Chain Link Fence with Snow (Digital Woodcut)

Chain Link Fence with Snow (Digital Woodcut) Originally uploaded by randubnick

This image is not from a recent snowstorm, although it could be. (Here north of Boston, we have had run of snowstorms this month.) I created this digital woodcut today, but I made it from a photograph that I took back in December of 2005 with my first phonecam. I have been learning to make digital woodcuts using Painter IX, and I thought that some of the low-resolution images from my old phonecam might work well. Usually we pay little attention to a chain link fence, but the snow makes us look and helps us to see patterns. Woodcuts emphasize patterns, so I thought this would be a good choice. I opened the photo in Painter IX and fiddled around with the controls for a woodcut effect. It took several attempts to get this version and I had to limit the number of colors to five or six in order to get a nice white highlights for the snow. I like this version because it shows off the geometry of the fence and the brightness of the snow. Art helps us to see beauty in things that we look at (or look past) everyday.