This is a photograph of my Mom, that I postworked in Photoshop. Any comments or criticisms greatly appreciated.

Without being unkind, The Silence of the Lambs comes to mind

its a 10 x 14. Thank you. In all my work, I would count this as one of my most powerful pieces, and I am not being egotistical, while I was making it, it spoke to me. The first thing that came to mind was Mott the Hoople's "All the Young dudes". And I almost called it that LOL. However, I could not even begin to explain how I did it, but I will try. I took a portrait shot of my Mother, and I monkeyed and monkeyed to get a softness to it. I let it go about six weeks, and then came back to it two days ago. Then, I worked purely on instinct with only photoshop. Layer upon layer filter and filter. I think one of the myths about filters is that we cheat, and I dont see it that way. Why make them, then? In order to achieve the roundness of the head, I actually drew a circle around it, so it would stand out. Color wise, I thought of a dozen different ways to change it but came back to the goldish color. Now one thing I can give as advice in postwork, cause sometimes when you work on instinct you forget every step you took, is this......MAKE LAYERS!!!!!!! I found out that the hard way....Make layer after layer, and erase bits here and there, when you like that version, then what I do, is then save it under a different name, flatten it, and begin again because I may want to then do something to the whole image. Jack is the master at Photoshop, and if I was where he was, I would attend his class. Photoshop is the most amazing program around. Okay, thats a bit of it, thank you for even asking, because I admire your work so much.

wow I like it, looks excellent Syyd.

Wow. This is powerful stuff. It actually reminds me of some stuff I did with some old photos of mine..I cut them into little pieces and overlapped them, creating rather strange effects, and with some I..oh nevermind. I'll just have to learn to use Photoshop (and get a computer powerful enough to run it!) to show you all what's floating around inside my head!!! Really inspiring work, Syyd...

Very interesting image, the colors and textures work well, light against dark and vice versa....very nice.