Playing with Photoshop

For a while now I have been toying with the idea of revamping the blog. This is all in hopes that one day, I'll have enough interest and followers to warrant leaving blogspot and having a domain name of our own. I've been playing with photoshop over the last month or so, trying to come up with a colour scheme and feel for the blog that I like.

This has been a great learning experience for me. Up to this point, I've only used photoshop to do just that: to touch up photos here and there. I had never created anything from scratch.

Originally, my plan was to try and mimic the current background we have. I love the colours, I love the textures, but it just isn't as bright and whimsical as I will eventually want. So I've started this:

Now bear in mind this is the very first draft of the very background, and most will be hidden. In the foreground, probably coming right up to where the clouds end will be our fruit trees; underneath which I'll add the various fruits and vegetables we also grow. Hopefully I'll also be able to add some chickens running around too!

This was created with lots and lots (and lots!) of layers. Did I mention I used layers? I also discovered you can adjust the transparency of each tool, and not just the layers themselves. That helped a lot with the clouds. I probably deleted more than I saved, but so far, I like the way this is looking. As Chris observed, it has a very painterly quality about it (I would say ethereal, but hey, that's just me!).

I really enjoyed making this (though I have many more hours of work ahead of me!), it's been a long, long time since did anything artsy that didn't involved needles and yarn (or fondant). And it feels great to be back.