Experiment

I wasn't sure what to do today. I know, it's only the third. I started trying to take a photo of our Christmas tree. We were planning to take it down by Monday, so why not?

I just wasn't really happy with any of the shots. When I came in and started reviewing them I tried to think of something else to do.

I recently installed a new version of Photoshop to try out it and Lightroom. Allie had a bit of a disaster with Aperture a few weeks ago and started switching over. I'd been curious about the digital paintint capabilities and so I decided to try something out. A few years back Allie got me a really nice Wacom tablet for my birthday. I hooked it up and started playing a bit.

My subject was a green wing macaw. We were talking about them earlier in the day. Allie really would like to get one for a second bird, we almost did a few years ago but in our current space it just wouldn't work out well. And our family has grown since. We also got Mackenzie a plush through the World Wildlife Foundation this year of a scarlet and blue and gold macaw. She's been loving them to death! Well, the scarlet at least.

With parrots on my mind, I found a nice photo of a green wing online and used it as a subject in Photoshop. I traced it and started brushing in layers of color, figuring out what I was doing as I went along. It's still very much a work in progress, but I was relatively happy with the outcome for a small amount of effort. This is something I plan to play with more in coming weeks.

Here's the original photo for reference: