The Great American Road Trip

I'm originally from England and although I have lived in the U.S. for over 30 years, up until last year I had actually seen very little of it.

That was when my husband decided to plan a cross country road trip for us. It really was the trip of a lifetime and we came home with a treasure chest of memories and hundreds of photographs.

Our first stop was Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. The caverns were spectacular, to say the least!

It was a first test for my new camera, and although not all of the photos were successful, there were a few gems among them. I thought this particular formation, The Chinese Theater, was especially photogenic.

We couldn't go on a Great American Road Trip without visiting the Grand Canyon could we?

Unfortunately it was a bit hazy while we were there and for most of the day we didn't see the canyon in all it's glory.  However, my husband booked us on the "Sunset Tour" and while the driver was concerned that we might not be lucky, in actual fact, once the sun got down to the horizon, it broke out underneath the cloud layer and we were treated to some spectacular views.

I was worried that our drive across Nevada might be a bit dull - miles upon miles of desert terrain.  However, it was far from it.  For a start, the "Great Basin" as it is called, is surrounded on all sides by mountains, which we don't have down here in my area of Texas.  And then we kept seeing these dust devils around us.  I was fascinated by them, and became determined to get a photo.

Let me tell you, it's not easy to get a photo of a dust devil through the bug-spattered windshield of a car at 55 mph, but after numerous failures, I finally got a good photo.

Later in our trip, we visited Bryce Canyon in Utah. Interestingly, the 3D graphics programs my husband introduced me to when we met is called Bryce and was actually named after Bryce Canyon.

Below is the promo image from Bryce 5.5, actually created in the program itself, and below it is a photograph I took from Ponderosa Point at Bryce Canyon.

Can you see where the  inspiration for the promo image came from?  

Our trip eventually took us across the Sierras to the West Coast.  On the way, we stopped at beautiful Lake Tahoe.  This is one place I have been before and can never get tired of it.  I haven't even been there in winter yet!

This is one of many photos I took as we went on a drive around the lake.  I call it "Lake Tahoe Through the Trees.

 I'm rather proud of this photograph as it recently earned a Special Recognition in the 4th Annual "Landscapes" Art Competition held by the Light, Space and Time Online Art Gallery.  This was quite an accomplishment as there were 587 entries from around the world!

Everywhere we went, in addition to being committed to taking the best photographs we could, Eric and I found ourselves getting ideas and inspiration for digital landscapes to create in Vue, the 3D graphics software we now use.

Below is an image rendered in Vue of Emerald Bay at Lake Tahoe.  I didn't create this - it was a sample scene that came with Vue when I purchased it, to show the power of the program.  All I did was click on the render button, so I can't take any credit.

Below is a older Vue render inspired by my first trip to Lake Tahoe, several years ago.  I created this from scratch and of course I can find faults with it now. But on the whole, I'm rather pleased with how it came out.

Some of my best photographs from The Great American Road Trip are available as prints and art cards on my website at www.jaynewilsonart.com and I will probably add some more in the coming weeks.

Inspiration from Life

My latest digital artwork was inspired by a recent trip to England, where we visited the lovely Cotswold village of Bourton-on-the-Water.

The Cotswolds is an area in the center of England, known for its honey-colored stone architecture and idyllic village scenes. 

We were not blessed with pleasant weather -- in fact on the day we were there it was "bloody freezing!"(to quote my sister, who took us there) -- but I found myself enchanted as always. This particular village has a shallow stream running through it, as its name implies and there are always ducks around, either in the water, or sitting on the grassy banks. 

Feeding the ducks is a popular pastime, in fact it's encouraged.  Several of the little gift shops offered for sale paper bags filled with bird seed, labelled with the words "Feed the Ducks".

That got me thinking and when I got home again, back to my studio and my computer, I began to consider how I might recreate such a scene in Vue.

Luckily, I had some time ago purchased a pack of 3D models from Runtime DNA which had the look of typical Cotswold cottages. I loaded several cottages into the scene and arranged in a row beside the stream, similar to how the cottages are set in the real village.

After creating the basic terrain with the stream channel, I set about finding the perfect texture for the stony stream bed and the water .  Once I had that in, I added grass, benches and trees to fill out the scene.

Then it was time to create the figures that would populate the scene.  I envisioned a small child feeding ducks on the banks of the stream.  Here's the figure I created in DAZ 3D.  This render was done in DAZ, prior to the figure being exported to Vue.

I felt a small child shouldn't be left unsupervised to feed the ducks, so I added a mom and dad to the scene, lol. Dad is sitting on the bench watching benevolently as his wife offers duck-feeding guidance to their daughter. I think I hear the words "mind that big one doesn't peck your fingers!"

My computer was really dragging by the time I got everything in. An "eco-system" like this, with lots of grass or trees, tends to suck up the computer's resources and I had a scare when Vue shut down and then claimed it was unable to open the file again! 

Luckily, my computer-savvy husband was able to rename one of the backup files and open it up, so I was able to finally finish the project and do the final render, which you can see below.

As I mentioned at the beginning, my inspiration for this piece came from a real-life place.

Where does your artistic inspiration come from?  Are the scenes you paint imaginary places, or are they places and people you have seen?