I was messing around trying to get over my day, and made this. Cute huh? it's not rocket science really just playing around.

First I tubed the cat off of some fabric and saved it. Then picked a really fat font, and made a patterned fill thingy and then did some paint shop magic with selections and tubed in the kitty. Added bevels, and drop shadows etc just to show the effects. I stuck the kitty in the middle so you could see where the pattern came from. The outside pattern is just the blinds effects like what's on the frame.

I figured if I do something everyday, it will only improve my skills.

Painting Pansy's the Photoshop Way

While I am waiting for PSPU to reopen I have to have something to do so I decided to try a tutorial over at Eagles Rest Graphics. This is a tut on alpha channels and painting that Susi has provided. Click here that will take you to the tutorial if you want to have a go at it.

So what is an alpha channel? That I don't know concerning this but it was fun! That's me putting the donkey before the cart, I am sure that will be covered in class somewhere down the road. As far as I can see it is explained as a file within a file. Masks, settings and info can be stored in this Alpha Channel. As long as you save as a .pspimage or .psd that alpha channel remains there, with the items within out of sight until you load/recall (in the case of a mask) from that Alpha Channel. In this case someone else saved the image as such for people like me to play with. One day I will make some for others to play with.

I found this a lot of fun, and a bit of a challenge. Everything I know about painting had to be temporarily shoved aside because this is nothing like the real thing but has similar, possibly better results. In my head I am thinking OK now paint one with your paint and brushes on an actual canvas and compare. I may try that if I have the right colors of paint in my stash without having to go buy some. This also took me longer to do, 2 days - only because I really screwed up yesterday an just deleted the whole thing and started over today.

I learned a few things from this tutorial, I learned how people get the shading so perfect (well as perfect as the artist's eye) and patience! I used my Wacom tablet for some of it but I am still having trouble coordinating my eye and hand movements, and I grip the pen too tight thus click goes the little buttons at the most inconvenient times! there is the fact that my brain still thinks the harder I press the darker or blendyer (new word) it will be. Got to stop doing that before I wear out the tablet and the pen from heavy usage.

Well hope you enjoyed this little bit, I am sure there will be more soon!

Painting a new way

So while PSPU is still on spring break, I was messing around a bit and painted a Sunrise....or is it a sunset? It was fun to do, messing around with gradients and the deform tool. This is the first I ever tried that deform tool and it took me about five times to get it the way I wanted it. The clouds were fun too, using a brush and reducing the opacity to make them actually resemble clouds.

I was trying to make shapes too and actually did but I am not sure what to do with them yet lol.

Surfing around I found so many really awesome digital scrap booking sites and boy oh boy they can be addicting. Most of them offer you teasers so you will go back and buy their stuff and if I were truly a scrapper I would be in heaven. I do love to look at it and have actually saved some of it but not sure I will ever use it.

I am so torn right now, I want to get out my paint, inks, papers and do dads and play with them but I want to do this too. Somewhere down the line it will have to merge right? I think maybe I am just running a quart low on energy lol.

Well that's it for tonight, sleep tight.

Moon Gone Digital

Where have I been? Well long story but I am trying to be back now so that is all that really matters. So while I was gone I decided to try digital. There is a lot to be said for digital work, it has always interested me but I really never pursued it until now. The only thing is you can't expect miracles overnight, as it is a long process to learn.

I joined a group, and I highly recommend it to anyone just starting out. The group is called PSP University and they are some fantastic people willing to teach quite a lot. They share too, and in return you do the lessons and share back as soon as you can. Quite simple. Now this group is for Paintshop Pro and you can get free copies of that if you don't have it, but if you know a little bit about Photoshop you can do the lessons in that too. They have a few rules as all groups do, and believe me they are fair but necessary rules. You work at your own pace, and it is like going to school with lesson, a final and even graduation.

I made a slide show of some of the Freshman lessons I have learned there. Note please that some of the tube graphics are not NOT mine but if you like the tube you can go to the website listed on the picture and get the tube, please leave a thank you comment and READ the TOS. I did learn how to tube finally and I love it! The biggest challenge is finding the right photo to tube from and it has to be your own or something like Dover clips(which I use a lot) also there are some really cool thing from old postcards that you can snag which I will probably do soon.