Skywatch Friday - Orange Curtain

As a veil of rain moved across Tucson, Arizona at sunset, our neighborhood remained dry.

Thanks for visiting! Many more sky pictures from around the world at:

Pixel Magic

Greetings and Happy Cactus Monday!

I've been playing around with this simple Photoshop trick. A single line of pixels is selected and then pulled using Ctrl+T. This technique works vertically as well as horizontally. The stretched sections can be moved, and the canvas enlarged, if desired. These are some of my experiments:

Red Bird Of Paradise

There is something about viewing altered images that gets creative juices flowing. Hopefully I've included enough cactus examples to provide color and design inspiration for cactus lovers as well as art and nature enthusiasts.

Budding Barrel Cactus

Prickly Pear Fruit

House Finches in Red and Orange

March Ocotillos

Purple Prickly Pear

Cactus Wren

Azurite and Malachite

Creosote Seeds

Sunset

I learned about this process from an article by Evad at Colourlovers.com. Click here for some stunning examples of Single Pixel Color Inspiration from Photos.

Visit Teri's Painted Daisies to see more Cactus Monday posts.

Craycroft Road Art

Here is some of the public art on Craycroft Road between River Road and Sunrise Drive. The wall treatments tie in with the agave themed art along Sunrise Drive featured on my Sabino Canyon blog.
After Craycroft Road was widened, mosaics were created to adorn the retaining walls. The artwork is colorful, yet subtle.

The material looks like ceramic tile or stone.

Green metal agaves decorate fences at regular intervals.

Beside wall treatments, I found that two free-standing sculptures had sprung up. This one is by the River Road Library. I think it resembles an agave and the base echos the shapes on the wall mosaics.
And up the road, this rusted metal sculpture blends in surprisingly well. It doesn't have pointy shapes like the piece above. Rather than agave leaves, perhaps cactus blossoms or prickly pear pads come to mind.

To complete the road improvements, the unsightly cell tower was camouflaged. Yes, the tall cactus pictured below is fake. It's a saguaro cell tower like the ones on Sunrise Drive.
I'm pleased that Pima County and the City of Tucson support public art. The installations I've shown along Sunrise Drive and Craycroft Road are site-specific. In future posts I hope to share some of the rich diversity of artwork to be found around Tucson.

Cactus Monday - Faux Oil Painting

Happy Cactus Monday :)

Welcome to Desert Colors! I started this new blog as a place to put my creative experiments and art related posts.

These are some of my recent experiments with oil painting in Photoshop. I followed this Photoshop Essentials tutorial. The tutorial shows how to set up the oil painting action so that it can instantly be applied to a photo without having to paint individual brushstrokes. I tried it out on many photos, with mixed results, but I do like the glass-like distortion.

The colors are quite saturated on this first one exaggerating the late afternoon glow of the setting sun on the prickly pear pads. Click picture for closer view.
I kept the colors more natural on the next two images.

I had the most fun with this photo of an old prickly pear cactus.

I rotated the canvas and cropped in for an abstract effect, before doing the oil painting action.

Then, I inverted the colors and cropped closer. I like this one the best, but the picture is small now and it won't enlarge.

Thanks for stopping by. For more Cactus Monday posts, visit Teri's Painted Daisies.