Having Fun with Photoshop Neural Filters

Photoshop has a new feature where you can run an image through a filter to make it look like another style of art.  Top:  Sam in Greece with a neural filter from an old "at the beach" watercolor.  Bottom three: I took a photo of two roses in a blue vase, and ran that through a filter of an original fabric design, done in illustrator, of a Paenibacillus bacteria, and ended up with the 2nd to top image.  Endless possibilities!  So many ways to avoid housework!

New Fabric Designs and a Contest Entry

I'm back doing more fabric designs, which are available in my Spoonflower shop here:  https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/lucy_autrey_wilson. 

 Some of the new designs are not yet available but will be soon.  They can be seen by clicking on the "designs not for sale" button.  I have to buy test samples before I can sell.   Some of what's new is described below

 Top to Bottom

1.  New coronavirus repeating fabric design.  The viruses were created with Illustrator and Photoshop, then layered on top of a photo of a chain link fence in front of a garden which was modified to more closely appear like an electron microscope scanned viral specimen.

2.  I painted a Dodo with pen & ink and watercolor, put it on a watercolor rainbow painting and added scanned cheesecloth. 

3.  An old fabric design of a bacteria.  Face masks made with bacteria and/or virus image fabrics seems like something that makes perfect sense.

4.  Last, but not least, I created a Poster Tea Towel image (to be printed on linen) as my entry into a Spoonflower contest.  I painted the image (actually a larger version of it) while on one of my many Ibiza vacations.   Voting starts Oct. 22.  You can vote here:  https://www.spoonflower.com/design-challenge

 

Illustration of a Summer Cold

Getting sick in the summertime has never seemed fair.  But it  recently happened to me.  I decided to try to tackle how it felt by doing another mixed media collage.  The (for now) final version is at the top of the page, an earlier version below it.  So what's the backstory on the elements used in this new creation?  The photo of me in the collage goes back to a Christmas in 1971 when my sister  Susan came to visit me while I was living in Madrid, Spain.  As I was often sick during the two years I lived there, I'm pretty sure I was sick that Christmas.  I was also pretty poor.  I always liked the moody photo Susan shot of me in front of the wall calendar.  To illustrate my sore throat, I used another little piece of my new red Japanese washi paper.  I didn't have any picture of viruses to throw at the image so sampled a few I discovered Tal Danino had created and posted on his twitter account (link here)  I could have used my own bacterial design which I created for a Spoonflower (link here - although they aren't showing all of my designs anymore) fabric design contest - a Paenibacillus done in 2015 because it looked cool, but I didn't because that wasn't what was infecting me.  Finally, I spent too much time trying to create a brain image using various photos (from the ocean in Pt. Reyes to the Botanical Gardens in Berkeley.)  I'm not too happy with the resulting brain but think it is time to move on from this project.