In this week’s free Deke’s Techniques video, Deke discovers an old piece of artwork from my nine-year-old son (who is now 18), insists that we must save it for posterity, and subsequently scans and enhances it digitally, so that I don’t destroy it in a cleaning purge. 

This technique not only creates a compelling visual artifact, it saves you from feeling guilty when you know it’s time to purge the refrigerator door of its "current" (read: out-of-date) decor. 

Here is the canvas in question, nine-year-old Wheeler’s watercolor-esque (on canvas?) interpretation of Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night. 

After scanning and cropping, Deke uses Photoshop CC’s ability to apply Camera Raw as an editable smart filter to enhance the color and contrast. The result is a digital artwork that doesn’t take up room in our already full-to-the-brim storage area. (Hmmm, I wonder if Deke would be willing to archive some of his own early works this way.)

For those of you who have forgotten what the original (Vincent’s, I mean) looks like (as if you could): 

But I share this because in Deke’s member-exclusive video this week, he fuses together the works of both geniuses, using some complex transforming and blending in Photoshop, to create this fun interpretation of both mixed together: 

If you’re not a member of lynda.com and would like to check this exclusive video out, you can get a free week’s trail at lynda.com/deke. For the rest of your free week, you can enjoy all the other 350+ Deke’s Techniques, plus anything else from the vast lynda library that suits your own childlike creative curiosity.