Artists Down Under - Australia and New Zealand - April 2026

UNDER

DOWN UNDERartists

Australia and New Zealand

Happy Easter to you all.

“Tis” the month of chocolate, the month where it is ok to eat chocolate and not feel guilty about it, now who doesn’t love that.

What a month it has been, our artists have been so busy preparing all their images and writing articles for this awesome Easter edition.

Our girls from the Redlands Collab celebrate their 100th edition of their Chinese Whispers series, so they have dug into the archives & shared a few of their favourite images with you. 100 issues, 100 images, 8.3 years of friendship, how special is that.

One of our very talented long standing artists ALBaMass has written an article on her thoughts of AI, such a good read and something that resonates I am sure with what all of our artists thoughts are.

Andrew has put together another Photoshop article for you all, this month on Using Channels. We have our regular Coffee & Pixels challenge “Be Your Own Kind Of Beautiful” and also the Art Buddies have been busy with their latest challenge “Talk To The Animals”.

Our monthly artists challenge was set this month and the theme was “The Easter Bunny Imposter”.

Well that’s it from me for this month, stay safe everyone and look out for each other.

Pam Henderson

Backgrounds: Foxy Squirrel Laitha’s Designs - Jai Johnson - White Lane Studio Copyright 2017 © Artists in this publication are responsible for any rights appertaining to their work.

PRUE WRIGHT ( AUSTRALIA )

https://www.sandradimagery.com/

http://www.artistsdownunder.com.au/artist-2/george-koncz/ http://georgekonczphotography.com/

https://www.artistsdownunder.com.au/artist-3/mick-rooney/

https://artistsdownunder.com.au/artist-3/margaret-kalms/

http://artofwoman.com.au

artists Achievements monthly down under

artists down under facebook page

The Artists Down Under Public Facebook page has been set up to allow the artists in the group to showcase their work and to enable them to share promotional information about themselves, e.g. exhibitions, awards etc...

You can find the Artists Down Under Public Facebook page at this address; https://www.facebook.com/groups/ArtistsDownUnder/

So, if you are an artist in the group, don’t forget to regularly share your work and information here, and to let your friends and family know about the page if they are interested in viewing the latest art and news from the group.

If you are a reader of the magazine who does not have access to the page, please click the link above and request to join. When you request to join you will be asked to answer three simple questions that will allow us to determine if you are an eligible artist who may wish to join the group and therefore be able to post on the page, or a member of the public who can view, comment and like the work on the page. It’s a great place to see some great art from this vibrant group every day!

Three ADU members receive a special gift

Our very good Awake friend Diane Stafford from WhiteLaneStudio continue to give gifts as a reward for members of the Artists Down Under group who contribute to the ADU Facebook page by regularly posting their artworks and supporting other members with their comments.

Diane Stafford from Chester, UK, designs Photoshop textures and overlays for photo artists and photographers to use in their digital artworks. Diane has created another special kit just for Artists Down Under for the month of MARCH.

Two artists will receive a Diane kit each. Diane Stafford can be found at https://whitelanestudio.co.uk/biolinks

The APRIL lucky winners are

Diane Stafford (WhiteLaneStudio) Texture & Overlay Kit

- Jacqueline Goss

- John Kelly

LIVING THE PHOTO ARTISTIC LIFE

https://issuu.com/thephotoartisticlife/docs/living_the_photo_artistic_life_-_issue_no._133?fr=sMDM3YTg0NDE1MDQ

Congratulations to the following artists for having their images chosen to appear in the International magazine “Living The Photo Artistic Life”.

Penny deJong

- Ignatius Impala By Appointment Only

- Gaspard Giraffe Fashionably Late

- Llewellyn Llama Esquire

- Remington The Roguish Rabbit

Rosa Perry

- The Rose That Never Fades

Christina Brunton

- Boy And His Dog

- LumberJack

CatBeagle Creations

- She Who Houses The Wind

Sandra Dann

- The Journey

Ilona Abou-Zolof

- Festive March

- Chaos

Denise Hunter Logan

- Let Your Dreams Be Your Wings

- Define Yourself

Maureen Maxwell

- Angelina

George Koncz

- Reflection Of Albrechtburg Castle, Germany

LIVING THE PHOTO ARTISTIC LIFE

Only

Late

https://shiftart.com/shift-art-photoshop-challenge-results-march-2026/

DENISE HUNTER LOGAN ( AUSTRALIA )

https://artistsdownunder.com.au/artists-1/bev-terawskyj/

AL BAMASS ( AUSTRALIA )

MATILDA SISTERS

REASONS

kaylene helliwell ( new zealand )

CATS N CUBES

http://www.artistsdownunder.com.au/artist-4/penny-de-jong/

art by christina brunton steampunk

DENISE CAUCHI ( AUSTRALIA )

HAPPY EASTER

https://artistsdownunder.com.au/artists-4/sharon-rankmore/

COLIN KILLICK ( AUSTRALIA )

DOWN artistsUNDER

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DIGITAL ARTISTS GROUP

A COLLABORATIVE GROUP OF PHOTO ARTISTS

CHINESE WHISPERS #100

OUR COLLABORATIVE JOURNEY

Pam and I invite you to raise a glass with us to celebrate reaching the 100th milestone of our artistic collaboration. That is 8.3 years we have been working together.

