Poinsettias

[Nancy Bell]

This is a poinsettia tree and not the common poinsettia plant that we see all over at Christmas time. I took the original image during a hard rain through an open bus window in Bhutan. Processing was a layer of fractalius, then Topaz Clean, watercolor filter, with various opacities. Then some tweaks in PS. It is hard for me not to put the chop symbol in some discrete corner. It seems so "out there" and I'm just taking my best guess at a placement.

I am spending a lot of time at my computer as I must wait for various contractors to arrive, on their own schedule, to continue working on the huge amount of damage I had due to a broken refrigerator water supply hose flooding for days unchecked during the fire evacuation. It is frustrating not to even know what day a particular contractor may work, let alone even knowing the approximate time! I can't even take the dog for a walk thinking some contractor may show up. Oh well...I hope the project will be completed by the end of the summer !

[Cheryl Slechta]

Nancy, I'm sorry to hear about your contractor problems but the good news is you've got time to create images like this I had no idea there were poinsettia trees - they must be lovely. I really like the fractalius/Topaz,watercolor combo and the diagonal lines of the plants. I might evict the one pink petal in the LLC and clean up the 2 wispy things at the bottom under the flower on the right but those are minor nits. And chop placement is not for the faint of heart It's always interesting to get Dan's insight on them - it looks good to me.

[Anita Bower]

This image would make wonderful fabric for drapes! I very much like the treatment you did with this image. For me it has a flowing feeling. Gorgeous, gorgeous colors. Cheryl makes good suggestions above. I wonder about croping out the two petals, one upper left border and one lower left border, that seem to be coming in from the outside of the image.

Thanks for keeping us posted about your house renovation. Too bad you have to contend with the frustration of not knowing when workers will be coming.

[John Storjohann]

Beautiful work...an image within an image, with a lot of potential for different compositions and crops. Nice job of processing...not sure about the placement of the crop...then again, I've never really been able to get my head wrapped around where they should go! Nicely done.

[denise ippolito]

Nancy, You did a great job with the processing! Love it! Cheryl makes some great suggestions. The chop looks good to me but Dan is the expert on placement, size,color etc.. Sorry to hear about your contractor problems.

[Dan Brown]

Lovely creation, Nancy! As for the chop placement, the nice thing about using a chop is that you can use it to aid in balancing a composition or not! If you have a balanced comp, you can put the chop to compliment the comp and that can be in numerous locations, providing that they don't upset the balance of the piece. For this post, you are really close to having the chop in the right place IMO. I would like to see it closer to the upper right corner. This would fill the empty space in that area and balance the whole piece nicely. If you had some pink leaves in that area, your piece would be balanced without the aid of the chop, and then you could put the chop somewhere else, and I see lots of spots for it in that case. So, design the piece to leave a spot for the chop as a comp element or design the piece to stand on it's own and then throw the chop in where ever it looks nice and doesn't upset your creation too much. Blah, blah, blah

[Nancy Bell]

Thanks everyone. I appreciate the suggestions and here is a repost, where I cloned out the bits that Cheryl suggested and moved the chop some.

[Anita Bower]

I think this is an improvement, but I'm not evaluating the chop placement as I know nothing about it.

[Dan Brown]

This is a great improvement IMO! Now,when I look at the piece, it seems very balanced!

[Mitch Carucci]

Love the feeling of movement.