January 29th, 2008
You may have heard of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, or NAPP, and their publication Photoshop User (now you have!). A guy by the name of Scott Kelby runs the show over there and he recently put out a book that I had the audacity to purchase as soon as I heard about it.
It’s got a ridiculously long, albeit perfectly descriptive title: ‘Scott Kelby’s 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop.’ Ok, so maybe it’s not that long, but the point is, I’ve just finished going through the book and it’s worthy of mention. If you work with photoshop and want to do a better job of improving your photos, or need a more concrete process for improving them, then you want to zip on over to Amazon using our handy-dandy link and get yourself a copy.
There are 21 lessons in the book, so you get plenty of practice putting Scott’s methods to work. Even those of us who have been using Photoshop for a while will find some nice tidbits in Scott’s methodology that will help our own productivity.
7 Point Photoshop System
Here is a picture I re-worked in Photoshop using a combination of my own methods with some of Scott’s. The goal was to take a fairly flat and boring picutre and add some color, contrast and POW to it. My wife was sure happy with it!
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January 18th, 2008
I’ve been tweaking the look of this site, and it is coming along (finally). There are still some things to iron out – that header graphic is just asking for some more punishment. At least the RSS links are up and running, meaning you can subscribe to this blog via your favorite feed reader. If you have any problems subscribing to our RSS feed, let me know.
Illustration Project 001: ‘Floating Head’ is coming along. I’ve decided on the sketch I want to illustrate, and I’ve started the outlines. This is one that was jotted down several years ago and I had to do some digging in the closet to find the sketchbook, but it was worth it. Dopey Head here might turn into an interesting illustration (or at least a good warm-up). So, below you will see the sketch and also the vector outlines completed so far in Illustrator.
The sketch was imported into the program on a seperate layer, and the only thing done here was using the pen tool to create the outline. You could do something similar to your own sketches using Photoshop as well, although when it comes to vector art, Illustrator is the standard. As I was finishing the eyes, it seemed like this guy needed some bushy eyebrows. Next, I’ll start coloring and shading him in for some depth and hopefully a little more character, and maybe some hair. If he’s lucky.
So, thanks for visiting and if you are in the middle of any creative projects right now, I’d love to see them. Next week, we’ve got a book recomendation, and then stage 2 of our illustration project after that. Stay tuned.
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January 7th, 2008
I just finished reading a book by Dan Miller called ‘48 Days to the Work You Love’, a book I came across while listening to financial guru Dave Ramsey. Dan makes a living helping others find the courage and tenacity to chase a dream, make a change, and face and overcome adversity. He helps people figure out what they love to do and find a way to make a living at it, which coincides nicely with the purpose of ‘A Creative Year.’ What good is an idea that you never act on? Are you pursuing your passions and using your talents like you want, or should be?
For those of us who love to create, and are fortunate enough to make a living out of it, our very nature is constantly churning up ideas. Sometimes we let them go back from whence they came, but some of them we latch onto and wrestle with until by sheer force of will and determination, we drag them into reality. Maybe it’s a painting, a web app, or a certain combination of color, type and shape in a brochure design. You may find yourself doing a lot of web and print design projects for others, but you really don’t want to let that illustration bug go. That’s what this site is going to be about – finding the time to become better at whatever it is you do, and also making sure you are doing what you love (even if it’s just on the side).
I thought a good place to start would be where every creative project should start – your sketchbook. I tend to draw cartoonish faces with big round eyes when I’m doodling, and am interested in doing portraits as well as designing interesting characters. Below I’ve scanned in 3 sketches I’ve made in the past, and what I plan on doing is taking one of them and turning it into a finished piece.
Step one of that process will have to wait until next week. I encourage you to find a sketch you did, that you loved, and revisit it. Maybe you can turn it into something more…
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January 2nd, 2008
I don’t know about you, but 2007 wasn’t good enough.
Between working a full time job, doing freelance design projects for various clients, and family obligations, there wasn’t enough time for those pet projects swimming around in the back of my head. Don’t get me wrong - pouring out my valuable creative juices into someone else’s goblet certainly pays the bills, but it’s those personal projects that can rejuvinate our creative juices. They weren’t created for money, or with someone else’s vision and input, but they came into this world from the seed of our own imagination. Inspiration was allowed to run free, rampaging up and down the canvas with wild abandon. So, it is with grit and determination that I vow an upturn in my creative output for 2008
This site will chronicle a years worth of personal projects, from brainstorming, sketching, to final creation of each project. Hopefully you’ll find a little bit of inspiration you can use to tackle your own demon project, or gain some insight into someone else’s methods (madness). Now that we know the ‘why’, let’s find out what exactly we’re doing…
The majority of my day job involves marketing, creating brochures, business cards, running a website, with an occasional video project thrown in. On the freelance front, website design consumes most of my time. The one thing I don’t get to do anymore is illustrate. It’s rare I get to lose myself in a drawing, or spend time experimenting with some vector art, or try out some digital painting techniques in Photoshop. So this, our creative-year ground zero, will begin with an excursion into illustration utopia. That is, after I get this Word Press theme looking halfway decent. Oh, and I get my new laptop up to speed. It comes in tomorrow.
Tags: about, begin, creative projects
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