Our first collab was January 2018. At the time Pam lived near me in Redlands City (east of Brisbane). We used to meet for dinner quite often and talk at length about photography, photo artistry, and many other things. Then Pam moved to country NSW to be near family some years ago. We both miss those personal catchups, however, modern technology has enabled us to continue with our collaborative journey.

For a few months, we had four people but, for various reasons, the other two decided to leave it to Pam and me. All of us met through the international Awake Photo Artistry course by Sebastian Michaels. This course has had a major impact on many people, and it changed our creative direction. It enabled Pam and I to engage with similarly minded people throughout Australia, and around the world.

During these eight years we’ve seen a lot of technological changes across many platforms. Photoshop has gone from strength to strength, to a point where we regularly see amazing new tools. There is always something to learn, to test, to play with and to challenge us. Photoshop remains the tool of choice for us in creating our artistic works.

We both enjoy the challenge, and each month we surprise each other when we see the final image. I think there are two important factors to reflect on. Every month we learn from each other. When you start with a few basic elements and then see how the other person creates an image in a way you may not have thought about, it is a continual learning process.

The second aspect is we have a lot of fun. It provides us with relaxation, creativity and a diversion from the more serious aspects of life.

Would we recommend collaborating with another artist? Yes, it is most rewarding, but a collab of 2 people works the best. With more participants it becomes too complex and a little cumbersome to handle.

It has been a wonderful creative journey, and we are now looking forward to achieving 10 years working together.

Maureen Maxwell

This month the challenge was set, we each chose three elements and decided to both use those elements to create an image and to see just how different our thought patterns were. The results are amazing. We have dug through the archives and pulled out a few of our favourites that we would like to share with you. We hope you have enjoyed our journey over the past 100 editions.

“PARTY CELEBRATIONS”

OCTOBER 2020

FEBRUARY 2022

APRIL 2022

AUGUST 2022

MAY 2023

FEBRUARY 2024

OCTOBER 2024

SEPTEMBER 2025

art by MARIE HELYAR

WHERE THE LAND REMEMBERS

THE HILL

THE HOMESTEAD

THE ROSE GARDEN

THE WINDMILL AT THE BIG DAM

WHAT THE WIND CARRIES

THE PATH WITH SANDY

WHAT REMAINS

http://www.artistsdownunder.com.au/artist-3/maureen-maxwell/

https://trish-hoskin.myportfolio.com/

http://www.artistsdownunder.com.au/artist-4/trish-hoskin/

https://andrewhaysom.myportfolio.com/ https://artistsdownunder.com.au/artists-1/andrew-haysom/

SPIRALLING INTO OBLIVION

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and New Zealand

SOME PHOTOSHOP INSPIRATION USING CHANNELS

By Andrew Haysom

In recent times there have been huge improvements in the selection tools available in Lightroom and Photoshop. Despite this, there are times when you will simply get better results using “old school” methods. One such example is using Channels to create selections and masks.

If you do not see your Channels panel in Photoshop, use the Windows / Channels menu command to display it. I like to keep my Channels panel nested with my Layers panel.

[Figure 1 – The sample image (Grevillea flowers)]

What you see in the Chanels panel will vary depending upon the image mode you are working in. Most of us spend most of our time in RGB mode, but Figure 2 shows the Channels panel for RGB, CMYK, Lab and Grayscale, for the sample image shown in Figure 1.

SOME PHOTOSHOP INSPIRATION (CONT .....)

In each of the colour modes you will see an entry in the Channels panel for each of the colour channels as well as an entry for the composite image.

For RGB and CMYK mode the composite channel is labelled RGB or CMYK, with the Red, Green and Blue channels (for RGB) and the Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (Black) channels each showing a grayscale representation of the respective colour in your image.

Lab mode is slightly different in that there is a composite channel, a separate Lightness (Luminosity) channel and two colour channels labelled a and b. The a channel specifies green through magenta, and the b channel blue through yellow, much like the Tint and Temperature sliders used for white balance.

[Figure 2 – Channels panel for each of the image modes]

Figure 3 shows Channels representations for the sample image for all these colour modes, as well as Gray scale mode.

