Form fitting

Here is an example of what you can do with just a simple image. I took a closeup photo of a rock, applied tonal alterations to it and then used the twirl filter on several layers, rearranging them this way and that to give me the effect I wanted. Of course I had no idea what I wanted when I started out. I just let the image dictate the artistic direction.

Maine flora

This is a perfect example of what can be done with just a single image, and is based solely on a simple a simple nature photograph. The rest is all tinkering with adjusting first the tonal elements and then using the filter gallery in Photoshop.

Cave painting

Another one of my more complex images -- and of course one of the larger files I've worked with -- this began primarily with the old nude study. A woman is reclining on a chaise lounge or some sort of casual furniture, with her back to the viewer. After tweaking the image itself -- and adding the special effects using the stained glass filter in Photoshop -- I started the search for the background textures. As those fell into place -- several bits of texture in fact -- I then started toying with the idea of integrating the human figure into the inanimate background, and came up with the idea of juxtaposing the two as part of the same whole, rather than trying to keep them distinct from one another.

Blue doors

While this is in fact "only" a photograph with just the light and dark tonal qualities altered a bit from the original, it struck me that it was more like a painting than anything else. As I recall, this was taken in the French Quarter in New Orleans two years before Katrina. I wonder if the building still looks the same.

Woman in the water

This is a perfect example of letting your imagination run amok. I began with two images, one a nude study of a woman sitting in a chair against a wall and the other of a close-up texture of a rock. After combining the two I added an overlay of another small image to provide the "tattooing" effect and the finished it off with water using the Flood filter plug-in for Photoshop (Flaming Pear software if you need to know).

Framed

This was another very large file that began as a simple square of texture. After numerous dressings and re-dressings I then the added components first of textures taken from rocks and then from the Studio Geometry series of images. Wedded together we get this:

Birth of an idea

This particular image was quite possibly the largest file I have worked on: more than one and a half gigabytes. I began with a simple close-up of a rock, as I was keenly interested in the texture, and then brought a similar file onto the image, replicating that layer many times after modifying the shape, tonal qualities and texture, before positioning it the way you see it here.

I have also experimented with this image at different angles: with the "birth" happening upwards, sideways, what have you. It pretty much works for me all the way around in fact. I do like this variation the best, however.

Machiavelli's watching

This was one of the first composite digital images I created -- quite a few years back in fact, when I lived in Vermont. This particular image represented my general approach to digital painting: begin with a background (in this case a water image with a round shape I created using Bryce) and then just start experimenting with various other images: here I usedf a stock nude photo from the early 20th century, and then a photo of Machiavelli's statue outside the Uffizi gallery in Florence; I added the eyes (my niece's eyes in fact) to "give Niccolo some life." And voila!