It seems like there's always something going on around here, and having "spare time" is like a little magic trick! Helle and Andrea warned me that being retired would NOT produce more down time, and they were right. I don't have any more now than I did when I was working full time! Anyway. There are a couple things I've been wanting to do ... when I got around to it ... and this is one of them. I have a painting and drawing program called ArtRage, which I love. One of its features is that you can bring a photograph into the program and work on it right in ArtRage. In the past I've imported photographs into ArtRage, set them up as their own layer, and used them to trace an outline for something I then painted "from scratch." Once I had the outline, I only used the photograph as a reference ... turned off the layer, and layed down and blended paint. (Virtual paint, of course.) I posted those images in the 2-D gallery, because they were true paintings. This is different. I imported the photograph into ArtRage and then used the pallet knife to blend the colors that were on the actual photograph. So. THIS IS NOT A PAINTING!! It's a photograph that's been postworked. Think of it as using the smudge tool in Photoshop, only it's a much more versatile tool. It was so much fun I've already done a second picture this way, having learned from my first try! I could skip showing you this first one, but then you wouldn't see my progress. On this one, I took a photograph straight out of the camera, did the "painting" postwork in ArtRage, and then Photoshopped the resulting image for contrast and light. The second one, which I'll show you later, I postworked heavily in Photoshop and THEN did the knife postwork in ArtRage. AhHA! :) I can't wait to try another one. Whoo-hoo! This is fun! Note: Brigitte wanted to see the postwork progression from original photograph to finished product. You can see it HERE.