Photo, Paint and Pastels

Yesterday The Good Luck Duck commented on  "Except The Kitchen Sink"


"I could use a program that does pointy arrows 'n' stuff on photos - what do you use?"


Well,  I use all the good free stuff I can find.  My favorite program, which I used yesterday to do the pointy arrows and stuff, matter of fact I use it to process just about all 99.9% my pictures, is GetPaint.Net .  You can also paint with it, so I dug out some of my paintings to share with you. 


I'm a lousy artist, so feel free to laugh and poke fun. I'm used to it. 

Self Portrait

Dear Miss Mermaid

The GetPaint.Net program is 100% free with no nagging ads or spyware. You can add loads of plugins to it, making it do astounding things. I have not learned all the features of the program, but I've been using it for years. For some reason I tend to take crooked pictures, so I am able to straighten them up. I can't decide if the camera is crooked, or if I just naturally see the world lopsided.


Whatever it is, I have to straighten many of my photos. I look at them on the rectangle computer laptop closeup, I am able to see the slant that dominates many photos I take. When I take them, it seems straight, but they aren't. *sigh*


I also take pics of extraneous stuff, so I use the crop to show just what I want to focus on.  

The Century Plant Garden

(I used to manage this vacation beach villa and garden)

I often crop to a round or oval shape, to omit things and focus on the subject. I like the font tool for adding notes, or captions.  I discovered one day that instead of drawing plain lines to point at things, I could switch it to a pointer, such as I did yesterday in my blog about the galley. 


It's also a snap to convert pictures to smaller sizes for uploading to the blog or internet or for articles. Those huge sized pics that are necessary for great printing, are a pain in the elbow to upload to the internet, so I always resize my pictures to the size I want to display,  before uploading. 

Cooper Island, Virgin Islands

Last time I was there, they still had no electricity, just private generators.

You can also paint with the program. I decided to dig out some of my stuff to share with you. You see my photos on the blog,  all the time, but you haven't seen my artsy fartsy  stuff.


Although I am a lousy artist, I have some of my framed pastel prints for sale at this link for  $39.99


Once in a great while, someone buys one. Like maybe once a year. 


If I'm lucky. 


I give new meaning to the term starving artist. I  am thinking I will make more available one of these days, you just never know, somebody might buy one next year. 

Jost Van Dyke, Virgin Islands

(I sailed to this magical island hundreds of times)

Fat Cat

(I miss him so much)

Bomba Shack, Virgin Islands

(The shelves really were crooked at the bar)

The Bomba Shack is famous for their Full Moon parties on the beach where they serve shroom tea.  I used to dance in the sand to the sound of the live bands almost every full moon. The tea made the full moon look very colorful indeed. 

Smugglers Cove Beach ,Virgin Islands

(I swam here hundreds of times.)

Well, I am practically in tears now, digging out these prints,  have made me so homesick for the islands. 

It seems so long ago and far away, but I was lost in the Caribbean for 22 years. I've barely been in America 20 months now!  

Lawdy mercy, small wonder I live in a state of confusion. 

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