Sunflower Landing

This is a digital image creation that I made from one of my own sunflower photos, Dylan's Sunflower, that I took last summer. I'm calling it Sunflower Landing. I've created it for the 3 Muses Black & White Challenge.  We had to use the Black & White theme, but that was really our only limitation, and how we interpret that theme is up to each artist. Any medium can be used for the 3 Muses challenges too, which gives us a lot of wonderful creative freedom. And in this case, it gave me an excuse to play around with digitally editing and altering my own photos, which I really enjoy.

I wanted to create an image that would appear as if it came right out of my sketchbook. So I took my sunflower photo and first changed it from color to black and white. Then I gave it a bit of extra contrast. And then I gave it a watercolor pencil effect that has no color. Next I wanted just a little pop of color, so I added the colorful butterfly to the sunflower's leaf. And finally, I added a frame to the photo that makes it look as if I've torn it out of my sketchbook.

I used PhotoScape to edit this photo. Normally I would use PaintShopPro, but I only have that program on my laptop, and I keep PhotoScape on my desktop PC for when I want to edit photos from there.

I really love how this turned out, and it makes me want to do more with digital editing of my own photographs. It also makes me want Spring to hurry up and get here, especially after the 10-12 inches of snow we got yesterday!

Dylan's Sunflower

Had to share this photograph here because I just think sunflowers are so beautiful. This one was started from seeds by my grandson, my daughter and myself (along with several others). We've been nurturing it since spring and it is now around 12 feet tall! (You'll want to click to see the full view--much prettier that way!)

Funny how something like this can just make you smile. Dylan can't believe how tall this sunflower got.  It's really the first one he's ever seen, so he wasn't sure what to expect. This one is the tallest of the 3 that survived our planting. We'll have to get some seeds from it and plant some more next year.

I think this would make a great watercolor painting too at some future date.  :)