GRAPHICs - how NOVEL...

I am procrastinating. I should be changing into a pair of pants that fit so that I can go to the grocery store. But I made a quick stop by my desk and here we are. And here a couple photos of the kiddies that I did some Photoshop magic to.

Yes, another tutorial. This one was the Stylized Comic Book Effect by Corey Barker of PlanetPhotoshop. Fun for me!

And here is a super simple Halftone Dots and Linear Light Effect:

In other news, I am reading Island of the Sequined Love Nun by Christopher Moore. It's...

Oh.
Now I must find pants and get out the door. Chris just came upstairs and told me to buy drugs. Lots of drugs.

I'm sure he will clarify exactly what he is looking for before I leave. He knows me a little too well...

I love a Tutorial

More than a parade! Although there was that one time at Ventura College when I saw a line of students walking across campus all carrying globes – now that was a parade.

Anyways, I am following a bunch of web designers on Twitter, and they are always sharing cool links to articles, graphics, tutorials, etc. Apparently the look of Pressed Lettering (embossing) is all the rage is web design for 2009! Yeah, you heard it here first! Unless you already knew about it. But hey, I like to be trendy – ha! Ok, I like a good tutorial. We all can agree on that yes? So, this one looked cool and lord knows I need to be honing my rudimentary Photoshop skills whenever I can. So, I followed along and made this:

Pretty nifty eh? We’ve got the starry space background that it so en vogue right now. Really, if you start to look, you’ll see it everywhere. And then I cut out the Blanchfield Photography letters so that background shows through. If I told you how I did it, I would have to kill you. Or – you would die of boredom as I rambled on about layers, masks, radial gradients… although I think Kyle hung in there pretty well. My little designer-in-training. Either way, don’t worry about the how , "oooh pretty" is the proper response.

And I will save the rant about my name for another day. Lucky you. Chris wasn’t so lucky. He never is.

So. There I was with this... thing image... that I created.* What was I going to do with it? Well, first I resized it to 160x107 pixels. Then I did a bit of html cut and paste and viola! It is now a badge over there on the left that links to my photo website. Cool. Except at that tiny size you can't see the stars or the cut-out effect of the letters, so I had to write this post to show it off and here we are. And it is still to small in Blogger to really appreciate it. I advise you to click the image to view it in all its glory! By the way, have you calibrated you monitor recently?

*Ooh! I'm going to make a monster next so that I can say "I've created a monster!" And I won't be talking about the children. Chris frowns upon that.

Actually right now I'm making spirographs designs in Illustrator. When I'm done with those I'll make a monster.

Worth a 1000 words

I had a blog entry partially composed in my head this morning, but never got a chance to type it out, and now that bird has flown. It's so typical that my big dumb brain (henceforth to be referred to as BDB) only kicks into creative writing gear when I ought to be sleeping or some other equally inconvenient time. And you and I both suffer for it. I remember the jist of the post, but I don’t have the creative juice to recreate it right now which has me feeling a bit… oh, what’s the word… frustrated!

And BEHOLD! Intro to Digital Art Project #2 - My homage to frustration ~

It’s actually a pretty big file. Go ahead and click the photo and really get in there and experience my world, up close and personal. I dare ya. I double dog dare ya! And if you want the complete experience, go back to this entry and play that second video in an endless loop in the background for the soundtrack to my image. And that is my world.

Ok, that’s not my world all the time. But it wasn’t hard to piece together. Kyle has been having a rough couple weeks at school. And we have a couple parent/teacher conferences next week. But he is still a great big brother. And was a huge help with my Illustrator project when I had to design a logo and letterhead. That boy has a lot of design talent. Erin is a crack up, but I could do with out her need to climb on everything. And it has been determined that blame can be aimed squarely at Chris for that trait. I’m still not sure where the opera singing comes from.

On a personal note, the reading glasses really seem to be helping. My eyeballs have not threatened to leave my skull since I started wearing them. And that is a good thing. There have been a couple days where my eyes have felt extra tired and I’ve gone out of my way to rest them (read- nap) but in general they are feeling much better.

Head has been feeling ok too. Shh.

Admission for one please

Alrighty then. What I didn’t acknowledge in the last post was that after I mentioned restoring an old photo, I thought about putting up the before and after shots. Wait – that’s not the bad part. Where it really gets sick is that my next thought was – “Can I write a JavaScript program to change the before image to the after image when the user’s mouse moves over the photo?” And then I seriously considered attempting it. I am not well.

So to distract you from my shocking confession, I give you this:



Cute eh? Well, I wasn't kidding about that feedback!

Paint it black

Hot-damn. This Palin-pant-fest post by my dearly demented Sain’t has given me the energy to scale the Elavil induced wall of inertia I’ve been trapped behind. … Wow. How’s that for a sentence?! So, quickly, while I still have the energy to type, what shall we talk about? I am in no mood for the election. I just want it over. Ditto for the financial crisis. I’m pretty sure you don’t want to hear about JavaScript. There’s not much else thanks to the dulling effect of this damn medicine. I placed a call to my doctor yesterday to talk to him about it because it is just not working for me. Not even a little bit. And I want off it asap. And then I can be my happy chatty self again. I’ll take the headaches over this crap any day thank you very much. He hasn't called back yet. Can you tell?

In local news, the TBMS 6th grade class goes to Shady Creek Camp next week! That should be fun for Kyle. I will admit that I’m not going to miss having to micro-manage his homework for a whole week! Gads. That sucks.

I tried to get a video of Erin spinning around like I mentioned last week. And I might have caught a rotation or two, but what I really ended up with was a lot of footage of her reaching for the camera and throwing little fits of frustration. This may help me with the second assignment in my ‘Intro to Digital Art’ class. The first section of the class has been Photoshop (Illustrator and InDesign are next) and the first assignment was to restore an old photograph. Easy enough. But now we have to put together a collage. And we need a theme. Of course the theme can’t be something simple like the beach, or dogs, or even Christmas. It needs to be more of an abstract concept or feeling. Like sadness, chaos, or imagination. What the hell. I’m annoyed already and will probably take this someplace dark. And I’m pretty sure that’s not the pills talking. This project is a little too scrapbook-y for me. And I sincerely mean no disrespect to any scrapbookers out there. I’ve seen some pretty cool looking pages. I only mean that scrapbooking is something that I never got into. My brain/creativity just doesn’t put things together that way. And I’ll just stop right there before my drug-addled brain goes too far with that train of thought. Back to my project. I have kids and both of them act out in frustration more than I care to think about.* I already have more than enough photos showing this charming side of their personalities. So, I think that’s it. I will put together an angst-ridden montage of frustrated youth. Hmm, I’ll need some sort of background layer, how would you represent amplifier feedback visually?


* 1 ½ and 11 are not that different. I’m pretty sure if Erin was capable of expressing herself in words; she too would be calling us stupid and wanting to run away - all because we wouldn’t let her touch the oven when it was hot.

Kyle and Erin are both wrong. This is stupid. Man, sometimes I really miss drinking.