2LO Texture-making Class : India Ink on Yupo

 

Continuing with 2 Lil Owls'  Texture-making class, this lesson focused on India Ink on Yupo Paper.

These black textures are what Kim Klassen calls Magic Textures, as you can use the screen blend mode in PhotoShop or PS Elements to layer these into a photograph.  Truly--it doesn't come out black and inky!  Here's an example.

Even the brayer unloading pages in my Waste-Not/Want-Not book came out looking kind of cool!  See below ...

On the  final set (below), I tried the India Ink and brayer technique on the photo paper I had.  It seemed to work much better than than the Alcohol inks did on that paper.  I have a stack of it for a photo printer that is long gone.  (This paper actually never worked well in that little printer, either.)  I think they look better if you don't work this photo paper too much -- I just need to remember that if I use it again.  The over-worked ones look a little duller in the middle.

I actually did these a few weeks ago, but --you know how it is when you make something new -- It comes from you, it's yours, but it still looks foreign--NOT yours.  Even though it is.  I had to let these sit a while so I could get used to them.  To claim them as my own. 

I suspect I'll be playing more with this method -- as soon as I get more Yupo paper. ;-)

Texture Tuesday : Geese at Sunset

Sunset Geese

This photo was taken on an evening walk in Marshfield, WI, on a nature preserve there.  The geese were congregating atop a berm.  There was a pond on the other side, so they were not far from water.

This is a great example of why Kim Klassen  calls these black textures "magic."

Here's the original image from my iPhone.  Not bad ...

The super simple recipe in Photoshop Elements :
Layer 1) Background image
Layer 2) Kim Klassen's Flourish Magic (black) Texture - Overlay 92% opacity
Layer 3) Kim Klassen's Wonderful Magic Scripted - Soft Light 34% opacity (this layer adds a subtle frame to the edges, and some words to the clouds in the upper left corner.
Cropped

The black magic textures deepen the colors and add drama -- like a sunset if you stay long enough to see it!  Very different from the  dark shadows you might expect with black textures.  These are amazing!

Linking up with The Texture Artists FaceBook Group and Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday. 
Come join us!

2BD34 Making Magic

For this week's lesson, Kim showed us how to turn a ready-made texture into a "magic" texture, and then layer it into a photo.  Magic textures are mostly black with some white textures.  With the right blend modes, they can add wonderful effects to an image.

 

Here you see the original Kim Klassen Flourish texture beside the magic version.

Kim gave us a recipe to magic-ify suitable textures.  

It's a little hard to see that the magic version isn't just black, but trust me--there's more to it.  

 Here's a closer-up version of the "magicked" Kim Klassen Flourish texture.  

You can see it looks like beautiful black slate or other black stone.

Yummy! Makes me want to reach out and touch it!

I know Kim K did a magic version of Flourish around Christmas last year, too.  This is my magic version of her Flourish Texture.

I won't share the magic-making recipe here.  Please join the Beyond Beyond Class if you want to know how.

Here's the original photo I started with.

Recipe :

Layer 1 : Original background photo

Layer 2 :  Kim Klassen's Flourish Texture - Magic Version

                     Rotated 90 degrees ; Screen blend mode 100% ; 

                     with a layer mask to brush the texture off her face

Layer 3 : Copy Layer 2 - Change opacity to 39%

In the version at the top of this post, you can see the flourish in the upper right corner.  It's pretty amazing that layering in a black texture doesn't make your image all dark and muddy.  That's the magic of the blend modes!