My theme of today is "Pages in History" with the idea that for something to have any kind of fame and fortune it must be remember through the ages and (at least to me) books do that.
In the first image the main backdrop is my mythology book (no, that's not a bible I scanned) that was leather bound gold page binded. These books always gave me the symbol of a rich fortuna 
because regular books (hard back or soft back/trade) are all cheap ranging from 4.99 - 25.00 but the leather bounds always have a rich, expensive look and feel. When I scanned it, however, my already pastey pages grew even more white and the gold plate lost it's edge so I went back and fixed that by brightening the edges/gold, but there wasn't much I could do about the pages so I went through my art paper and found some crinkled parchment pape that would give it an aged paper look.
because regular books (hard back or soft back/trade) are all cheap ranging from 4.99 - 25.00 but the leather bounds always have a rich, expensive look and feel. When I scanned it, however, my already pastey pages grew even more white and the gold plate lost it's edge so I went back and fixed that by brightening the edges/gold, but there wasn't much I could do about the pages so I went through my art paper and found some crinkled parchment pape that would give it an aged paper look. The main "picture" consist of symbolc symbols of dragons and golds. Dragons, to me, are royal creatures. They are well known across cultures thus hold a famed feel towards them. They're also greedy creatures, hording gold and other shiny objects. The gold pieces in this image is foreign currency both Canadian and Ukrainian that I used color balance to bring out the yellow/gold look in silver pocket change. I then preceded to warp and skew the gold around the dragons, feeling the base. I left the entire image in a rich shade of yellow to add the feeling of 
wealth. I then warped these into the pages of the book to capture the image for all time.
wealth. I then warped these into the pages of the book to capture the image for all time.Interestingly behind the dragons, faded from the original pages if one looks closely, is the tale of King Arthur.
My next image is a pirate treasure map with all it's mythological glory. Our dear pirates started their adventure in the Land of the Dragons, continuing forward they found there way to port where they hopped aboard their ship Lady Luck. Follow the black 'X's to the Red one that marks the treasure, but don't go to far south or the monsters there would eat you up.
This one I used the same parchment paper from before. The photoshop tool I used was removin the channels until only the red remained. Then inverse the select to get on the lines. I put these lovely style of cliparts to give it that "Ye Ole Map" look.
June 16, 2010 at 7:52 PM
i really like the choice of book that you chose as your piece for the first picture, however when i look at the picture its kind of hard to see the dragons and gold and stuff so maybe just darking them so you can see them better might be a suggestion.