No Fear

I participated in a webinar Tuesday night that introduced Photoshop actions. Oh my... I never understood the actions feature and, frankly,didn't think I could figure it out. I still don't know how to create my own actions but I have a little better understanding of how to download and run them. There are tons of free Photoshop actions on the web available for download!

Basically they are a saved set of commands that produce some awesome effects on your images. For example, here I supplied the image of the dock going out into the water. The action took that image and created the water/sky background. I adjusted the ripples in the water and chose the time of day (dusk). The background colors were different, depending on the time of day you chose. I added the girl later.

Needless to say I spent the better part of the day hunting for these jewels and downloading them. Ooh, the possibilities! So no more fear of that particular unknown! I am trying to push myself to learn new techniques and try new media in my art. Now I have another tool to play with!

I just realized that the figure in the last image I posted is very similar to this one. Hmm... something about those outstretched hands and leaping into the unknown is weighing on my mind. I'm exploring that in my art journal too; no finished page to show yet. For now I'll go with this theme and see where else it leads me!