Needs a shine -

"Star"
manipulated digital photograph by Mick Mather
- original photograph by hpy -

"... though twilight drops her curtain down
and pins it with a star,
remember that you have a friend
though she may wander far ..."
- unknown

Thursday Challenge: Yellow -

"Yellow"
digitally manipulated photograph by Mick Mather
- original photograph by HPY -

Yes, I'm quite aware that yesterday's post would also have worked well for this week's theme, yellow, at Thursday Challenge. I also have to admit that I'm cheating a little bit. My good friend, Hélène Pyy-Letellier, from France, took this most marvelous photograph and the moment I laid eyes on it knew that it would be perfect for Dale Hudjik's marvelous photoblog. So I asked permission to work my own magic, cropped the original photograph, manipulated it and, well, here you have it. I'm not so sure that I've improved on the original, though. Hélène's photograph, as all of her work happens to be, is superb! Please do pop over to her place for a good look around when you can. I'll be at one of those darned night meetings and then to a favorite pub for a tumbler of Redbreast Irish Whiskey.

Back street -

"Man on an Empty Street"
digitally manipulated photograph by Mick Mather
- original photograph by hpy -

Shortly after seeing hpy's photograph of a car-lined village street I became fascinated with the single individual down the block. In her post, the fact that so many cars impeded the charm of this backstreet view was quite an issue. Through the magic of cropping and a bit of repainting I was able to create a different mood than what was originally captured and at least the cars are gone. Thanks so much, Hélène, for permission to use this one. :)

One more for HPY -

"The HPY House Project"

digital collage by Mick Mather
- base image layer by typoGenerator -

The House Project was officially closed by HPY on Thursday. This morning, via Collage Clearinghouse, I stumbled into this wonderful project, White on White, curated by The International Museum of Collage, Assemblage and Construction. There's a lot of terrific work over there, including "White on White Words" by Debra Dresler, where the five words in this post first caught my eye. As I read them, my thinking immediately went to HPY and her houses and I couldn't resist running things through my new, most fave gadget, typoGenerator! To complete the collage I added the five white words in another font that I like along with a small house plan. If you ever get ambitious enough to create a little book, HPY, perhaps this might be the cover. :D

A house for HPY -

"Chez HPY"
tempera-on-paper by Mick Mather

I've been thinking a lot about the request that HPY made at her blog last week. The original post begot two lovely drawings, the first by Isopeikko and the other by Susupetal. Above is small painting I did a few years ago that seems to fit the bill here. As I recall, there's been some mention and a little conversation about keeping things affordable. So, here you go HPY! It's what we call a fixer-upper over here. :D