Happy New Year!

Just some fun with a fireworks model.

In celebration of the beginning of fall. Just hints of red and gold here and there.

This is my digital artwork, not a photograph.

I created a version of this picture several years ago, but I never posted it because I wasn't quite satisfied. So I decided to take another look and polish it a bit. I ended up changing more than I had intended, but I'm pretty happy with it now. Here's the earlier version.

I love sitting outside around dusk and watching the fireflies!

I love frost and snow and things that sparkle in the sun - even though I know a late frost can do some damage in the garden. But this virtual rose isn't going to be hurt by the last frost of winter.

This morning was the first frost of autumn, and I finished this picture just in time. I love chilly mornings with frost, especially when the sun is just rising and everything glitters. I also love fall with all its colors.

This is actually looking out the window of the cottage in Cwm Solitude. You can just make out the path heading out of the cwm, and the steam fog coming from the river in the foreground.

I had been doing some pretty colorful pieces, so I thought it would be good to focus on light and shadow for a change. This is a closeup photograph of an orange rose, but I took away all the color except for the water droplets.

I don't use yellow very often, so I thought I'd try it on a rose. This is the same rose model that I used in Blue Rose. I created a silky yellow and orange material with some translucency in Vue.

The sunny cheerfulness of the yellow rose is often used to symbolize friendship and warm affection.

For this image I was figuring how to get depth of field in Vue.

Some single-petal red roses that my dad grows.

“The blue rose means mystery. An appreciation for the enigmatic, the inexplicable is expressed by the blue rose. A tantalizing vision that cannot be totally pinned down, a mystery that cannot be fully unraveled is the blue rose. A person who receives the blue rose is the subject of much speculation and thought. A complex personality that does not allow easy interpretation is what the blue rose indicates.”
— FlowerMeaning.info

“Due to the absence in nature of blue roses they traditionally signify a mystery, or attaining the impossible, or never ending quest for the impossible. They are believed to be able to grant the owner youth or grant wishes..”
— Wikipedia

This was my first “professional” image created with Vue software. I had tried out the beginner versions of the software (with all the limitations such as size and watermarks that come with that type of software) and decided I wanted to invest in learning this program and making extensive use of it in my future artwork.