I’ve been trying to teach myself Adobe Illustrator from on-line videos. I highly recommend Lynda.com. I managed to get my workplace to pay for a monthly subscription and have used it to learn Flash, ActionScript, Photoshop, and now Illustrator. Illustrator is a very powerful vector drawing program. I really am a beginner. This is my very first drawing. If I didn’t have a background in Photoshop or Flash it would have taken me much longer to get this far. My husband was visiting relatives in Manchester, so I had a long, uninterrupted block of time last night to practice.
Here’s the reference photo, for comparison:
One of the neighbours has a little herb patch in his garden. This is French lavender. I never noticed before that the buds spiral. I will have to remember to take some close-ups of the buds before the flowers are finished.
Here’s a quick shot I took this morning from the minibus on the way to work. Usually the camels are on the other side of the road, if they’re there at all.
Last Friday I saw eleven, yes, eleven wild gazelles in the wadi. And I didn’t have a camera with me! I had hoped to go for a run, so I put on my running clothes and left the DSLR at home. A few running steps were all that it took to convince me that my foot wasn’t ready for that kind of stress, so I switched to a fast walk. I’ve seen two or three gazelles before, but never eleven. They were grazing and moving slowly, so I was able to count them twice. Gazelles are difficult to photograph because they keep their distance and their grazing habits are unpredictable. I went out with the camera early on Sunday morning but didn’t see a single gazelle. I did startle a fox and managed to grab a quick shot of him running away. He was a beautiful specimen — look at those ears and that bushy tail!