Saturday, July 07, 2007

Birchbark













10 comments:

Anonymous said...

These are beautiful - as designs, as layers, textures and colours as well as playing with the notion of hiding and revealing.

meggie said...

Wonderful images. I love Birch trees.

annie said...

so much beautiful texture.

I want to rush into mastering digital coloring/painting so I can crib from nature and borrow her rich details.

Zhoen said...

Arboreal Burlesque.

Lee said...

I wish I could do that! Start each year with a clean slate. How good would that be!

Fire Bird said...

Weeping birch

herhimnbryn said...

Top image.......her cloak is undone.

Lucy said...

Thanks all.
ML - yes, I like that slightly blush pink of the new bark, and there's something almost saucy, also vulnerable, about the way it peels back.
Meggie, me too, and of many trees we try to grow here, they are perhaps the most successful. These large-leafed ones are not as elegant in form as some others, but much of their beauty is in the bark.
Annie - lovely to see you :-).That sounds an interesting thing to do, worth some studying. I only quite recently found the saturation and contrast/luminosity buttons on my Photoshop, which is in French and about which I was astoundingly and wilfully ignorant, and it's tempting to overdo things. It also imposes choices and decisions, more l/c and less saturation to bring out the line, or darker and more shadowy for form? etc etc. Easier in a way when it was just a question of crop and maybe quickfix with Corel! But really learning how to make something new and creative with digital imaging rather than just enhancing and fiddling with sounds great.
Z - lovely idea!
Lee - indeed, but that's not really how they do it; in fact they are continually shedding some bits, holding onto others, revealing startling tender new pink skin while keeping their rough old calloused algal stained old stuff, which is probably much more like how we do it too!
TG - yes, the teardrops are nice aren't they! It was a moment of patchy windy sunlight a bit after the rain, much seemed to be happening...
H - yes, as Z said, rather a burlesque gesture!

Anonymous said...

lovely, lovely studies...

Pam said...

Beautiful pictures. I'm a bit afraid, though, that my new sofas are going to look a bit like that once the kittens get to them...