Imitation Landscape Sketch or Hey! I'm a Pretend Artist!

Here's how I turned this:

Policka, Czech Republic 2007

into this:

1. Duplicate Background (as usual)

2. Remove Colour
Image>Adjustments>Gradient Map>Black and White

3. Duplicate Layer

4. Invert Image
Image>Adjustments>Invert

5. Select Blend Mode: Colour Dodge (screen will turn white)

6. Filter>Other>Minimum>1 pixel

Note: Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur>12 pixels (6-12 pixels work best) is done instead of the above step if you're "sketching" a portrait.

7. Merge layers to a new layer by:

• (Alt+Shft+Ctrl+E) which is the shortcut, or
• Layers>Merge to a new layer while depressing Alt key

To Add Colour:

8. Duplicate background layer

9. Move background layer above all others

10. Select Blend Mode: Colour, 50%

I love the dark outlines

Instant Watercolour Painting

Here's how to turn this:

At the Smithsonian Flight Museum, Washington, DC

into this:

Little Butch

Open the photo (will be background).

Duplicate the photo (i.e. the background layer) 3 times.

On the first layer (from the bottom):

Filter>Artistic>Cutout, 4, 4, 2
Blend Mode: Luminosity

layer 1

On layer 2:

Filter>Artistic>Dry Brush, 10, 10, 3
Blend Mode: Screen

layer 2 (including layer 1)

just for fun here's what layer 2 looks like by itself

On layer 3:

Filter>Noise>Median>12 pixels
Blend Mode: Soft Light

Note: make all the layers visible to achieve the end result




Instant Watercolour Painting

I was having so much fun. Here's another one I did.


Beautiful BC Mountains

Just one more:


view from the tower in Policka

Policka, Czech Republic

I noticed the clouds disappeared so I may need to tweak some settings.

Clouds are back (I used cutout filter 8,4,2 instead of 4,4,2)

Chives

This is why I think chives are awesome:

• first edible plant to come up in the spring, so welcome after the bleak winter
• don't mind a cold, wet spring (which is highly probable)
• honeybees like them. I like to help honeybees out as much as I can.
• are an Allium and I love Alliums
• bring back fond memories for me. I remember Tato asking me to go snip some "schneetleek" to sprinkle on our homemade chicken soup and it was one of my favourite "grown-up" tasks and I was so proud. "Schnittlauch" is the German word for chives, but until today I thought it was a Czech word. Apparently "pažitka" is the "new" (to me and probably to my Tato but I can't ask him) word for chives in Czech. I'm wondering if perhaps this is due to czechification that happened after WWII.
• great topping for baked potatoes. Only freshly-snipped will do, dried chives taste like cardboard and don't even think about freezing them.
• plants spread well, which may or may not be a good thing
• divide easily. I was given this plant (rather its mother to be more accurate) by my neighbour to welcome us when we moved in, so it holds happy memories for me.
• do not get out of control unless you want them to (as evident in the border picture)
• thrive in any soil
• don't need pampering, i.e. I never water or fertilize
• will grow well in a pot. My Mom enjoyed fussing over hers on her small balcony, even though it didn't need much fussing.
• are easy to prune, just shear them off after blooming and they will send up fresh new leaves. I try to do this before the rain beats them down, or before they go to seed because otherwise there will and explosion of millions of seeds everywhere.
• flowers are edible too, tear them apart and they will be less oniony-tasting or at least you will get less on your tongue all at once
• flowers make a nice garnish on any plate
• make a great subject for Photoshop

Chives Are So Easy To Grow

Chives Make a Great Border

Filter>Artistic>Watercolour

Filter>Artistic>Palette Knife

Filter>Artistic>Smudge Stick

Filter>Distort>Diffuse Glow

Pie: I Wish I Could

I first heard of Pi Day one March 14 when my daughter mentioned she needed a pie for school. What a great excuse for a celebration!

π awareness is huge especially since "Life of Pi" came out and how appropriate that it's being released on DVD today. I loved the book and movie and I see yet another blog topic and excuse to play with Photoshop but that's for another day.

All I remember from my school days about pi is that pi = 3.14 followed by a whole bunch of numbers, an infinite number actually (also there's no pattern).

I also remember, because it must have been drilled into my brain, that the area of a circle = π r squared. Hmm, pi has to do with circles and a pie is a circle. How cool!

Some people use mnemonics to memorize sequences and I have used them myself. I still remember Every Good Boy Deserves Favour are the notes of the lines on the treble clef.

Apparently there is a practice dedicated to creating mnemonics for pi and it's called piphilology. The word is a play on the word "pi" itself and of the linguistic field of philology. The mnemonic I heard on the radio this morning was "may I have a large package of coffee" (3.1415926). Others I like are:

• how I wish I could recollect pi easily today
• how I need a drink alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics

and the best one for last

• how I wish I could enumerate pi easily, since all these bullshit mnemonics prevent recalling any of pi's sequence more simply

The whole world loves pi. This is a Czech mnemonic: Sám u sebe v hlavě magického pí číslic deset mám. (I have ten digits of magical pi in my head.)

