Balloon Sampler 2011: miracles of Photoshop

Balloon Sampler 2011

5x7" Balloon Post Card Painting

I have been using Photoshop primarily for storage and organization for my watercolors for the past few years, but this afternoon, I stumbled into the 21st century and began to explore its astonishing capabilities.

A quilt with sampler blocks

As someone who spent half a lifetime looking at samplers in which quilters and needleworkers practiced stitches and alphabets, and created ever-more complex quilt patterns, I felt a kinship with their energy and gratitude for this amazing tool.

Beginning with a 300 dpi scan of a 5x7" watercolor on 140# paper, I copied the image over and over again, experimenting with posterizing, gradients, channels, filters, curves and more. I created a 22x22 blank square and then dropped in each of the copies, re-arranging, adding, and deleting. When I ended up with a 3x4 row image, I deleted the excess blank canvas, added a signature, and I was finished.

Making a quilt or a piece of needlepoint can take weeks or months. Beginning with a finished painting, which, admittedly took about six hours to paint, the Photoshop exercise took about an hour.

This was way too much fun, and I look forward to learning a lot more about Photoshop, and multiplying and manipulating the color and energy inherent in original nanoscapes.

Balloon Sampler 2011 is available in two limited editions of five each, signed and numbered through the nanoscapes website:

• 20x20 inches, matted:          $75.00 
• 10x10 inches, matted           $50.00