Playing...

...with the Reflect app I mentioned yesterday on my abstractthursday entry.

It is a well rounded app with lots of different effects and sub effects, both for photographic purposes, if you need to redesign your photo maybe for graphic design purposes...or..

...the way, I am just realising its potential is to design a photo of something I want to make a painting of. Obviously, initially, I take my photo of the scene, but then I can manipulate the photo to get the extra things on that I want, and actually see how the reflection would work in that design, and how the water behaves. And then I know the most effective way to do my painting.

I am particularly interested in water at the moment. The sea and rivers and rock pools. I have a selection of pastels and pastel paper and card that J bought me all those years ago. And I never really used them because as far as I was concerned he used to do some amazing pastel paintings which were his trademark.

It's nearly ten years since he left, and when he was alive he wanted me to do some then, but I wasn't ready, and also I felt like I would have been intruding on his success in his work. But J didn't see it like that. He told me and showed me how he did them so I could possibly even improve on the way he did his pastels. J had no qualms about passing on his secrets and his techniques unlike some artists who keep how they do it secret. All knowledge is to be passed on. That is how J saw it, and I see it that way too.

It's been nearly ten years since I saw how J did his sunsets over Hilbre on a seal brown card, how he did his Waders on this beautiful sea green card (this was a healing painting), how he did his rock pools on dark green card, and how he did his Moonlights on dark blue card.

I have thousands of printed photographs of the most wonderful rock pools, the sea in all its moods, and of Hilbre, and sunsets in the Dee, that I took over a period of 20 years when I was with J. I can still remember lots of the photographs now after all this time even though they have been in the garage in plastic boxes for a long time. I am almost recalling the conversations we had...

I always wanted to do something with these, and I am ready now.

By the way the extra is the original photo, so you can see what I have done with it in this Reflect app. I have added some birds and some rocks to the left foreground. Anyone who who knows Hilbre will know this photo is so wrong on many levels. There are no rocks like that in front of Hilbre!!!

But I was just playing :)