Blog on Blog

There's been some negativity going about the "whole blogging thing", and in all honesty the thought of having some strangers unfortunate life thrust upon you can't be said to sound anything but appalling. Still, there are ways of blogging that doesn't necessarily put the entirety of focus on the infamous self; the trick is to write about stuff that might actually be interesting for other people. If, for example, you've got mutual enemies, why not slag these off? That's always a winner.

Skillz - I has dem

Lots of people have asked me "how do you do it?" Well obviously I don't want to give away my secrets, but that's mostly because there are none. With Photoshop the trick is simply to learn yourself some of the basics, and then use them your own way. You can achieve great effects through simply filtering and layering.

Here's a little tutorial I've patched together to illustrate what I mean:

1. First off you need a photo; I've downloaded mine from sxc.hu (http://www.sxc.hu/photo/710131)














2. Make a new layer and colour it white.
Now change the mode to "colour" and the opactiy to 75%.











3. The roses look a bit damp, but that's nothing a little contrast adjustment won't fix. Duplicate your background layer and go to Image > Adjustments > Brightness/contrast.
Put brightness to -25 and contrast to +35 and watch those roses come alive.

4. Now duplicate the previous layer and go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. The size of this file is quite big, so I've put the blur to 10. (Remember this won't apply for all photos, so this is where your "personal twist" comes in. Same goes for the brightness/contrast adjustments.)











5. The last step is actually the same as the first one!
Change the layer mode to "overlay" and you're done.











So there it is then!
Now, if you please, stop bothering me.

















Cheers.

I'll edit you out, you know

Depicting reality is great fun, but photoshopping is even better. Here are some of my own favorite snaps:

Actually the first one's clean. Didn't see that one coming, did you?

And we've Finished!

Needless to say, this looks quite a lot better in real life.
As to how it's made: I've used actual wallpaper for the background, satin for the hair and t-shirt, and... well, paper with some tape stuck on to it (to make it tactile) for the face. I'm a fan of easy solutions, so what?

I'd rather you didn't touch that....

I don't want to get too far into this, so I'll just say that we're working with textures at school, and I'm not very good at it. I have however worked with textures before, only it's been strictly restricted to the Photoshop meaning of the word.

A recurrent texture in my art is the ever lovely paper texture.
It's a very nice and subtle texture which will fit to almost anything.

Another texture I've used on a couple of occasions, is the knitted texture. The use of this texture is more restricted though.

Textures in real life are of course tactile, but like with our project at school, I can't say I'm entirely comfortable with people touching my art, especially not when it's a picture of my face. 

I hope this has been educational x) 

So they Live there or What?

Arctic Monkeys is without doubt my favorite band, and at the event of their "Arctic Monkeys Live at the Apollo" DVD-release, I thought I'd just post this piece I made of them a while ago, to "honor" them (if you could call it that xD). In the meantime I'll just die of anticipation as I wait for my pre ordered "Arctic Monkeys Live at the Apollo Special Limited Edition DVD Box Set".

Don’t be Rubbish, New Design?

I haven’t been myself lately, and as you might have noticed, my blog has suffered. Two Sundays have passed without me writing a single word, and so I thought perhaps it was time I made a valid effort of making a proper blog post. So here you are then:

Yesterday, even though nothing really worked out, like it never really does, in the midst of all the distress, I actually felt a jolt of happiness. I had been asked to make a header for fredstoyva’s blog “The Music Dramatist”, and so I did.

Inspired by the making of Fred’s header, I decided to rework the design of my own blog. Having not touched Photoshop for such a long time, I had almost forgotten how much fun it is to work with, and it felt really good to be reminded.
I hope you will enjoy the new design as much as I do J

Here are some of the headers I made, and might use in the future: