From a family reunion last weekend. This is Cody. (see link)

From a family reunion last weekend. This is Cody. (see link)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfdYq2ILkCU

Title

If you want some coolness on a hot and muggy day~ nothing is cooler that the bowling alley.

If you want some coolness on a hot and muggy day~ nothing is cooler that the bowling alley. That is, until Captain "Show-off" Kirk beams your pins up.
(A little sparkle and color added via GIMP)

Confucius says - Good kitty litter does not a good sand castle make..

Confucius says - Good kitty litter does not a good sand castle make..
Brother Theo says- it makes a darn nice zen garden though.
Princess Lizzie says - Daddysan needs a good shrink.

My artistic choices are limited since my laptop runs Vista and now my favorite editors quit working. So this is all done in GIMP with the Charcoal filter coming from G'MIC.

First, scoop up all the hidden treasure. Then add a nice fresh layer and shake it/smooth and rake it. Only then realize that all the fancy lines and stuff aren't showing up in the picture. Fix that with a lasso tool from GIMP and a gradient that's radient er, radial and then turn it into a charcoal sketch with G'MIC.
I added the text and fiddled with the perspective, trying for a cinematic effect and then brought the colors back with a copy of the original with the layer mode set to color. Finally, I boosted them a little and brought the contrast up a bit for a "graphic illustration" look.

Comments including critiques and marginally related topics are required. Thanks in advance. (examples below)
"I would have done it different", or "Life is like a big box of cat turds" or "that looks like tree rings, do you like ice cream" ?

This might help ?

This might help ?

I was shooting a challenge shot last week for the word "Lines"

I was shooting a challenge shot last week for the word "Lines"
Lucky for me, I don't suffer from hay fever. It was still and sticky and awfully hot but I liked the results.
Then when I was packing up to go, the light started dancing in some powerlines and I ended up with a nice "sketch" project.

The pix are captioned and here is a very brief BTS if you care about such things. There was a whole lot of moving sliders around and trying different things but I'll keep the recap short. I'll skip over all the head scratching and bad words too.

The original shot was BIG. I cropped it for composition and also to cut down on the processing time. That left me with the third image. I used the pencil filter in G"MIC to make the second one and layered the third on top of it using the "color" layer mode. That's it.
(it looks so easy if you type it fast)

BTW - zoom in

SOOC original

SOOC original

Combo of pencil and color

Combo of pencil and color

cropped original

cropped original