Accessories

My sister took a picture of me wearing some of my accessories around my birthday.  I took the vivid colors of the picture into Photoshop and put it in black & white and  brown tones.  Then used the direct selection and transform tools to put different versions of the photo into a stock photo of a pile of old Polaroid film. 

Buttons

Life has been busy, so this blog has been on the back burner for a bit.  I was thinking about things to post, but never had time to make them.  This picture is based on an experience I had last week.  I spent the week at a camp teaching crafts, and the most popular item seemed to be the button making machine.  I won't bore you with why I think that was the case.  But like real buttons, these Photoshop created buttons are easy to make.  All you need is a circle.  Then add an inner bevel and a drop shadow using Layer Styles.  The trick is to make the inner bevel as soft as you can. 
As for the messages on the buttons them selves.  I feel like "Art Dork" is encompassing of my personality.  Particularly when I'm doing things like carrying a paper cutter, a ream of paper, or large canvas for a mile or more.  Which funnily enough, I find myself doing frequently. 

Hidden Bench

The US Botanic Gardens turned out to be a respite from a crazy cold winter. I borrowed a nifty camera from a good friend and worked up a sweat shooting around 100 pictures. A few will be featured in future blog posts. I really love the original photo but I also love the graphic/illustrative quality to the black and white version.

Original Photo

Damask Figures

The composition above was created by copying or pasting vectors (eps or illustrator files ) in Photoshop as Smart Objects. Using the free transform and move tools to place things were I wanted. Then using Inverse Selection to "place" the Damask Pattern in the figures. Purple is currently one of my favorite colors, and gray is my favorite neutral.

Rusted Branches

This composition employs the sames techniques used in the previous post. The original photo (credit again to Corb, thank you!), by itself is beautiful. I really liked the snow covered branches and contrasting sky. I begged to borrow the photo, so I could play with it in photoshop.

Original Photo

New to this blog are links to websites I find particularly useful design wise. In some cases the site design is awesome, or the services offered are reasonably inexpensive. I'm always on the lookout for more resources, if you have any suggestions for sites I should check out, please comment and let me know.

Old Paper Figures

I applied my Threshold Filter technique to 4 different photos. Then copied the layers to a photo of old textured paper from istockphoto.com. After playing around with the layout, I decided that I liked the descending order of this composition the best. Picture credits go to Corb. Extra blogger points, to anyone who knows what building in DC the Statues on the left and middle of the picture are a part of.

Tribute to Snowmageddon 2010

Although I grew up in a blizzard prone town. I've never continuously walked through so much snow in my life as I have in the past two weeks. (You drive through snow there.) Just this morning I wished I had my old snow pants, as I sunk though a snow drift up to my knees. After a while the trudging through the snow gets old. But before that happens, while the snow is falling or just after the storm is over, the snow is truly beautiful. I've spent spent several cold moments with a smile on my face looking at trees, clouds and buildings.
Special thanks to Corb for venturing out in Snowmageddon to capture the picture of the Capitol and then letting me use it for my blog. The frame came from iStock Photo. I applied a few filters to the picture of the Capitol for a blurry oil painted look, with a little detail. To the picture of the frame I adjusted the hue until I saw the shade of blue I was after. I love the color blue, but it also conveys how cold I've been this winter while complementing the picture inside.

Classical Motif Abstraction Calendar

My current obsession is abstractions of classical and floral motifs. A few weeks ago I worked that idea into a calendar for my friend's birthday. I designed each of the months to fit on half of an 8.5"x11" piece of paper with a 1/4" border. Once all 6 sheets were printed, I cut each page in half. I used vectors downloaded from istockphoto.com and played with the scale and color in Illustrator, then I imported the backgrounds as jpegs into InDesign and added the text. My current Sans Serif font of choice is Myriad Pro.

Red Doors

I had the idea a few days ago to use floral vectors as paths to show different color versions in the same photo.
So thanks to my trusty stock photographer (sibling/roommate) for the photo.
Working my photoshop magic this time using things I've posted on this blog before, I tried different versions to my hearts content and came up this.
The doors belong to a church in Mt. Vernon Square, Baltimore.

Two tone patterns

My design aesthetic goes one of two ways, minimalistic or overly complex. There is very rarely any middle ground for me. I also love monotone or two tone patterns. My favorite neutral color is gray. So naturally these things all came together in this design. I started with floral vectors from istockphoto and went to town with layering and scaling.

