#51

Discovery of Love

#50

Proud but Shy

Credits: Google image.

#49

Stripes

Background painted in Corel Paint Essential and manipulated in PSE9

#48

This image is of my husband on holidays at his Oma's house in Pinneberg, Germany.

Childhood

#47

Mansion

Credits: Google images

#46

Male

I found this great Bonobo chimpanzee on Shutterstock, so I used a smudge painting technique to bring him into the digital world.

#45

Watching the Sunset.

Credits: Google image of zebra, background images from Photoshop Magazine resource disc.

#44

Here I have combined an image of a modern road with Gustave Caillebette's painting of "Rising Road".

Two Roads

#43

A difficult subject to illustrate.  Credits Google images and Shutterstock image of Old woman.

Dying

#42

Credits for "Motherhood" are Google images, the theme is based around Mary Cassette's painting.

Motherhood

#41

Morning mist, we have all I am sure experienced the wonder of mist in the morning, I have tried to capture this in this digital painting.

Mist over the Lake

#40

Sun is the title of #40, Credits for lotus flower and sun image to Google images.

The Sun and the Lotus

#39

What do we dream about?

Credits: Paintings by Falandrin Hippolyte and William Bouguereau, background from Crowabout Studiob-Spring Fling.

Frog and Fairy Princess

#38

The background is a personal photograph of the Menindee Lakes, Google images for the stylized Australian Aboriginal kangaroo, statue by exfordy.

Abandoned

#37

Just a bit of whimsy. Credits for eye go to Google for the volcanic ash cloud and the eye.

#36

White is the challenge, this was interesting to work out as white is white, anyway we played around and came up with "Twins". Image from Shutterstock, cloud background from personal photographs.

#35

The elements in "Journey" are from the Japanese Space Probe - as the probe Hayabusa streaked across the sky before landing, a simulated image of the probe landing on the asteroid Itokawa, and an image of the asteroid.

Journey

#34

Could not decide which image to use for stars so included both. Images are from Shutterstock and Google.

#33

Love smoothies, so this is the starting point of my image.  Glasses of smoothies (Shutterstock) have been filtered in Filter Forge 3 using the Pixelate filter and then given a slight twirl.

Twisted Smoothie

#32

Moon and sunset (Google image), gymnast (Shutterstock), clouds from personal collection, lot of manipulation.

Night

# 31

The title of the challenge is "Flowers", I have used images created by Joao Pedro Canhenha in his tutorial "Summer Nature" with some changes, but not many.

Flowers

#30

The image for "Umbrellas" is based on natures umbrella mushrooms (Google images) and beach scene form Photoshop magazine resource disc.

Natures Umbrellas

#29

Happiness, what makes us happy is it a smile on Henk's face, pusspuss asleep, roses blooming in the garden, the list seems to be endless.  Images are from Shutterstock, quote is from John Barrymore on this subject. Light beams from Color in Motion.

Happiness

#28

Sorrow is a difficult subject as there are so many things that make us sad.  I have chosen to use an article on the Armenian Genocide, where a mother is mourning the death of her child and a Shutterstock image of a angel statue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenia has all the information on this terrible event.

Sorrow

#26

Two photographs by Alvarez Bravo were used in this image, one is a street scene and the other is of Frida Kahlo.  I have added a tear.

Tears

#24

"High in the Jet-stream" is a photograph of the sky that I took as we were driving to Mildura yesterday.  The design element is a Google image of fire-escapes, also used Filter Forge Lomo filter and did a slight twirl.

High In the Jet-stream

#25

Summer haze was designed on Wacom tablet with boat image from Google and a cloud brush from Blazter.

Summer Haze

"Lake Mist" was designed with tablet, the foreground is Pinnau River from personal collection.

Lake Mist

#23

Images are from Google search on whales.

#22

To me the challenge was not to use an image of a beautiful girl etc.  So I turned to indigenous cultures and found this energetic goddess from the Andes (Wikipedia) and combined her with a painting of birch trees by Zoltan Szabo as the background.  I have included the information from Wilipedia,

Mother nature

The indigenous peoples of the Andes worship the fertility goddess Pachamama. In Inca mythology, Pachamama presides over planting and harvesting and causes earthquakes. After conquest by Catholic Spain her image was masked by the Virgin Mary, behind whom she is invoked and worshiped in the Aboriginal ritual in some parts of Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Peru.^[4] The religion centered in the Pachamama is practiced currently in parallel form to Christianity, to the point that many families are simultaneously Christian and pachamamistas.^[5] Pachamama is sometimes syncretized the Virgin of Candelaria.^[6]

#21

How mysterious a cave can be.  Two year ago I ventured into a lava cave at Mt Eccles, there is no lighting and what my camera revealed was incredible, so I have taken this photograph and just used a filter or two.

