Photoshop and me

I've made no secret of the fact that myself and Photoshop do not get along - I cannot, despite great help from fellow artists, get it sussed and as time goes on fear I never will. I follow instructions step by step and to the letter and while there are times I get it to do what I want there are more when I'm sitting there totally confused - like today when I tried to join two pictures together. I've done this successfully in the past but today Photoshop decided to remove the colour! Why - does it really hate me that much?

I have been working on the Springer Spaniel montage - mainly on the main pic - and wanted to scan where I'm at for my website and blog. Being a large portrait I had to do this in two halves - no problem - but as soon as I joined them the colour disappeared!?!?! I've spent more wasted hours than I care to think of trying to get Photoshop to like me and unfortunately today wasn't the day we gelled so can't show you where I'm at with the montage but can tell you I've made some progress with the reeds and that they're taking a frustratingly long time to do.

Something I could do - hooray - was scan and crop my first of many horse portraits I'm working on in between commissions. This is the first drawing/painting I've done for me in months, in fact coming up to a year and I'm really enjoying working on it.

She's in coloured pencil on drafting film. Working on this surface is great but as with everything, has it's negative points - the main one being layering. As an artist who builds layer upon layer of pencil to get the depth and colour I'm after I found I needed to change my technique quite considerably on this surface. I do like how the pencil feels and looks on it however so will definately be exploring it more.