Two things I did in the past week

Over the past week or so I've gotten bored enough to do things I don't usually do, so I ended up trying out water colors freely for the first time and editing a photo.

The photo at the top is of my water color attempt. I sketched out and inked one of my characters (His name is William) and then colored it with my water color paints (I used a lot of red and black, with some purple for his hair and stuff!). I went a bit crazy to make it look bloody and gory since it fits his character, but I feel I did a pretty good job. I was actually inspired to draw him specifically because of two songs I was listening to that day; "S.H.E." and "Volatile Times" both by IAMX (the songs are here and here)

The second picture is a photo I edited of Chris Corner, who is actually from IAMX (IAMX is his solo musical project, I like it a lot). I found this picture on google images of him and kind of went to town with an online photo editing software (original picture is here. I also got inspired somewhat by another song by IAMX called "Under Atomic Skies").

I can't remember exactly what I did, but I mixed many different photo effects and did a focal blur and some other crazy things and it ended with this. I dunno I find I did a really good job and I'm proud :) (Also the thing at the bottom corner is my tumblr blog link, I was originally going to just put it there but...yeah)

So those were really the only major things I've done this week related to art, so...yay?

Art Nouveau Slide

If you need to look at my art nouveau slide show, click here 

Adobe Illustrator-Light Bulb

This time we had to use illustrator to make a lightbulb :) heres the original photo:

Now I didn't necessarily finish because I got severely frustrated with Adobe Illustrator so I just stopped before I made myself upset. But as of right now this is what i've done;

Using the pen tool, I made outlines around everything, starting with the Edison screw and ending with the reflections of light (in my opinion the pen tool is a pain. I originally used shapes and merged them all together, but that one looked horrible and it also got deleted so I had to start over). Once I finished outlining I used the gradient and fill bucket tool to fill in the shapes and give the photo some color (when it came to the light reflections I removed the black outline once I was done). After that I just saved it as a png file and posted it here!

I didn't do a lot (unfortunately) but thats what I did! if anything was difficult, it was pretty much everything, Illustrator never works when I use it so I don't like using it...But it was kind of fun I guess!

Rick Mercer Photo Challenge- Stephen Harper Jeans

In class we had to do the Rick Mercer photo challenge starring Stephen Harper! (the challenge is here) What you had to do was take a picture of Stephen Harper that was on the website and photoshop it to make something "special." For this, I decided to take one of Justin Bieber Calvin Klein photos and put Stephen Harpers face on the model. Here's how I did it;

1- First I opened both pictures in photoshop. Then, using the Quick Selection tool I selected Stephen Harpers face then copied and pasted it into the Calvin Klein photo.

2- Using the transform tool I dragged Stephen harpers face over the models face and bended the image until It matched the body and face shape as much as possible. It took a bit of work with not only the bend tool but I used liquify for some minor details such as the areas around the hair.

3- This is when I made his face black and white. I erased some things that I missed when I changed his face shape and size so it looked like it fit.

4- Using exposure, I changed Harpers face to make it match the contrast of the photo as much as possible. I couldn't make it match completely, so I had to change the photos contrast slightly as well.

5-I was told to attempt changing the "Calvin Klein" to "Stephen Harper" or something along those lines. So I selected every letter individually at the bottom of the image and used the fill tool to get rid of them as best as I could. It probably took me the longest out of everything because I screwed up a lot and had to re-do it.

6- Afterwards all I did was add the text. I scrolled through the text options until I found a font that matched the original Calvin Klein the most and added it in. Since the pants are so bright I went over to the layer styles and used the drop shadow option. I played with it a bit and eventually it looked like an outline. I did the same with the Hash tag, fixed the exposure a bit more, then I was done!

That was my step-by-step for my Stephen Harper Jeans.  buy a pair, take a picture and tag it with #MyHarpers! (though don't actually because there ain't no brand called Stephen Harper Jeans obviously)

Digital practice

these are three pictures that I have made for a web comic I am making; "You're Mentally Insane, My Darling".  The darker one is the newest chapter cover; "Is he okay?" and the other two are fillers.

I just thought I'd share these because I made it in this really cool program called; "Paint tool SAI" its a great program to make amazing drawings in. I've been using it since I was about 10 or 11, and I've gotten progressively better. I mean, look at these older drawings;

I know, pretty bad, right? some of them are partially recent, but I learned to draw, use the line tool better and color better. What do you all think?

Prezi-Hieronymous Bosch-Surrealism

This is my Prezi on surrealism, and Hieronymous Bosch. I hope you enjoy it :)

Digital Surrealism-Glorified bodies

So for our culminating assignment, we had to make a surreal image using photos, and (obviously) photoshop. My work is called; "Glorified bodies"

We had to make it based on social, economical, or humanity issues. So I chose to do a subject that is looked at quite often; how industries make models on magazines look like the perfect human being, hence why my picture is called “Glorified bodies”. I took a picture of my friend holding up her shirt to reveal her stomach, while another two friends of mine are working on her, to make her body look “perfect”. There is a screen to the far right, which shows what they are doing to her, pushing her stomach in, retouching her face, etc. At the current moment in the picture they were just fixing up her stomach to make her look pencil skinny.

Oh gosh…the procedure was forever. I had a lot of trouble actually working on the model on the screen to make her look like an actual magazine model, it got really aggravating after a while, also, my model had a slight smirk on her face when we took the picture, so I had to make it look like she actually had a frown. I used probably 30-ish layers to make this, maybe more, but eventually I managed to get it to work, I adjusted lighting in the picture, colored things over, etc, and it ended with this.

What I learned was that being someone who actually edits the model must be pretty dang hard. It was really difficult to edit my model to make her look like a magazine model. That, and I’m pretty good at coloring things over J. I also learned that the liqufy tool is more useful than I thought. And in the end…I’m actually