Month: November 2016

Taniku shokubutsu

Taniku shokubutsu, or “spoiled child”, according to Weblio‘s definition of the word “succulents” in Japanese:

translation of succulent in Japanese

I guess a spoiled child would probably be ta-niku (have plenty of meat)!

I had absolutely no IDEA about the succulent-verse online until I photographed the adorable little things as I was walking one day. Peeps are real serious about these plump plants! Using the PRISMA app, I made a colorful fabric pattern out of some little succies I photographed while walking near Date Street in Honolulu, HI.

Succulents Date Street Honolulu, HI

Then using the Prisma app on my phone, I applied different filters to the photo:

screenshot_2016-11-05-11-53-58

Then I took a screenshot of my phone and opened it in Photoshop (CS5, version 12.0). You can also save the photo or e-mail it to yourself. (Prisma cropped my photo so I had to run it twice, once on each side of the photo.)

screencaps

After cropping out the phone stuff and the app, I aligned and joined the 2 halves of the photo together into 1 layer. Then I made a backup, duplicate of the entire layer and turned it off, just in case I messed up later.

Next I used the Lasso tool to duplicate a few flowers. I just traced around the edges of a flower and Copied as New Layer a few times, until I had a few extra flowers to be used later as ‘filler’.

photoshopscreencap2

Then I used the Offset filter (select menu Filter>Other>Offset) to turn the picture into a repeat with four corners.

repeat using offset filter
Offset filter applied. Now just gotta fill in the center area with some filler flowers.

Using my new flower copies, I filled in the blank space in the center where the four corners meet. Then I used the Smudge tool to blend the four corners together.

smudge-to-join

I think it came out pretty well, don’t you?

Artistic Process – Where Cool Pillows Come From

I grew a few gray hairs creating this Cosmic Damask fabric pattern, but it was way worth it! From pencil sketches, scanning, and then repeat process. You’ll need some tracing paper for this, unless you prefer using a drawing app with a digital stylus.

First, I scoured the web for a nice old damask pattern. Here’s what a quick search might turn up — almost any of these will do the trick:

damask-image-search

Now print out the damask pattern you just found. Print on regular paper, in a size that is easy for tracing.

Lay the tracing paper over the damask printout. Now this is where your artistic vision and skill come in! Think of a theme and start filling in the damask area with your own doodles, like mine below:

cosmicdamask-002

You can scan the tracing paper and continue to work on it in your photo editor software.

showprocess

Or, you can do a repeat pattern by hand on paper, old school style. (madamchino on Instagram)