Grrrrr!

Don't you just hate days when nothing works? It's not even eight o'clock in the morning and my workroom lights refuse to work (Clive is muttering in the garage with fuses and trip switches). Blogger still won't load my pics and I can't find a vital piece of work for tomorrow's class. It can only get better - can't it?

8.30 am and it has got better - the lights work and I can load my pics on Clive's machine. Still not on my laptop - how weird is that?

Anyway, to get back to yesterday. Thank you so much for your lovely comments about the talk. Pat. It cheered me up no end (the cat is ill again) and I thought your comment on your blog that you thought of computer design as cheating, was very interesting. I don't think of it like that at all as I always take care when composing photos or else I scan my drawing in. What I don't like is when it is very obvious what effects are used - so always use several on top of each other or fall back on our good old Displacement maps.

Had some emails about how to do Displacement maps so I'll do a tutorial step-by-step on Wednesday. I think I have done this before and it's my fault for not adding the right notes to the blog.

Here is a pic from Sissinghurst of the white Wisteria.

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And a closer shot of the flowers, using the Layers and duplicating the pic. Then adding a new layer and putting a colour wash over with the fill tool.

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Changing the top blend mode to 'difference' gives this great design.

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and then putting it through the Polar Co-ordinates effect.

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Here is Kathy from Kent's lovely bag, based on chimneys. See yesterday's post.

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And a detail.

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Back to the preparations for the Marlborough workshop.