Zhangjiajie in Snow—Awesome

/

China's Wulingyuan Scenic and Historic Interest Area comprises the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, the Tianzishan (天子山) mountain ranges, BaoFengHu (宝峰湖) and the Suoxi Valley (索溪峪), and is a very popular filming and tourist destination. This area is purportedly the source of inspiration for the floating mountains in the motion picture, Avatar.

I've seen photography of this area before, but never in snow...jaw-droppingly beautiful.

John's Artists' Brushes & Dry Media User: David Reid

/
reid_days.jpg

Artist and photographer David Reid created this surreal landscape using a combination of John's Artists' Brushes and John's Dry Media. I first profiled David's work last June.

David writes:

I just thought you'd like to see another one of my paintings created from your fantastic brushes. This one was created from a mixture of the dry and media brushes.

I added some depth to the brush strokes to give it a more 3D approach. It too about 3 hours in total, though am still not sure of the hat and scarf though the umbrella seems to work well.

The brushes I like the best are the the flat blenders and chalk dry brushes as the texture they give is fantastic. Many thanks for creating the lovely brushes.

You can see more of David's work at his website.

If you have an image created with my brushes, send me a JPEG and I'll feature it here on the PixlBlog!

Architectural Decay in HDR

/
atgr_4.jpg

We grew up near where Interstate 80 now cuts through Omaha. As a result, there were many old houses and structures that were tagged for removal in advance of the interstate. As kids, we spent a lot of time exploring these curiosities. This fascination remains with me to this day.

Whenever I'm on the road, I keep an eye out for abandoned structures. In the midwest, there is a continued elimination of small farms by corporate agri-business. Many of these mega-farms have abandoned farmhouses and out-buildings on the property. When I find one, I'll make a point of documenting these decaying structures.

I usually don't have a tripod with me when these opportunities knock. As such, I've never played around with combining multiple exposures into HDR images. HDR (High Dynamic Range) tools utilize multiple bracketed exposures, combining both highlight and shadow information to arrive at a final image with greater tonal range than an individual exposure is capable of.

A few months ago, I began playing with the HDR Toning filter in Photoshop CS5 and was pleasantly surprised to find that this filter is great at pulling HDR-like tonality out of single exposure images. The result is an enhanced textural quality not prominent in the original image.

Below are a few of my architectural decay images that I've run through the HDR Toning filter.

atgr_1.jpg
atgr_6.jpg
decay_3.jpg
decay_4.jpg

John's Watercolors User: Kenneth Broström

/
brostrom.jpg

Swedish artist Kenneth Broström writes,

Thanks for your brushes! I'm still trying to learn. This is a portrait of my daughter. I used a photo for the sketch only the rest is made in Photoshop and Painter. Thanks again from Sweden!" I think Kenneth is figuring out the brushes very well!

You can see more of Kenneth's work at his website. (I've utilized Google's Translate in the link so that text portions are converted to English.) If you have an example of art created with John's Watercolors, send me a JPEG—your work may get featured here!

If you've been frustrated trying to master digital watercolors, John's Watercolors for Painter are the answer!

Karen Bonaker: Artists' Brushes Paintings

/

Karen Bonaker sent me a couple of nice examples of her work done using John's Artists' Brushes. Both paintings show off the Artists' Brushes textural and blending capabilities.

bonaker_transition.jpg
bonaker_autumn.jpg