Monday, March 19, 2012

Three, Four, Five Palms

This little 8x8" painting began as 3 palms and I found they aligned themselves in the way we humans almost always manage to do: perfectly evenly spaced. No, no! Nature doesn't do symmetrical, mostly placement is random, or asymmetrical, since birds dropping seeds, hurricanes, and high tides rule sowing of palm trees where human hands aren't involved. OK, I know, snowflakes are symmetrical, I love the famous VT photographer, Snowflake Bentley's gorgeous snowflake shots, too, but for palm trees... asymmetrical is best. Sooooo, I admit it, this one is Photoshopped. I selected the far right tree with my lasso tool, copied it, transformed it by tilting and stretching a bit, erased anything that didn't look right and voila! a better composition. Then I did it again with the far left tree, 5, even better, an uneven number. I love editing my paintings this way. I can do it in Photoshop and then fix the painting with paint if I like the results! Talk about a time-saver and less stress for the artist!