I wish I could draw this well

From the same website as the last I found a great tutorial on turning an object into a line drawing.  To give it a go I used one of the photos I took in San Francisco while my mom, sister and I were standing in line waiting to eat breakfast in a tiny joint called Dots.  I love the curved window and the stone work.  The tutorial uses a long barrel revolver as an example so I thought I would try something completely different (of course).  I ended up with this...

(More after the jump...)

My Sister as Pop Art

The quest to figure out Photoshop continues.  My latest tutorial was for a Warhol-esque halftone from a photograph, and this is what I ended up with:

It is a simple, yet complicated tutorial (depending on your familiarity with Photoshop...most of this stuff is new to me).  I learned several things from this pop art tutorial from melissaclifton.com.  The most important is that I need more photos of my sister because most of mine are candid type photos she wouldn't be impressed with me using, second is that you want clothing and hair to be different tones from each other for this kind of transformation (which I don't have), and third is you want the starting photo to be very low contrast (contrary to logic) which I worked with by fiddling with highlights and shadows. For as dark as the end result is, it was mostly a black mass before, and I almost gave up until I seriously lightened the original and started over.  The original photo after the after the jump...

The waxy path

I finally did a Photoshop tutorial for making a wax seal that I have had my eye on for weeks but put off  (knowing I would want to individualize it)  and when I took it on, it DID end up sending me off in several directions that I am thankful for.  Because of it I ended up getting a basic grasp on working with the pen tool (never used it before) and then I was pushed mentally to come up with a logo that could fit within the seal -- I love the logo I came up with so much that I think I will stick with it for a while.

The following set of seals shows my progression of thought...

Happy Mom's Day Mom!

I made you something so you would know I was thinking about you.  Love you!!

Header #2

I have made another header picture, and so far I quite like it.  I made it from another tutorial, and though I changed parts of it to fit the idea of the blog better, I really like the original idea from Graphic Tutorials found here.   It is called "Text Within Text".

The cloud background I made myself in Elements a number of months back when I discovered the impressionist brush: 

Just in case I decide to play musical headers (highly likely because there are so many other text tutorials I will end up doing that I have try out as a header), I will put the picture of it here as well -- as a record of my continuing remodeling of the blog.  This one is a definite improvement on the last one, don't you think?

-Header #2-

Chocolate is the new text for the day

I did a full scale photoshop text tutorial and though I messed up a bit (I was too far along by the time I realized how and why -- the shadow should be directly below the letters).   I think it still turned out really great! I will definitely be using this, and parts of this, tutorial again. I would tell you how I messed up but I doubt anyone else will do the odd thing I did. (now I have to figure out how to reset my rulers because of the odd thing I did) [click on chocolate for a larger image to see how metallic the lettering seems to be]

-the more I look at the word "chocolate" the more it looks spelled wrong-

I want to thank PSAwesome.com and Eren Goksel for the tutorial that can be found here.

Step one, make something that interests you but you aren't invested in.

I am not actually a master of Photoshop CS4, but I did finally make something with it. The new header up top -- which I probably won't keep for long before it starts to bother me -- gives me hope that I will be able to grasp the workings of CS4 eventually. Hey, the window alone was 5 layers! I also followed two tutorials on making rain: one using noise and another using dots.

[edit: It bothered me, I took it down, look below]

Hypnogogial's Steampunk(ish) Death Ray (pew pew pew)

I am not a steampunk artist as much as I love the look of it, as I only found the genre' fairly recently and my mind doesn't often come up with a steampunk idea. (I am more of a surreal/fantasy thinker)

If you put steampunk into google images, you will see a lot of two kinds of things: Goggles and guns...ray guns mostly. (pew pew) I decided the ray gun idea was worth giving a go after I came across a cheap Chinese nerf-like gun for 2 euros that I could take apart. (it is almost impossible to work on something with moving parts if you can't take it to pieces and put it back together again.)

