Lighter Handed

My wellness day on Thursday was wonderful.  I made jewelry all morning and then went to my knitting class where I practiced casting on and off.  Then, I went on to drawing class in the evening.  I didn't get around to cooking any meals, but I took the time to put a grocery list together for a few Cooking Light recipes and now I have the most yummy smells coming out of my kitchen!  I'm trying a baked root vegetable sort of thing with chicken.  We'll see how that goes.

In the meantime, it's almost like I got to have another day of reprieve from anything "real world" again today and I love it.  I had to go through my photos and find something to draw.  Part of this class I'm in is designed to work us through a drawing from beginning to end.  I was completely overwhelmed with picking one thing that I will have to focus on for hours of work.  But, alas, I finally found a really pretty shot and worked it out.  I'll share more about that one as it goes in later posts.  For now, though, I want to share a few variations of a photo that I found while wandering through my files.  

This is a light from out at the Bedford Springs Resort in my hometown.  I took tons of shots during the course of a few visits last year and I want to use more of them.  I worked with this shot for my Kim Klassen layering adventures.  Some of her advice that I read this week was to be aware of having a heavy hand with adjustments and effects.  Well, I obviously didn't heed this advice for the banner, but I tried a "lighter touch" and here's what I have to offer...I wanted to share my latest PSE banner.  The "gradient map" is my new favorite tool.  Here's the new banner:

 And here's the original shot that they came from:

I'm happy it's the end of a Monday.  I got lots of good mail today, so I'll share later this week!