"Coalwood Memories"

Last May, a friend and I visited Coalwood, WV, the former home of Homer Hickham, the "Rocket Boy". We discovered this empty shell of an old schoolhouse, half-hidden by bushes and overgrowth of vines. It called out to me to explore the memories that still live there. This collage recalls the former students and their watchful teacher who once walked those halls.

My friends know that I have played with digital art for a long while, (and I mean played) but I have a lot to learn before I can claim to be proficient in Photoshop.  In early January, I started an on-line workshop with DJ Pettitt, a digital artist whose work I admire.  After three weeks of intensive work, I am putting some new tools to work and having a ball with Photoshop.  It can be frustrating at times, but it's usually a correctable error, such as being in the wrong layer.  Patience is definitely a requirement for doing work like this.  This collage has combined five different photographs with blended layers and masks, brushes, and artistic effects. The people photos are scanned from old photographs that I have been collecting from antique shops and estate sales.


"Wish You Were Here"

The wistful expression of the woman in this illustration I found made me want to use her in a collage.  I blended layers consisting of a photo of one of my own acrylic paintings as a background, the illustration I got from Dover Publications, a scanned antique postcard ("Hello Joyce"), and my own flower photos.

 

"My Dearest Sister"

This exercise in the DJ Pettit workshop had us blending layers and using the masking technique for the raindrops and butterfly.  The layers were a flower photograph, a photo of raindrops on leaves, a scanned postcard, and a photo of a butterfly on flowers.