies below had a distracting background on my photo but I managed to "pop" the colour out of the background reasonably succesfully.

But now for my piece of resistance!

How exciting!! I am now in charge of Photoshop...and my life is complete.

Moving on from the finished paper quilt...

It's so interesting and infinite what one can generate from a finished piece. Well is it finished? I thought so but when I started manipulating the photo I took of this paper quilt in Photoshop I can see that this could just be the start of a whole ongoing series stretching to the ends of the Universe!

Simple really. I used the pencil crayon filter and then the liquify filter and ended up with a piece that looks for all the world like totally crazy free embroidery based on a loose Paisley design. This could be printed on to fabric and stitched...

Finally a shot taken from another angle and "pencil crayoned".

Snowy Tree Therapy

Some days don't run as according to plan as one would hope.

In the past 24 hours I have attempted to make a loaf of bread in the breadmaker without the stirring paddle inserted, which gave the house a delicious scent of rice pudding, but did not produce anything remotely resembling a loaf nor anything else at all edible.

I then put my blender wand in the cake mix instead of my electric hand whisk and wandered why I couldn't cream the butter and sugar very well.

I also had a less than satisfactory time at work for one reason and another (NOT this time due to my dippiness).

Anyway I have had some stitching therapy tonight and made another brooch which I enjoy doing. I wonder if I can sell them? Maybe I could just do this all day long and stay more sane instead of beckoning the early onset dimentia with quite the enthusiasm I did today...

Oh yes and then I played around with Photoshop (must get an instruction book) and sketched this tree. Must also get more blonde highlights because I can't remember how I did it.

Photoshop direct

Can anyone recommend a Photoshop instruction book that won't bamboozle me too much? I have just tried using the program to draw into, rather than manipulate a photo, and I came up with this. My current fascination is with the silhouetted trees of the winter landscape.

It has potential obviously but I need a "dummies guide."

Oh WOW

Oh WOW I have just had my first play with Photoshop. This is the doodle from my last but one post with a few button twiddles. What fun. I know Maggie Grey uses this program a lot for image manipulation but I didn't realise it was this much fun.

I could be molecularly bonded to this office chair if I explore a fraction of this program's possibilities. If my bottom goes square I shall blame Adobe!