Edible Landscape - Pyschedelic Jello

I recall being in a gallery eavesdropping in on a conversation between two collectors. The one was describing her favorite painting style where the paint is put on so think that it looks like pudding. In the case of the landscape above it reminds me of psychedelic Jello. For one, the water is doing all kinds of rippling in two different directions like a large platter of Jello would do. Then there are the crazy saturated colors not found in nature, but strangely enough in some of the food we eat.

As I've been discussing, I think for once the subject didn't get in the way of color exploration. I find myself often staying too loyal to the original, whereby it acts as some sort of constraint which I constantly measure my efforts against. It's a crutch I need to free myself from.

In this landscape study from a Lake Vermilion photo, I put texture explorations in the back seat and focused more fully on color as I pushed the saturation sliders further than I ever did before. That and some vodka produced colors that I wanted to dive into. Wouldn't it be absolutely crazy if there was a place you could go to for a short visit where the world was colored like this landscape. Of course we couldn't live there, because our eyes would burn out from over sensation.

Maybe that is what a painting is for?.... no.. not to burn our eyes out, but a place to go to for a short visit.

I love how the grass and shoreline turned out. There is enough texture there to keep me from feeling the need for more throughout as was done in the petunia study a few posts back. Both the Topaz Simplify and Clean plug-ins where used multiple times on different layers, along with Photoshop layer masks and other layer adjustments. When you click on the image the enlargement will be close to what the final 20x30 print will look like.

I don't think going psychedelic will work with many subjects so maybe the lesson learned is that I need to choose subjects which 'allow' me to be as nonrepresentational as I want to.