[Figure 3 - Channel representations for the sample image]

SOME PHOTOSHOP INSPIRATION (CONT .....)

If you find that Photoshop is displaying a colour representation of the channels in your Channels panel (see figure 4) you will need to uncheck the “Show Channels in color” option in the Interface tab of the Photoshop preferences. The grayscale representations are much easier to interpret.

When in RGB mode, every pixel of your image is a combination of red, green and blue, they mix to create all the colours and tones in your image. The Red, Green and Blue channels show representations of the amount of each colour there is each pixel. In the Red channel for example, if a pixel has a fully saturated red component it will show as white in the Red channel representation. If there is no red in a particular pixel it will show as black. For values in between fully saturated and no red, different shades of grey show how much red there is in each pixel. The lighter a part of the image shown in the Red channel is, the more red it contains, the darker it is the less red it contains.

This obviously holds true for the Green and Blue channels as well.

Given the ways colours mix though, it can sometimes be hard to interpret, for example in the RGB colour model, white is the combination of fully saturated red, green and blue, so any white pixels in your image will show as white in all three colour channels. Similarly black is the result of no red, green or blue so any black parts of your image will show as black in all three channels.

Most colours in photographs will not be pure red, green or blue, but will be a combination of all three, so the various channels will show varying shades of grey for any particular colour.

It is worth noting that when looking at the channel representations for CMYK mode the “mask” is reversed, that is more of the colour means a darker representation in it’s channel, less of the colour means a lighter representation.

The best way to use the channels for selections or masks is to examine them all when you want to make a particular adjustment or selection and see if any of the channels show good separation / selection in that area of the image.

For example, in the sample image of the Grevillea flowers I used the Red channel to create a very good mask of the flower to create a colour boost adjustment. If you look at the Red channel representation in Figure 3, you’ll see that this channel shows the flower in a very light shade (well selected), with the background less selected, a good basis for a mask. You’ll note that this selects all of the flower, including the bits that are more orange/yellow, because they also contain a lot of red. In my case this didn’t matter because I wanted the whole flower selected, but if

SOME PHOTOSHOP INSPIRATION (CONT

I had just wanted to select the red skinny pieces of the flower (apparently they are called “styles”), then I might have been better to have used an inverted version of the Green channel in which they are shown very dark, an inverted version of the CMYK Magenta channel would also have worked well.

Creating selections and masks using channels will create accurate, smooth masks that are often very superior to those created using selections.

You’ll notice in the Channels panel that each channel has a hotkey displayed on the right-hand side (for Mac Cmd+2, Cmd+3, Cmd+4, Cmd+5 and for Windows Ctrl+2, Ctrl+3, Ctrl+4 and Ctrl+5). Pressing these will display the associated channel representation, so Cmd+3 (Mac) will show the Red channel when in RGB mode for example, pressing Cmd+2 (Mac) will return to viewing the composite image.

Using these hotkeys in conjunction with the Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows) key will create a selection based on the relevant channel, so on my Mac if I press Option+Cmd+3 it will create a selection based on the Red channel. Then with that selection active, if I create an adjustment layer it will create a mask based on the channel.

Don’t forget that you can also use techniques to modify the mask such as Levels or Curves to increase contrast and of course you can invert the mask using Cmd+I (Mac) or Ctrl+I (Windows).

If you want to know more about Lab colour mode, please check out my earlier article which can be found on my website here,

https://andrewhaysom.myportfolio.com/lab-colour-mode

Shortly after I had written this article Blake Rudis released a new course called “Channels: Beyond Luminosity Masking”, if it is of interest you will find more information here,

https://f64elite.com/channels/

This is the first article in a series, parts two and three are available on my website here,

https://andrewhaysom.myportfolio.com/articles

Andrew Haysom

ILONA ABOU-ZOLOF ( AUSTRALIA )

https://artistsdownunder.com.au/artists-3/lynsey-stirland-mitchell/

https://artistsdownunder.com.au/artist-2/dennis-rickard/

‘COFFEE

and PIXELS’

by Maureen Maxwell

THIS MONTHS CHALLENGE

THEME IS

Be Your Own

Kind Of Beautiful

https://www.juliepowellphoto.com/ https://artistsdownunder.com.au/artist-2/julie-powell/

http://www.artistsdownunder.com.au/artist-4/pam-henderson/

MARINA HOBBS ( AUSTRALIA )

Australia and New Zealand

FROM LAYER MASKS TO MACHINE LEARNING DOWN artistsUNDER

By ALBaMass

A 20-Year Creative Evolution in the Age of AI

For over twenty years, I’ve worked in digital art. Long before AI could generate atmosphere in seconds, I would spend an entire afternoon removing the background from a single head of hair. Zoomed in at 300%. Tint brush. Eraser. Undo. Repeat.