Lava Cave Mt Eccles, Victoria

# 20

Half is based on a statue that I purchased a number of years ago in Ferndale, California, it is titled "Rising Heart" and is hand forged steel by Kramer.  The top half is masked with a rose blending "Difference".  Texture by Jerry Jones.  Here is a link to Kramer's site http://www.kramersculptures.com/

#19

Silver is the challenge, so I have taken a photograph of  a ruined house in Silverton NSW.  Silverton was established during the early mining days out of Broken Hill.

Silverton

#18

Well today was cold and raining, so it was appropriate to tackle number 18 "Rain". Photograph is from Shutterstock, I just played with duplicating her reflection and adding rain drops.

Rain, rain go away

#17

Upside down, how appropriate for this day and age. This photograph is from my personal collection. I just love the image of dead red gums standing in water.

#16

Where would we be without colour. Culture dictates how we view colour, for instance the Inuit have many, many word for the colour of snow.  In this composition I have used paint splashes (forgotten my source) and a figure from Deviantart.

Colour

# 15

During November 2010 on a visit to Broken Hill, NSW to visit Henk's son and family, I decided to photograph the closed mines, these photographs are in use for various other projects, so I decided to use them here as well.

Silence of the Mines

# 14

The challenge for #14 is "smile", so here is myself and two sisters, I am the one on the left.

# 13

One morning I took a photo of the dawn sky, I knew that it would have it's uses and I have used it a few times to add texture to a background.  This time I applied the Fractal filter from Filter Forge and then added the original photo.

Dawn over Berri

# 12

Maybe the subconscious was humming the tune "Silver Threads" when I decided to play with the theme "Gold" so I just changed it around. I have wanted to play around with text so this was the opportunity.  Also had fun making a golden sheep (you know Jason and the Argonauts).

# 11

"Memory" is the challenge and there were a few ideas on how to present it, some did not work, but I think this idea of old letters and photographs do and also the thought of the elderly lady with  her memory album in her lap.

Photograph of boy is my husband, the elderly lady and bride are Google images, Envelopes by fungopolly and brushes of vintage post cards by Fidget Resources.

# 10

I was really stumped with the lemon tree until I tried textural effects from "Digital Photography Special Effects" by Michael Freeman, I took a graphic of a tree without leaves and made a embossed layer, then I ran it through Filter Forge filters and then applied an action by PFx Reflections Triptych.

Lemon Tree

#9

For Ancient I decided to depict the ancient nature of earth,  The rocks are two photographs , one at Port Fairy and the other along the Great Ocean Road, Victoria.  Starry sky and Planet are from Shutterstock and NASA, Planet brush from Obsidian Dawn.

# 8

#8 is "Innocence", at first it seemed an easy task, but I found that I could find a suitable subject, so I have taken another William Bouguereau painting, to create a collage that may have a hidden meaning behind the word "Innocence".

#7

Heaven, many things are be interpreted as "heaven" a life supply of Peters icecream, unlimited coupons to a spa etc.  I decided just to go for photomanipulation, although I did put in the feathers and gate as symbols of a higher place.

Heaven

#5

Exodus is the theme for #5, I had to think about this and took the meaning of the word to imply the movement of people, I did not want to tie it into migration.  I have taken images of people fleeing from Kenya, movement of people across the Himalayas; images of people at the waterfront in Haiti, and an old photo of people arriving at the Port of Melbourne, this last image is a tribute to my husband Henk who arrived in Australia in 1956 from the Netherlands.

Exodus

# 4

My interpretation of dark is based on NYX the goddess of the night, who is usually represented as the substance of night: a veil of dark veil of mist drawn from the underworld which blotted out the light of Aither (shining upper atmosphere).

So I hope you can interpret the following design.

Mist of Darkness

The background is a photograph I took of dawn from my back door, I used it twice then created some clouds and did some fiddling.  The dark veil is actually a selection of hair distorted.

#3

Light is the challenge, so I decided to work with the saying "light as a feather". I have also discovered the wonders of RAW.

Light as a Feather

#2

Here is my interpretation of " Love ".   The poor damsel is wondering about her love by plucking the petals from her daisy.

He loves, he loves me not.

Painting is by William Bouguereau, effects by Filter Forge, daisy pot from Shutterstock.