It took me two weeks to do. There were a lot of mistakes to undo (don't use stove black, it doesn't completely dry) and a lot of "humm, nah, maybe" going on. The amount of two part epoxy I used was astounding really (I love that stuff)...there were three colors of spray paint (not all spray paints are alike, the white base coat went all crinkly when it dried -- panic! Sand paper -- pfew!) and mixed acrylic paint put on by hand to get the rusty look, coppery look and the cast iron look of the grip. Of course there was also a lot of 'things' I stuck on. Jewelery findings, painted paper, an old spring bracelet, copper thumb tack, grommets, bone beads, leather...the 'ray emitter' is a small drawer pull.

I forgot to take a picture of the gun before I did anything to it, but when I realized how much I was changing it, I took a picture so the original color could be seen on the inside because once was done it wouldn't come apart again (really do love that glue).

-paint and glue can disguise anything-

-under-

-over-

-finished and ready to blast away Morlock's who wander too close-

Jetlag and the Creative Mind

Luckily I don’t have a job because: 1) I have a problem with authority if it doesn’t make sense in what it is demanding. 2) I wouldn’t be able to keep saying “I am going off to the states for a month, again, see ya!” 3) It takes me over a month to regain any normal kind of sleep pattern when I get back to Ireland.

I have given up trying to force myself into Irish time and people simply ask me how lagged I still am no matter how long it has been since my trip to the states – they know me well enough by now here. (It doesn’t help that late-night TV is really good on the east side of the Atlantic Ocean either.)

When I go to the states I pretty much fall into regular hours immediately. (Meaning: awake during most of the day and asleep most of the night.) No effort needed. I have heatedly argued this with several people and had several others absolutely agree with me that going west is easy and going east screws you over severely. Who’s with me here? So I tend to be a night dweller in Ireland and a day dweller in the States.

When I am working on an art project, I get most creative after midnight no matter where I am. There is an interesting and cloistered energy working when it is dark and quiet outside and you know no one is going to interrupt. When you have a creative flow going there is nothing, absolutely nothing, worse than to have the flow broken. It can be so hard to get back. It is hard to start in the first place, for me anyway.

I have a few things that have happened in my life that have subconsciously enforced this work pattern. One was an architecture design class in college. It was more about design as a concept than architecture per se’, but during that semester, I found myself working feverishly in the a.m. more and more often. It was the most demanding class I have ever taken and the most interesting. I lost 14 lbs. Another student got a divorce, and several had to drop out because of the pressure. (tears in class happened on several occasions)

I only took the class as an elective but I got into the spirit of it, got an ‘A’, and an invitation to join the Architecture Department. (which I declined…one semester of that I could handle, but no more. There was a 24-hour restaurant near the college and if you went in after 1:00 a.m. basically the only people in there were architecture students and drunk students who were hungry.) No way! ‘Ambition’ is not my middle name. The woman who got a divorce did take them up on the offer but I don’t think she stayed in the department for more than a year. Who knew you had to live like a med student to design a building?

The other thing that happened was I set up a jewelry studio in my garage a few years later (I have training in several kinds of media but was a jewelry/metal-work student when I finally got my degree) and had a neighbor who didn’t understand boundaries. How many ways can you say “Leave me alone!”? A hundred ways. A thousand. When a person thinks they are more important than your ‘little hobby’, it is devastating. I ended up hiding in my own house. I stayed out of the garage, didn’t answer the phone or door after a month of constant interruptions.

That was actually scary looking back. It was quite a while ago, but it stays with me even today. I am fiercely territorial and my time is my own now. Many people think of me as a hermit for my lack of social interactions which is fine with me. I am actually very friendly and can talk to absolutely anyone about almost anything (except sports…don’t even bring sports up), but my extroversion is by choice.

I understand completely when artists become reclusive or writers cut-off contact. Creativity is a ‘job’ for some, but for most I think it is ephemeral. It doesn’t come easily to throw yourself into a project, even when it is in your blood, if you have to think and rethink and brood and consider before you know you will spend a lot of effort on something. Once you have made the decision, it takes over your life till the particular project is done. When you are in ‘the zone’, only the pizza delivery guy is welcome.

If it wasn't for the spiders, I would love a hobbit house!

I had some ideas for small drawings about fantasy houses and decided to make them to give to my sister (who is a mortgage consultant). The titles on the pieces are about the size of normal letter writing so the biggest one of these is about 3" x 4". I don't know why I don't do more of them.


























[click on any picture for larger image]