FUN WITH DIGITAL IMAGE MANIPULATION, AND ANOTHER UTI

Seeing design everywhere!

Over the past few years my eyes have become much more attuned to design and pattern everywhere, even in the most unlikely places. I often take photos of curious things, so that I can store them away for future use in projects – patterns on floors, interesting shapes, unusual colour combinations, etc. etc.

Almond milk splashes

You wouldn’t think there would be much design potential from spills in the kitchen, would you… I make my own almond milk, by putting soaked raw almonds in my high speed blender (Vitamix) with some water and blitzing it for a minute, and then straining it through a nut bag into a jug. I put the jug in the sink to avoid making too much mess, but I often splash drops of the milk as I squeeze the bag, and they land on the stainless steel of my sink. I have noticed that they spread and run, and for a few seconds they form really interesting shapes. These tend to disappear quite quickly, so I need to grab my camera if anything particularly interesting shows up!

I photographed the spashes in these first photographs a little while ago. This is the raw photo with no editing. As the drips ran down the curve of the sink, they formed kind of tentacles and resembled weird sea creatures!

I cropped the image and edited the contrast and levels, and then applied a “find edges” filter. This was the result. Loads of grungey texture!

This version was colourised to a blue-green, to reflect the marine-life characteristic.

Finally, I applied the “etching” filter to the non-colourised version. This seemed to have a bit more contrast than the basic “sepia” filter. This makes them look more like fungal growth than marine creatures.

I took the remaining two photos last week. I did some basic editing on them before applying any filters, removing the sink plug-hole and adjusting the levels and contrast etc.

This is the first photo after its basic editing.

Before adding any filters, I simply applied blue-green in the colouriser tab.

Here is the “edge” filter applied to the basic edit. I think all those little lines are scratches on my sink! Amazing how clearly they show up.

Here is the “edge” filter one with blue-green applied.

Moving on to the third and final photo, here it is after its initial basic editing.

Simple blue-green coloursing applied to the basic-edited photo.

The “edge” filter applied to the basic-edited photo.

Blue colourising appied to the previous photo.

Finally, the “edge” version with blue-green colourising applied.

I am not sure what I am going to do with these, but I think the results are intriguing. I chose the blue colour scheme because they all have a somewhat watery/marine flavour to them. The third photo could be a seascape.

I have all the basic-edited photos saved, and can re-colour them as required, or manipulate them further with different filters, and perhaps with distorting tools. The possibilities with this sort of thing are endless!

Similar backgrounds created with inks

In the past I have created abstract swirling backgrounds with inks – Distress Oxides lend themselves particularly well to this. I have then added subtle doodles to enhance them. Here is an example from one of the teabag mini-albums I made last year. I did it with a fine grey archival marker to keep it subtle, outlining some of the shapes.

I think these digital backgrounds could be used in much the same way.

UTI

Unfortunately I have just gone down with another UTI. I felt some itching and discomfort over the past couple of days, but today I thought I should do something about it as it was getting worse. These things always come at the weekend, and I knew if I didn’t get things going today, it would be very much worse by Monday. My hubby was out all day and out of reach with his mobile – no signal. I hopped across the road to our neighbour and she very kindly said she’d take my sample down to the surgery – we didn’t have a pee bottle but she had one that she gave me. They phoned later to say that a prescription for antibiotics was on its way to the local pharmacy. I left my hubby a couple of voicemail messages which he was able to pick up on his way home, asking him to pick it up before they closed at 6.00 p.m. I have now taken the first one, but the infection is much worse than it was this morning. I am drinking loads, and increasing my consumption of cranberry juice, and I hope that in a day or two I shall start noticing the effect of the antibiotics – they usually kick in pretty fast.

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