Make one-of-a-kind creations During the second pandemic winter, I began dabbling in a new hobby: photo painting. It goes by many names—digital painting, digital photo art, mixed media, etc. Rather than simply enhancing the original image using the usual settings like brightness, highlights and shadows, or color saturation, photo painting creates an entirely new piece of art. There are apps for transforming your photos into pieces that resemble, for example, a Renaissance painting or a watercolor or a vintage illustration, but since I was only tinkering for my own pleasure one long, dark, December evening, I didn’t bother finding new software or reading up on technique. In fact, I stumbled upon this pastime by accident. Reviewing folders of images from the fall, I opened a slightly blurry mid-October image of some dead leaves with river water rushing by in the background, a downright dull picture. For kicks, I tried the…