A little too flowery?

What better model than a flower? Full of colour and life, not at all camera shy--and offering all sorts of exciting possibilities for creative editing.

c.2014. L.Ciacco. Iris Pastelli. Digital Art from original photo

Flowers have long been popular subjects for painters, including myself. But in this instance, I have turned a photograph into what I hope looks like a chalk pastel drawing. I love working with pastels, though they do get terribly messy (at least in my hands). Working digitally, bending and blending the pixels with the smudge tool in Photoshop, I can get a very similar effect to chalk pastels without all the dust. This was a brand new discovery for me--very excited about it!

Here's a collage of four of the versions/experiments I made along the way, just trying different filters and textures in Photoshop.

This highly abstracted version still has an element of painterliness to it, hinting at a highly textured, mixed-media canvas.

Pure abstraction! Created with applying the Wave filter in Photoshop (applied blindly, I might add.  "Whack it on there and see what happens!" is the technique used).

This is the photo that I used to make all the above images. It was already cropped and had several filters applied to it, including plastic wrap (helps keep the flowers fresh).

And this is the photo where it all began, taken with my Asus tablet using the 'Little Photo camera' and the 'HDR-FX' apps.

Go ahead and ask me if I'm having fun yet!

Joining up with Nature's Footstep abstract meme today.  Pop over there to treat yourself to other participants' digital art.