Module 5: Texture in Landscape

Maybe I should have called this post 'My Love Affair with Trees'! I've loved trees for as long as I can remember ... vague memories of my hippie 'tree hugging' phase as a teenager. Established in our 'forever home' with a garden far too small to have a real life tree (the flowering cherry tree that was there had to go after much heart searching as it was causing cracks in the house wall), we set about creating our very own bonsai arboretum. I have oak trees which are no more than 10" tall grown from acorns which we planted ourselves, a crab apple tree 8" tall and 35 years old which is smothered in blossom every spring and produces tiny crab apples every autumn, a tiny quince which is the first to bloom each year with beautiful red flowers, a gingko, a selection of maples... well, you get the idea.

 Maple bonsai

Crab apple bonsai

Everywhere I go I take photographs of trees so when I saw the topic for Module 5 - Texture in the Landscape - I immediately knew what my subject would be! So tree bark it is.

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My first job was to narrow down the images that I would use as inspiration for my work and tried to pick out some of the trees with the most interesting textures. We were asked to zoom in on the particular area of interest and to manipulate the images in some way so as to emphasise the texture. It was then that I hit my first obstacle ... the last update of Windows 10 had rendered my copy of Photoshop Elements unusable! I found a couple of free photo editing programs online but they weren't really doing what I wanted. I waited to see if Santa would bring me an up-to-date copy of Photoshop and he didn't let me down.

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