Back to photography - The beauty of Wales

Welshpixels is a very accomplished photographer in Wales. She has three Zazzle stores for flowers, wildlife and landscapes. All three stores are well worth a visit, with far more photographs than I can show here, which makes it very hard to choose which to show. Especially worth a look at are her stunning photos of the curious Puffins, and the beautiful Red Kite. These photos are available on a wide range of items, as well as prints - all perfect gifts for nature lovers.

Anemone Card by Flowerpixels
Stretching Kingfisher Card by Welshpixels	Clean Swan by Welshpixels

Real Watercolours

Having shown some of my digital watercolours, I thought I should show some real ones as well, so I'm featuring here one of my favourite watercolour artists on Zazzle. As you can see, she paints a wide variety of subjects - animals, flowers, landscapes, still life. As with everything on this blog, these images are copyrighted by the artist.

Michele Webber is a Watercolour artist in England, exhibiting in local shows and galleries. She teaches a variety of classes and courses, mainly in drawing and watercolour painting. She also has private students who go to her for one to one study.
As well as her products shown below, more of her work is showcased and available for sale as prints at www.michelewebber.com where you will also find some great tips on how to start watercolour painting yourself.

'ProudCockerel' (rooster) greetings card by michelewebber	Shells And Pebbles postcard by michelewebber
'Sunset over the Water Meadows' fine art print by michelewebber

Digital watercolours

Although I've painted in the past (I even got an 'A' level!), I've never had the time, and probably not the ability either, to paint with watercolours - I used to use gouache. The basic watercolour filter in Photoshop gives me the chance to get close to a painted look that I would have liked to achieve. It takes a bit of experimentation, and not all photos are suitable, but it does enable you to crop out an interesting part of a photo that would otherwise be too small to use and improve the composition at the same time. For example, the grebe birthday card is a crop from the photo that I copied and posted earlier. You still have to know about pixels though, otherwise it's very easy to end up with jagged lines. Perhaps true watercolour artists would not agree (and I do envy them their talent), but I'm quite pleased with the effect!

Shabby French house birthday card by ruralfrance	Sunlit beer party invitation by ruralfrance
White wisteria birthday card by ruralfrance

It's quite difficult to see the effect in the small images, so this is a crop from a section of the French house photo.