Cartoon Filter

This is the last picture that I used the cartoon filter on. Once again I took this photo while on my trip in Europe. I chose this filter because it just adds so much character to this old, enormous bulding. I think it gives it a bit of a gothic feel to it. Unfortunately I can not tell you where this picture was taken exactly, other than the fact that it was taken in Hungary. There were too many exquisit buildings to keep track of.

Creepy Vicky!

Yes, this is me. This was quite a fun project. First I had to cut everything out of the picture, by slowly tracing the contours of my face. Then the fun part comes along! You get to mess with all the different filters like: blur, distort, you can add funky colors, as i did, or simply take away all color.

Miskolc - Diosgyor Castle

This photo was taken in Miskolc, Hungary, with my dance group and a beautiful historic castle. Again I used the cartoon filter. I think it really makes it look comical, and look at all the dpeth there is in the clouds.

Lazy Boy

My piece of Abstract art is titled Lazy Boy, because that’s what I am reminded of when I see this sort of relaxed seal like creature. As you may know Lazy Boy is a luxurious chair brand, well-known for selling that irresistibly, comfortable chairs. So comfortable you could become really lazy in it. So, in my picture, that’s exactly what I see, a lazy boy (or seal), of who in a way looks like the chair itself. The tools I used to create my abstract art was first the “free select” tool to create my outline, which I set it on “feathered edges” to give the drawing that blending-in sensation. And then I used the “paint bucket” to fill in my outline with colors. I chose to use analogous colors, the red-orange-yellow branch of colors, with blue as my highlight because a chair should be cozy and warm (hint, hint), so I chose warm colors and blue as my night sky. What inspired this piece of art was a song by Fiest called “Sea lion.” As you can guess it’s about a seal and the song itself is very strange, so I wanted to create a picture that could lead to many explanations. I want my audience to question the emotions of this seal, is it happy? Is it tired, sleepy, lazy, laughing? Those are all correct. I myself find it rather funny looking, it kind of looks like Jell-O, the way it’s so relaxed and sprawled across the art work.

Marmoset Monkey

I took this adorable picture of a Marmoset monkey at the local zoo in Hungary over the summer of 2008, and believe me they were not camera shy. Again I found myself playing with different filters, and the one I especially like was, ofcourse, the cartoon filter. What I like about this feature on ths photo is how your eyes are now instantly drawn to the white clown hair.

When I see this picture I always associate these colors with Easter. They are bright, happy colors. I created this picture in one of my workshops through gimp. I began messing with different paint bruches. I had lots of fun embracing my creative side.

Verona, Italy

This is a picture I took half a year ago in Verona, Italy. It’s a picture of your typical buildings all across Europe. All the houses are squished together and flourished in fun bright, and often, complementary colors. I chose this picture originally just thinking “Italy, home of the art.” It would be a gorgeous building to recreate on the computer. Turns out it was, but it took so much detail and time to draw in every little balcony railing. I mostly used the square brushes, or at least tried to. It was so small it was sometimes hard to tell if it was circular or not. First thing I did was crop the picture because I wanted the focus to be more on the building and not the pavement. What was most challenging when filling in the color was the roof tops and the blue sky, because neither were one color. So after I played around with the mode and opacity for a while, I finally decided to, for example with the roofs, I first chose one color to fill in the roof top, then I chose a more dominant color, set the opacity to 98 and the mode to dissolve, and then refilled over the original color, giving you a multicolored roof top. I really wanted to capture the essence of the housing style in Europe. There is a very different feel when walking down a street surrounded by a block of apartment buildings and walking down a street in Europe next to a tiny little café and stone archway’s. I wanted my observer to feel a warm sense of welcome into the picture; to want to be a part of the colorful people enjoying the blue sky.