Detail everything. And everything in detail. That was my motto.

Back then, effort equalled value. If something took hours, it felt earned. Craft lived in the patience.

I was part of global creative groups, learning techniques deeply – not just copying tutorials, but absorbing them. I didn’t want to stay in the safe repetition of lessons. I wanted to understand the mechanics and then move with the flow.

It took me years to share my work publicly. My art felt private – almost sacred. Eventually, I had to push myself to create pieces specifically to show, to sell, to release. That shift was emotional. Vulnerable. Necessary.

And then AI arrived.

The Shock of Speed, AI didn’t just introduce a new tool, it introduced velocity.

What once took hours now appears in seconds: atmosphere, lighting, texture, variation – end less variation.

The first feeling was fascination. The second was anxiety.

What if the next generation is better? What if I don’t capture this version? What does skill mean now?

In the communities I’ve been part of for decades, many artists are wrestling with similar questions. Some feel threatened. Some feel resistant. Some feel disoriented. I understand all of it. But I also feel something else ... Curiosity.

Craft Was Never About the Tool, Photoshop never made me an artist. The tint brush never made me an artist. Layer masks never made me an artist.

They were instruments.

The real work was always in the eye, in the noticing, in restraint, in knowing when a piece was finished – even when it never truly felt finished.

For years, I would sign my work to stop myself from touching it again. That signature was a boundary. A decision. A release. Today, the boundary is different.

Now it might be exporting the file, closing the app, saying, “This is complete for today.” The discipline hasn’t disappeared. It has evolved.

From “Detail Everything” to “Discern What Matters” My old motto was about total immersion in detail. But AI has quietly shifted that for me. Now the question isn’t, “Can I detail every surface?” It’s, “Where does detail belong?” AI can generate broadly. But it cannot decide intentionally. That part is still mine.

The skill I built over two decades – colour control, composition, restraint, emotional tone – didn’t vanish when AI arrived. It became a filter. A director.

Craft turned into discernment.

The Open Mind. Creativity, at its core, requires openness.

If I had stayed in the comfort of old tutorials, I would still be repeating techniques from years ago. Instead, I learned them – and moved forward.

AI feels like another turning point. Not a threat to the past. Not a replacement for skill. But an expansion of possibility.

I don’t believe in worshipping new tools, and I don’t believe in protecting old ones out of fear. I believe in respecting them.

The Private Stream

There is something else that hasn’t changed. Not everything I create is meant to be shared. Some pieces are just for me. A photograph polished quietly. A photobook made from memory. A moment noticed but never posted. If I couldn’t create something beautiful every day – even privately – I’m not sure where I would be. And that, more than any software, defines me as an artist.

The Future

I don’t know exactly where this transition will land. But I have a good feeling about it. Because the tools may change. The speed may change. The platforms may change. But the eye – the instinct to notice beauty in a fleeting moment – that remains. “Detail everything” once taught me patience. Now I’m learning something new: Stay open. Choose wisely. Create anyway.

https://artistsdownunder.com.au/artist-3/kim-ricci/

https://artistsdownunder.com.au/artist-3/kevin-sims/ www.kevinsims.co.nz

https://www.changeoffocus.com.au

https://artistsdownunder.com.au/artist-4/sharyn-walker/

STEAMPUNK DOGS

BILL OLDHAM ( AUSTRALIA )

ROSA PERRY ( AUSTRALIA )

LADY EASTERBLOOM

WAITING FOR THE EASTER SONG

DOWN artistsUNDER

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A COLLABORATIVE GROUP OF PHOTO ARTISTS

QUOTE CHALLENGE by the Art Buddies

A bit of background first:

In our Art Buddies group, we’re a vibrant mix of ADU members from across Australia, each contributing individual talents and viewpoints. Our ‘Art Buddies’ team includes Christina Brunton, Denise Cauchi, Ilona Abou-Zolof, Marie Helyar, Marina Hobbs, Robyn McLauchlan and Ngaire Danvers. We gather regularly on Zoom, taking turns to set our creative challenges.

Challenge: “Talk to the animals”

This challenge was set by Ngaire Danvers.

Create an artwork based on the immortal words of Dr Dolittle “If I could talk to the animals...”

Our Art Creations:

We hope our creations motivate you to share your own interpretation on the Artists Down Under Facebook page. Your artistic expression matters to us, and we are excited to see what you create!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/88165766@N05/ https://www.artistsdownunder.com.au/artist-3/karen-waalwyk/

https://photos.kogekar.com/ https://artistsdownunder.com.au/artist-2/hemant-kogekar/

artists photographic challenge theme: monthly artistic down under THE EASTER BUNNY IMPOSTER

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