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Welcome to Chistell Publishing's Book/Writing Discussion Forum! Enjoy engaging in conversation with other visitors to our Book/Writing website! IMPORTANT NOTE: Only Book/writing related discussions allowed at the boards! Have fun!

Chistell Publishing Book/Writing Discussion Forum
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New children's book

Please check out my new book at:
www.lulu.com/content/237867

www.bradymagazine.com/gallery/evehall

pet memorial gifts

pet memorial gifts

When a cat lover loses a treasured cat to death, the mourning process is similar to that of loss of a family member. A fitting memorial helps to ease the loss, whether it be a picture with a written memorial, a plaque, figurine, or a garden memorial statue or stone. I've chosen a few fitting memorials that can either be given as gifts or to honor the memory of a cat you've personally lost.

It seems that the holidays sometimes bring new losses with them, and certainly the memories of previous losses. One way of helping to solve the pain of a friend's loss of a cat is a memorial donation to a cat shelter or cat cause. I believe this kind of donation serves two purposes:

1.It is a wonderful way of helping to heal the pain of the survivor
2.It honors the life of the deceased cat by bringing hope to other cats

pencil sketches

pencil sketches

One of the most common problems in drawing is lack of structure. You can see it when the eyes don't quite line up right, or when the handle on a cup looks odd, or when a figure's arms are too long. More often than not, the artist has dived into drawing details, and all the detailed areas haven't quite matched when joined together. To avoid this, you need to sketch the structure first, then build up the detail.
This approach is similar to the 'step by step' method of circles and ovals that you will often see in drawing lessons, where the picture is broken into simple shapes. But instead of two-dimensional, flat shapes, now you need to look for three-dimensional ones that you will sketch in perspective
Start with fairly simple objects and then try more complicated ones. One useful approach is to imagine the object that you want to sketch is made of glass, visualizing the hidden edges of the object so that you can draw them. Lightly pencil in the whole form, including lines you can't see, will help you accurately show perspective and proportion.


AKVIS Sketch is an award-winning program for conversion of photos into pencil sketches and watercolor drawings. Make any photo look like a B&W or color drawing, imitate the technique of graphite or color pencil, charcoal or watercolor painting
Sketch can be used on many occasions. Surprise your friends and relatives by presenting them their pencil portraits. Make a watercolor drawing out of a photo from your last nature shooting to decorate your room. Convert your own photo into a color sketch to print on a T-shirt. Create a comic out of your party videos.
AKVIS Sketch has a simple interface with a few sliders. At first you can process the image with the default settings and then touch up the photo adding color, or trying different techniques - from pencil to charcoal or watercolor. You can make the hatching denser or finer and change the pitch angle of strokes. After that, you can apply a texture to imitate a painting on a canvas

painting a photograph

painting a photograph

Since the advent of photography, it has been negated by most as an artform with the ludicrous thought that all you have to do is aim the camera and push the shutter, photography is always mentioned as being separate from art.

The reality is that photography is as much an artform as painting or any other form of expression or communication.



In many ways, photography and painting are very similar, in other ways they are very different. Both have their inherent challenges, but photography can be as difficult as painting and sometimes more so. Each is a two dimensional creation, each uses composition and design and each takes varying amounts of time to create. Like painting, photography is a very lonely, solitary profession, only one person at a time can create a photograph, only one person at a time can look through the viewfinder, only one person at a time can make the final print with all the decisions that entails.

Painting starts with a blank canvas, a palette of paints, a brush, and the artist's skill. Painting requires the artist to create or copy from life, or from his/her imagination. A painter is free to choose which elements in the world excites him and which will be used or discarded from the paintings.

The photographer is challenged by the entire world. Photography is a process of selection and elimination much more than painting. One cannot move a tree that is in the way, so one has to use the viewfinder to find and select the best composition to include the tree in the picture. It's also a process of waiting for the right thing to happen, as in reportage, for the animal to make himself seen as in wildlife, waiting for just the right light as in nature.

Photography is a process of creating the light with artificial means if it's too dark or when shooting in the studio. It's a process of interacting with models and actors to achieve a look, a feeling, an emotion. It's a process of looking for the unusual, from point of view to detail, of being aware of all the things in life that we pass by every day and making the viewer notice them. A wall is not a wall, it's brick and mortar, it's stucco and graffiti, it's tiny insects who make their homes in the nooks and crevices, it's the mountain for a vine to climb, it's the prop for a man to lean on… and on and on.

Just like in painting, only the imagination limits the scope and just like in painting, the photographer who can and does create the entire scenario by starting with a blank background and adding and arranging props and or models/actors to create and illustrate his idea.

In fact, some feel, and I’m one of those, that just like in painting, the purest creations are those done in that manner, starting from scratch and creating the entire photograph or painting from the mind.

Painting requires technical dexterity to draw with a pencil, paint with a brush, mix the colors so that they emulate the ones from real life, or to form a shape on the canvas. Photography requires technical expertise in a more technological manner, chemistry, physics, as well as manual dexterity for focusing, camera angle, changing aperture, etc.



Responsibilities are different as well, photography is perceived as reality, the cliché: "the camera does not lie", gives people expectations that the photographer must deal with. Painters are expected to "invent" or create the world in which they work.


Photography should be considered as a three phased process:
1. Taking or "making" the picture.

I want to emphasize the idea that "Amateurs TAKE pictures, pros MAKE them", particularly in the arts. Unless the photographer makes his own prints hands on, he is not an artist, but a commercial photographer.

2. Developing the film.

There is much control in chemistry, it is agreed that the technology of color film processing is so refined as to require most photographers to have color film developed by labs, but there is more variety of film/developer combinations in black and white that require the photographer to keep control of that aspect of the work. For example, contrast, tonality and grain are affected not only by the chemistry, but by the temperature of the chemistry, the amount of time in the developer, the agitation during development, etc.

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