It DOES make a difference!

I have been playing around , trying to get an accurate photo of the Red Iris piece, fairly unsuccessfully till now. I was at the camera store yesterday talking about proper floodlighting etc and the man I spoke with ( actually LISTENED to!!) reminded me that I have a custom white balance setting on my camera- Canon S100. So, DH and I came home and figured it out and - voila- I have pics now that accurately represent the colours of this piece. At the risk of boring you all to tears, here they are . Have a look back at some of the Iris posts and see the difference. I can see a HUGE diff. Can you? Look at your cameras and check your white balance. I had been using the auto settings but this is MUCH better!

Accuracy at last! Try it! You'll like it!!

New ideas

As I have been going through photos stored on my external Hard Drives, I have come across some dandies! I found this stunning red Iris that I took at the Royal Botanical Gardens one evening several years ago. I played around with the original picture in Photoshop and came up with a few crops that have now gone into my For Quilting file! It is a VERY full file! I think it could be fabulous- maybe not too huge , say 24 inches - 30 inches square ? Could be very Georgia O'Keefe! Watch out when the Layered one is finished- or nearing finished :-)

The original photo judiciously cropped to get rid of extra background

"Closer to" as my Gran used to say

I like this one a  LOT!

Like I said, keep watching this space. I need to replenish my stores of hand dyes. Reds and purples and yellows would be nice!

Here is Layers so far. Those of you who are trained to observe ( :-) ) will see that some chunks have been removed and replaced and some have been added to. More to do!

Sketchbook Challenge for February

Hydrangea florets

...and some more...

...and a couple more!

I am not madly keen on large flowers, generally so when I find a large one made up of small ones...! Anyway, these are from closeup photos of individual florets on large flowered hydrangeas. I have some other pictures I took of dead, dried up ones too which I may tackle next. I have not done too much closeup this week , but I have been in my sketchbook every day. Here are a few examples. The Zentangles ARE helping. My hand is much better behaved now and I can tell it what to do, and mostly- it does as it is bidden!

You see, I am a Capricorn, which, in my case, means I am a January baby. Remember the theme from January? Doodling!! I LOVE to doodle. I love to draw seriously too but I LOVE doodling!

A whole page of doodles

These Tangles are really captivating!

I keep telling myself it is therapy for my hand- yeah! THERAPY for my HAND ! The head is happy too:-)

I will try to do some serious drawing next week - maybe those dead, dry hydrangea heads.

Closeups

Here is today's offering in the Sketchbook Challenge. It is part of a closeup photo I took last fall of the junction of a seedhead on a branch of our Magnolia Soulangeana. I LOVE this photo! The colours and textures are like something out of science fiction!