John Ziebro

Today, while at work here in sunny California, I couldn’t help but think of all you Ohioans digging out from under buckets of snow. While I can’t help clear the driveway or thaw the car’s locks, I can post some inspiration, albeit small. I have been working on an invitation for work sponsored event in the Big Sur area. McWay Cove in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park makes the perfect vista for the back page. I took a few slight creative liberties, but then again… its a nameless illustration on the back of a golf flyer, no need to be perfectly accurate. Working in Illustrator, general shapes are laid out. Then, many layers of detail are added, progressively getting more specific. While I am not a painter, I imagine this process to be much the same. Start large, lay in color blocks, then work towards the fine detail. Hope all your snow melts soon!

Through the listless fog a pair of eyes scan the old chart. It’s depths and contours worn with years of use. A finger traces an arc across the surface pushing dust to the side on its way to a faded inlet. The channel should be there. Yes, it should. The parchment crinkles then rests under the weight of a half drawn flask of Ole Gibleys. Eyes peer forward once again. Fog. Only fog. Where is the damn channel?

I really like one of the comments from Flickr: “Cheap gin is confidence and better than knowledge.”

Recently a coworker mentioned that her only baby picture was badly damaged. What a perfect chance to test my image restoration abilities in Photoshop. As you can see, not only was the picture faded with age, it had major crease damage, minor crackling, and one of the worst problems in image restoration, a missing portion of the face. I scanned the image at high resolution and began to work it over in Photoshop. Initially, I fixed the pervasive crackling using the Healing tool. (this doesn’t show in low resolution image above) After sampling the neighboring areas, I used both the Clone Stamp tool and Healing tool to fix the major creases. Using the existing chairs and samples of the wall and table, the missing corner was recreated. The face I left for last. Duplicating and flipping the existing eye created a cross-eyed effect. To solve the issue, a new eyeball was drawn above the old. Now the eye’s focused naturally and had the proper highlights. A layer mask blended the eye into the rest of the face. Finally, contrast, color tone and saturation were adjusted. This restoration was actually my first full image attempt. How do you think it turned out?

An ill fated trip to explore Point Reyes National Park and do some landscape photography.