Longer mnemonics are called piems from the word pi and poem. This piem is from the book: "Somewhen" by David Saul and Danielle Mathieson (another one for my Goodreads TR list). I like the way the text forms a circle. The word "nothing" designates "zero" which I think is brilliant.

It's a fact

A ratio immutable

Of circle round and width

Produces geometry's deepest conundrum

For as the numerals stay random

No repeat lets out its presence

Yet it forever stretches forth

Nothing to eternity.

The language to create piems is called Pilish, I'm guessing from the words pi and English and there's even a Pilish Checker where you enter your own piem and it will highlight in red the words that need correction. It will check pi up to 100,000 digits.

3.1415 is as far as I got. "Pie: I wish I could have some" doesn't work—I tested it out in Pilish Checker.

Snowdrops Look Better in the Snow

I have taken numerous pics of these beauties and have decided that they look their best in the snow

I've always loved snowdrops—even before I saw them I loved them. I guess what I really loved was the idea of snowdrops.

One of my earliest memories is of my beloved Tato describing the snowdrops that grew in the forest near his home in Czechoslovakia. He would go for a walk in the woods while the snow was on the ground and he would see the snowdrops blooming. A flower blooming in the snow?! That was incredulous to me. I thought he was making it up. After all, he was the world's greatest story teller! It must be a fairy tale. Speaking of fairy tale ...

Snowdrops were prominent in the most recent episode of "Once Upon A Time". This was appropriate since apparently "Snow White" was known as "Snowdrop" in the original Grimm Brothers tale. The show was also timely since the snowdrops in my garden were blooming at the same time as on TV. The TV show "Bones" also showed Bones using a snowdrop as a method of communicating hope to Angela at the lab. She used the language of flowers instead of her cell phone because the bad guy would find her via GPS.

I just picked a snowdrop so that I could examine it more closely. I notice how delicately it dangles from its stem just like an earring from which it gets the "drop" part of its name. The stem is so fine that it looks like it couldn't support the flower let alone survive in the snow. I notice that the flower is made up of three outer petals that flare out and three heart-shaped inner petals that form a tube. The bottom edge of the "heart" is outlined with a green crescent. These characteristics differ in the numerous varieties of snowdrops, e.g. four petals, larger green patches, forward facing, heights. This is the tallest snowdrop that I've ever seen:

Snowdrops in a planter at UBC

I just found out that there is a beer called Snowdrop made by Grimm Brothers (of course) which reminds me of another thing to blog about—beer—not just any beer, but honey wheat ale—one of my favourites.

Snowdrops are hot!

Snowdrops grow so easily in the wild, multiplying like crazy so I hear, but unfortunately I don't have that problem. When it came time to plant my first garden, I eagerly sought out snowdrops and was thrilled to find snowdrop bulbs in the same section as tulips and daffodils. I planted them with great anticipation, waited for what seemed like forever, and nothing came up. I tried again the next year thinking that perhaps I'd planted them too deep or in the wrong place. Still nothing. Then I read somewhere that snowdrops must be planted "in the green"—that is, immediately after flowering, when they still have their leaves. Happily this method worked for me and now my snowdrops return every year, blooming their little hearts out, even though it's pouring down rain and the sun hasn't been seen for days.

Can't Find My Czechbook

I decided it was about time I learned how to Photoshop. I was going to say how to use Photoshop but I can see that it is one of those nouns that can also be used as a verb kinda like "I'll Google it" instead of "I will look that up on Google" but I digress. 

After much experimentation using Help and the Tutorials that come with the program and numerous online tutorials and published books (on paper even *gasp*) Getting Started With Adobe Photoshop Elements by Michelle Perkins and Photoshop Elements for Windows by Craig Hoeschen, here is my first project.

I'm putting the steps on how I did it below as a reminder for myself (and anyone else who may wish to know).

• Open Google Images and search for "nail polish can't find my czechbook". Isn't it amazing how refined googling has become.
• Right click and copy the image.
• Open Photoshop. 
• Select File>New From Clipboard. Note: Image is Layer 1. 
• From the toolbox, select the Text tool. Choose the font style, family and size. Note: This took a bit of trial and error because my version of Photoshop Elements is 2.0 and doesn't show what the fonts look like until after you select them (*whine*). You can always change the font size and type later so don't fret about this step too much.
• Type the text. Note: This is Layer 2 for now but it will update its name to match the text you enter which I think is cool.
• From the text layer, click on the "T" to select the text so that it is highlighted with a black box behind it. Note: This is also how to select the text to make other changes to the font, e.g. style, family and size. 
• From the options bar, select "set the text colour". 
• From the toolbox, select the Eyedropper tool and click on the colour that most closely matches the nail polish colour. 
• Voila! I even posted it on Tumblr and within minutes it was "liked" *yipee*

The Czech in me said I just had to have it