SPT It's that day again

Self portrait Thursday again.Since I don't like the way I look I have decided that one option open to me is to learn something about Photoshopping and apply this to my self portraits.So what you see above is the original. Below is where I have had a little play around.

I am very interested to have a go at introducing some of this into my textile work.The picture above for example would translate well into fabric. The one below could be an idea for some bleaching or discharge work. Nothing earth shatteringly new about either idea, but new for me.
On the home front hubby and I are attempting to spring clean our lives. This involves sorting out paperwork,getting rid of unwanted stuff like clothes,some furniture and for some reason several items of recording equipment that we have accumulated and don't use. I am not that keen on Ebay or boot sales but some of this stuff is just too good to give away. It is the paperwork that is threatening to engulf us though.Whatever happened to the promise of a paper free world.It just seems to get worse. And then there is the decision of what to keep and how long to keep things for. I don't really like all this grown up stuff!

Pet Potraits

Finally got round to doing a portrait of my cat Tamlin.Named after a favourite folk song of mine.
Sadly after taking the photo, and trying to clean it up in Photoshop, I caught the USB lead and sent the camera across the floor. I think I have killed it.
I am teaching a class on this technique at the end of the month.See my earlier blog post with pictures of the chaffinch piece that I did.

With a little help from my friends

I am much in need of photography and Photoshop help, as my photographs will show you. Help is at hand in the shape of the lovely ArtyAllsorts. She very kindly spent the best part of a day in my instruction. I think more sessions will be needed as things seem to take longer to get in my brain these days but some of it has stuck.

SPT

SPT stands for self portrait Thursday.It is a group on flickr which for those who don't know is a free photo hosting and sharing site.For SPT you simply take a portrait and post it in the group. I have only a simple camera and few photographic skills.I am also not skilled in the art of Photoshopping. All this added to the fact that I don't like how I look at the moment means that I don't always post a photo every week.But this week I did.

Trees and Snow

Having purchased a couple of new saws we have tackled the major task that is cutting back our willow tree.We have decided that it has to be done over 2 years as you are not supposed to take any more than 25% of the tree at any one time.The actual cutting went really well and only took a couple of sessions.At this point I would point out that my main job was footing the ladder and jumping out of the way when the big branches dropped. Now comes the more major task of getting rid of it all. The larger stuff is to go to a friend with a wood burning fire. The small stuff has to be chopped up and dumped. Our kindly neighbours ( and next door but one neighbours ) have kindly lent us their green bins,which are actually brown, so we can get quite a lot taken away by the nice men that collect them once a fortnight.

Having got to this stage we then had a fair amount of snow so we were glad to have got the job done