Red

Here's one last post for 2009. I've had lots of adventures this fall, including the outing were this photo was taken. Bonus points for anyone who knows, what famous architecture site we are at and the architect. The photo was taken by a friend, who's camera I am quite envious of.
The techniques I used are oldies, but goodies: the old pop of color, brown tones and a little glowing layer.

Fall at Arlington Cementary

I spent part of my afternoon attending a funeral at Arlington National Cemetery. Part of my reason for being there was to take pictures. I took the picture above, just as we were leaving. Ordinarily, I'd play with this in Photoshop, but I really liked the original colors. So the only thing done with this photo was a tiny bit of cropping off the bottom.

Damaged?

A little spin on my usual design process, Paper Damage brushes. The photo was taken 4 days ago and damaged in Photoshop for 4 minutes or less. Thank you Photoshop Exchange for the brushes.

A Little Peter Pan

Today I found myself thinking about this photo I took of the Peter Pan Statue in Hyde Park, while in London 6 years ago. Said photo was shot with my now old and trusty, 35mm Cannon Rebel G. After returning home the photo was scanned. Today I applied the Desaturate and used Levels commands to produce a softened black and white photo.

End of Summer

This picture was created using techniques I've already mentioned previously. So I post this as a farewell to a good summer and motivation for me to blog more.

Pasta Straight Up

I recently made some colorful pasta necklaces for a design project I have been working on. While photographing I became slightly obsessed with the colors and angles. Proof is above. There's no Photoshoping on this picture, just straight up the original photo.

Celery Photoshoot

A few mornings ago, right before I rushed out the door, I took a moment to photograph an experiment as part of a design project I'm working on. Thus emerged the celery photoshoot, complete with walking around the living room, celery in two glasses of colored water trying to find the best natural light. My favorite picture, the one above was nicely side lighted by a 2nd story stair window.
Then in Photoshop, I just slightly bumped up the color saturation then added a small gradient to the corners and sides of the photo.

Rug Details

Wow, it's been a while since my last entry!
I took this photo detailing part of a rug I really like. I applied a few filters to change the colors. Then I applied canvas texture to the whole thing.

Sharpie Tattoos

I recently discovered a new hobby while spending some time at the beach, sharpie tattoos.
I was very proud of how this one turned out, so after it was documented via photo, I took the photo and applied a sketching filter to it.
Sharpie Tattoos anyone? Maybe I need to transition over to Henna, I hear there's money to be made. Perhaps I'll just set up shop on my front steps.

Catching a budding photographer

This photo was taken during an outing to the National Arboretum. Although the original photo was very colorful, I decided to apply some filters and mute the colors to almost monochromatic to focus in on the camera and the photographer's face. This particular photographer often wandered away from the group to use her old faithful Cannon Rebel G. So I decided to document this annoying/funny occurrence.

Foliage

At the request of a friend of mine I broke out my water colors, sadly they haven't seen the light of day in a while. In the quest to develop my Photoshop Godessness, painting was pushed aside. I have had a little more time lately so I'm starting to put those painting and drawing skills to use! I am not the greatest foliage painter, but I tried a different approach (lots of little washes, instead of wet into wet). Having not painted in a while, I was happy with the result. The line from a childhood song 'In the leafy tree tops' comes to mind when I look at the tree in back of the hosue. Now I'm on the lookout for my next subject...

The Tele

In honor of the rain, here's a painting I made while in London. My sister took the photo I used as a reference. Apparently the phone booth smelled pretty awful inside. Perhaps someone used it as a loo?

Keep smiling...it's Photoshop Express

I recently came across some pictures I had scanned 4 years ago. However I wasn't on a computer with my beloved Adobe Creative Suite. Then I remembered the Photoshop Express webiste https://www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html. It's basic and it's free and lets me play with photos. It even has a few "Pink Flamingo" functions (see text bubble above) that could provide hours of enjoyment if you like pink flamingos, happen to be unemployed or an admin assistant with some time to kill.

York Minster

The year or two following a semester spent in London, my artwork kept me reminiscing about my time there. This painting is of York Minster as seen though the city of York.

The Window

Due to some recent circumstances, this blog is going to take a different turn for a bit. I'm going to focus on paintings with a few digital creations here and there for the time being. The image above is a watercolor based on a picture I took of a window of John Ruskin's home in the Lake District of England. The image was painted on my return to London.
I have a slight obsession with architectural details. To spare the people around me I usually don't go around pointing out everything I like. But if you've spent some time with me in I've probably pointed out a fanlight, sidelight or mansard roof to you.