Just a little vector art

I've promised myself that if I ever get around to using the many computer graphics programs I've bought over the years, I'll post the results, no matter how amateur they are.

The following vector art started out as a photograph of an hibiscus plant in my front yard.

First I imported it into CorelDraw X5 (I started buying the program back at version 4) and then I used the Trace tool for my first attempt at making a vector graphic from the photo, using the clip art setting.

I deleted the background bit by bit and did some serious editing to get rid of a bunch of lines that were created in the tracing process. Then I started thinking that I should be able to make a graphic that looked a bit more like the flower in the picture. So I tried the higher quality trace setting, deleted the background again after finding out how to do it more quickly, and then finally figured out how to get rid of the lines without too much fiddling.

Don't know what I'm going to do with the flower yet, except use it as a profile photo on Facebook, but I'm happy with the results.

On another subject, the Nova Scotia Archives has put the Nova Scotia Historical Newspapers online. The images are of newspapers from 1769 to 1991. It's sort of neat to read news from so long ago (or not so long ago) and see how little or how much things have changed.