An oversight.

I've forgotten to mention that on Monday, Wensleydale and I went to this at the Discovery Centre. I had heard of the Chapman brothers but never seen their work. This was an excellent introduction – and the images were much more varied that the website suggests. Jokey, clever, beautifully drawn, and worth studying closely. 

The accompanying exhibition is by students from a local secondary school, Henry Beaufort. [Blogs are good for you – I realised I didn’t know who Henry Beaufort was, so Googled him. 15th C bishop of Winchester, apparently. I’m not sure from the Wiki site what he did to deserve to have a school named after him, but I digress.]

The students’ exhibition, inspired by the Chapmans’ work, is brilliant – drawings, altered toys, [“Toy Box Transplants”] storyboards and stop animation films, with music chosen and played, I suspect, by the students too.  I wouldn’t take a small child, unless they enjoy the macabre, [or an older person without  a broadminded view of art, come to that], but it is a very enjoyable little show.

Today's image editing site is probably my favourite of the more basic ones, BeFunky. It only offers 9 effects, including the ubiquitous ‘Warholizer’, but there are options for tuning with each of the nine. For example with the Warholizer, there is only one image but you can change the colour and the size of the dots [bit of Lichtenstein in there, I think, as well as Warhol].

You’ll notice Befunky labels the image but it is easy to crop off in another program.

This is ‘Charcoal’ , which gives you a choice of colour and amount of detail.

 

Another version of Charcoal. I think this is a beautiful effect, and very inspirational.

There is no visible ‘Undo’ button but if you click on another effect it seems to start again from your original image. I think. Unless you know better.

 

Another drawback is that you can’t see the effect of the options in advance – but clicking on the original effect again will reset the image if you don’t like the changes.

If you are like me, the idea of ‘Patriotic’ effects will not be immediately appealing – especially if your flag’s colours are not red, white and blue – but click on ‘Patriotic’ and the fourth dog from the left produces this – with maximum saturation and increased ‘Colour Space’.[You'll understand if you go to the site!] 

I could go on giving you examples but you would probably all be asleep very quickly. There isn’t one of the 9 effects which didn’t produce an inspirational image if I played around with it. But given my Banksy-inspired interest in graffiti, I can’t help but show you this one, produced with the ‘Stenciler’ effect, which is something I haven't found anywhere else. I really like this - definitely embroiderable, but it could be transfer printed as well for a more faded effect.

So – if you are looking for an easy image editing program for ideas for embroidery, I think you’ll get the best value for [no] money from BeFunky. You can even add frames and text if you desire.