Friday, February 26, 2010

SNOW GAMES


(click on image for larger view)

          This is my first response to Monday Artday. I imagined most people would create images of skiing, ice skating, or hockey, so I decided to follow a different path. I like games and puzzles, so I created a SNOW GAME.

          Every snowflake is supposed to be unique, but in the image above there are two snowflakes that are exactly the same design.  Can you find them?


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“We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand... and melting like a snowflake. Let us use it before it is too late.”
    ---Marie Beyon Ray          
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        I could, of course, have created my snowflakes by cutting folded paper (see example, left, of one of my cut-paper flakes) but anyone can cut a paper snowflake virtually at SnowDays.  (It takes a while to load the page, so be patient.) I created about 35 flakes and chose 24 (one duplicated) for my Snow Game.

6 comments:

Rebekah Leigh said...

I love this! great idea and lovely image, would make a good textile design.

Rebekah Leigh said...

How did you put it together? Did you draw them all out by hand?

CJ said...

Rebekah ---as you see on my post, I made the snowflakes at Snowdays. I then printed them (from that website) individually and scanned each of them. The printouts made the flakes look a little gray, so I opened each one in Photoshop, selected a flake and filled it with white, then copied it, pasted it into my new design, then scaled it down to fit into the grid I had made with guidelines. I had to do this for each individual flake. All the flakes were positioned in the same way, so I rotated some of them to make the final composition a bit more interesting.

The background was made in two layers. I made white clouds on a turquoise background using a filter. But the whites were too white and interfered with the snowflakes, so I added a layer under that with solid turquoise and then made the cloud layer transparent. I didn't want just a solid color, but also didn't want the background to be too fussy. I could probably have achieved the same effect by using a lighter turquoise for the clouds instead of white, but by making the cloud layer transparent, I could slide the transparency up and down until I achieved the effect I envisioned.

Snowdays is fun ---actually rather addictive. Click on the link on the post to try it yourself.

Linda Ryan-Harper said...

I'm just learning Photoshop (slow go—when I take that baby out for a spin I go 10 mph on an open highway and strip the gears); this site once again shows how generous a community of artists can be: inclusive and instructional—thanks

. justin segal said...

really fun idea — love your "different" take on snow games! I'm guessing . . . top right and 4th row left are the same?

Susan said...

These are so beautiful and delicate, what a creative take on the theme, I love it!