My Experiment with Digital Expressions by Susan Tuttle

I am so excited to be working through the exercises in this book by digital artist Susan Tuttle. I thought I would work through the exercises from beginning to end trying each one the way it is written. I believe that I learn best when I have followed a "recipe" to build my skill base. After I have done something a few times, I start to see that it shows up in my own style.


"Whispers" Creating Vignettes with Color Fill Layers

What I Discovered:  The photo file of the doll pictured in the text was not on the CD that came with the book so I tried to find a photo that I thought conveyed the same mood. I don't know that it does. It just makes me look old and tired. I definitely like making the vignette this way. You can control the size of the vignette with the way you drag out the elliptical selection before creating the fill layer. I also like that I can soften the effect using the eraser tool. The settings Susan suggests are the default settings for the tools-that saved some time.

The inspiration piece is by Sonya Cullimore of a bird on a tree branch. It reminded me of a photo I took a few years of ago of a local bald eagle. I tried the effect here. I liked the vignette created with the reduced opacity of 79% because I liked how the tree branches framed the shot. I cropped the photo after vignetting and I like the effect much better than on the one above. It takes less than 5 minutes from opening the file to finishing this effect.

Find Susan here.