Essentials Cafe

I never saw one of these in the wild, but we bought a packet of wild flower seed (for shady places) two years ago. Nothing seemed to come up the first year, but this year, the second year, seven or eight teazels grew up, they are amazing, over 7' high, and spikes everywhere. No other wild flower ever came up, but it was worth getting the seeds just to see these things.

I like this effect very much. Mind sharing your process?

Thanks Kirk, I should have explained what I did. I took several photos of teazel heads. I used one as the canvas layer, and blanked out what I didn't want with the digital airbrush, black. Then used the Place function to add other photos, and in Effects used Rotate to get them at the angle I wanted. Again used digital airbrush to remove some detail I didn't want. Combined all layers and put it through Woodcut. Used the smear blender a bit to draw out some of the leaves and stems. Added a bit of pale purple wash on the flower heads (though I think I did that a bit crudely, and have been having another go at it!).

This is absolutely stunning anne. I love teazels and this is one picture of them that I could live with for a long time.

This is fantastic Anne I really love it.  Very striking and I too could look at it for a long time.

Well I'm glad you did it Anne - this is good work, innovative and original, you have spent some time on this one and it shows, funnily enough I collected some teasels myself yesterday whilst out taking photos, and thought they would look good as part of a still life, and because of the distance I was going I used my disability buggy to alleviate pain, and put the teasels in the back of my chair which has a large pocket  for bits and pieces, then I went into a farm park for children to see what animals they had, and there was a large group of special needs children there, cuddling the animals and just having fun, and they saw this guy coming past in a buggy with loads of teasels sticking out of the back, and you could see they thought I had lost the plot, so I just smiled and waved and carried on past,..... past an enclosure full of llamas, and as I went past unbeknown to me various llamas were stealing my teasels from behind me and eating them, and as I heard screams of laughter I turned to see what all the commotion was, and one kid was on the grass holding his ribs as he rolled around with mirth, and then I spotted my last half eaten teasel, and realised I was the subject of their laughter, and it felt good to see them so happy, one little girl with down's syndrome said " What was the teasels for mister?", so I told her they were for combing my hair, and the grin I got when she realised I was jesting was worth the loss of my teasels.

Thank you all for your kind remarks, I'm glad you like these. That's a lovely story Toulouse, and I'm wondering what sort of mouths those llamas have, to be able to eat these things - I picked a few yesterday, and had to wrap each stalk in newspaper so that I could handle them without shredding my hands.

well as a south american animal Anne, they aren't used to the lush growth we get here, and will even chew on cactus, so I reckon they must have tough mouths or small brains.

Bit late on this but i think its great anne and well done for all the work you put into it. I really like the effect you created.