Creating Abstract Art from a Winter Landscape

I’ve been dabbling in photography as an adjunct to art journals and sketching. I struggle with creating technically correct photographs, but a recent experiment yielded some interesting images that didn’t require me to be technically perfect. The subject was a dull, winter, Kentucky landscape, that would be boring, even if taken by a professional photographer. With a little help from Photoshop, I was able to transform these lifeless photos into something artistic.

These landscape blurs were created by moving my camera while exposing the shot. Using Adobe Photoshop to edit the images, I pumped up the color to enhance the otherwise dull images and the results are more art than photography. The real surprise was the rich textures and colors that appeared when I pushed the colors beyond safe levels.

I can see using this technique to create rich colorful backgrounds in future art journals or as a base for a collage or mixed-media art. If you have used this technique in one of your art journals or artwork, I’d love to know more about your project.

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Moleskine Releases New Cover Art Cahiers

Check out these new Cover Art Cahiers, designed by Benjamin Barrios, Paul Desmond and Maykel Cordeiro Nunes. Artwork from these three artists was selected by Moleskine to start the Cover Art Collection, a new collection of high quality notebooks created by Moleskine to celebrate the creativity of the myMoleskine community. The artwork was chosen from thousands of images submitted to my Moleskine Gallery starting March 2009.

Carp Tattoo Image by Benjamin Barrios

Available in three different layouts–ruled, squared and with plain pages–the notebook covers reproduce drawings from their Moleskine sketchbooks. The Cover Art notebooks feature Singer sewn binding.

Press The Button Designed by Maykel Nunes.

Fiori Multicolor Design by Paul Desmond.

To become better acquainted with the artists and their drawings, there are three notebook covers and three bookmarks reproducing the artists’ creative work. You can download them for free in the template area.

For the story behind the Cover Art Series, visit Moleskine.com.

To order your Moleskine Art Cover Cahiers, visit JournalingArts.com or other notebook retailers.

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Notebook Stories Hosts the February Carnival of Pen, Pencils and Paper.

The newest selection of pen, pencil and paper reviews can be found at this month’s Carnival of Pen, Pencil and Paper!

Be sure to read the following notebook reviews:

Moleskine’s Pac-Man notebook by iHanna, Yellow Moleskine Plain Notebook – The Pacman edition posted at iHanna’s Blog.

Travisthetrout presents Uses for Notebooks: My 2011 Food Diary posted at Notes in a Book.

Millie presents Product review: Pineapple paper posted at Planet Millie, saying, “A review of paper made with pineapples! Very nice to write on with fountain pens!”

Thank you to NotebookStories for hosting this month’s Carnival. The next edition of the Carnival of Pen, Pencil and Paper will be hosted by Notes in a Book. You can submit a post using our carnival submission form. More info about the carnival can be found on our blog carnival index page or here.

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