Random Points in My Life

Day 6:

2009-12-20T22:25:00.000-08:00

So on our way to go visit the family in Mandoluyong. We experience more of the Filipino driving, which at time is quite fasinating. There is no such thing as lanes as you can see from the picture above. We arrived there safely and I was introduced to family that I haven't seen in 11 years. I hardly recognized anyone. I recognized the little bit around the house but that was about it. We had some dinner and then the family decided to break out the karaoke machine. We sang a few songs and then we decided to head to another mall before heading home. It was called Market Market and it was a place that had condos, resturants and shopping. The 3 things needed for any person here in Manila. There was a firework show and then we went home very tired and ready for bed.

Day 5:

2009-12-19T18:31:00.000-08:00

Again a little behind on my days. But on day 5 was my barhopping day with my two cousins. In the morning I woke up and went downstairs to have breakfast and drink some tea. By the end of breakfast (which normally lasts quite some time since I sit back and enjoy myself) I decided that I have time to relax. It was slightly sunny so I went to the pool, lounged back and listened to some tunes. My parents joined me later and I decided to finished my book "Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Thought the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu" by J. Maarten Troost. Interesting book and quite funny for a real story.

At about 9 my cousin Rizza came to pick me up from the hotel to meet up with my other cousin Roanne. The first bar we went to wasn't very packed so we decided to go to Green Belt to see what they had. We stopped in this placed called Ice Vodka Bar. It was really neat...couldn't really hear anything cuz the music was so loud but I had a long island and we took pictures. Then we went next door which was this Middle Eastern/Indian inspired resturant called Queens of Bollywood. They had hookah which both Roanne and Rizza never tried before. They wanted to try it and I said that it was my treat. All the hookahs were being used so we had to wait about half and hour till the next one was available. We wandered around until it was time. We got set up and also ordered a curry chicken pizza which came out about 15 minutes after we sat down to smoke. I explained how to smoke and showed them what to do. We were there till like 12.30 then we all had to figure out how we were going to get home. We tried many taxi's and nothing. They were going to charge us 200 pisos to start when it only cost us like 80 to get over there. So then it was about 1.40 am when we caught a bus over to Shangra-la Mall which is right by my hotel. So by about 2 or 2.30 I arrived at home and fell asleep.

Day 4:

2009-12-17T17:48:00.001-08:00

Well before the day was out; my Internet service decided to go down for some repairs. So I couldn't report on the days events. So here is a quick recap.

The day started at 7ish in the morning. Wasn't really tired waking up which is wonderful since I get more time in the day. I decided that before breakfast my family and I should work out. We went downstairs and went to the health club there; complementary for the hotel with a well stocked gym with bikes, treadmills, elliptical, machines, and free weights. Working out for about an hour and a half was great; I made a goal to work out every-other day to stay fit for all the wonderful food they serve us. Afterwards we had a breakfast at Heat (which is the hotel restaurant). Afterwards I had till 2 till my cousin came to take me out. My father and I decided to go to soak up some rays by the pool. At noon I decided to slowly walk into the non-heated pool. There were a few others in the pool at the time and as I got use to the water, a little Korean girl (I believe she was Korean, I didn't ask) with a little blue plastic inter tube came over. She laughed a lot when I blew bubbles in the water and tried to imitate me. For a while we just kept each other company not saying much. Finally I asked her what her name was; she answered that her name was Pali. She asked my name and of course I told her. She started naming parts of her face like her eyes and mouth. Just adorable beyond belief. Anyways she told me her age and we just hung out in the pool for a while. After all was said and done, I got out of the pool and she went with her family. I saw Pali and her dad come over to where I was sitting. The father had a mango and he handed it to his daughter so she could give it to me as a thank you for looking after her. So adorable =)

At 2 my cousin came to pick me to show me around the town. We started off at the Shangra-La Plaza and took the train to Alana to the Landmark, Greenbelt and one other mall. We shopped around for Christmas gifts for the family and friends, then she showed me where were going to hang out tomorrow. We ate lunch at the Landmark foodcourt which I must say is 100 times better than any fast food that I've ever tried. I had a korean bowl filled with rice, beef, a little bit of veggies and an egg. So good! After all the shopping we decided to go home. The line to go onto the train was crazy and it would have taken forever to even get to the platform. So we decided to take the bus to our stop. Now the buses are like the charter buses and the traffic on the road is quite crazy. We ran onto the bus and just went along for the ride. When we arrived to the room it was about 8.30. So that was about a 6 hour adventure of shopping and seeing the sights.

So that was day 4. Tomorrow....bar hopping!

Day 3:

2009-12-16T06:20:00.000-08:00

So third day in the Philippines. Today was a relax day which consisted of the pool, the hotel room, and Mega Mall ; mother was sick for the first part of the day so she stayed in bed trying to get better. Dragged my dad to the mall to get a swim suit ($20 which is great) but then I stayed by the pool for a while to soak up the rays and possibly jump in the pool to cool off. What I didn't realize was the pool they have for the guests here is not heated like at home...instead I walk in and bearly make it past my knees. It a lot of willpower to go completely under, and when I did I was treading water to keep warm and doing some water polo moves to stop from shivering.

After my poolside experience I came back up for a little relaxation. Turning on the television I watched Kirby. Something I rarely see ever which was quite interesting since it was also in a different language. Afterward my family and I wanted to explore Mega Mall.

Kinda a back story, but when I first visited the Philippines, the biggest thing there was Mega Mall. A 6 story mall filled with a department store, a bowling alley, an ice rink, etc. That was about 11 years ago.
This time I visit and there is no ice rink, but they have an extremely large movie theater, a gym and an area they call cybertron (everything electronic). They have tons of stores too; but what shocked me the most was my cousins telling me that Mega Mall had been outdone for the biggest mall in the Philippines. Apparently theres a place called "Everything Asia" or something like that. I think I might be taken there by my cousin here tomorrow or something like that.

Now this was a funny thing I found at Mega Mall. To tell you the truth, the Philippines loves western culture; they did have Pizza Hut, Dairy Queen, McDonalds, and KFC within the building but I saw 2 Pizza Hut's that were classified as a bistro. I saw that the place was more...oh how should you say it...dressed up than your usual Pizza Hut. But that was crazy. Needed to take a picture of it to show that I am not crazy.

But on with my plans for the next couple of days....since discusssing with my cousins, I actually have plans this trip. Which is actually great considering it would be a complete waste of time to come all this way to sit in a hotel doing absolutely nothing. But anyways....loose plans; tomorrow I'm taking a train to go to a mall or something like that with one of my cousins. Shopping for friends and whatnot (me too cuz of whats happening on friday). On Friday, both my cousins are taking me to go clubbing/ or bar hopping which is what they call it (since the drinking age is 18 I can actually get into clubs). And on the 30th, it's my cousins birthday so we are going to celebrate by going to a day spa. I've heard its completely different than going to an American spa but we shall see. Should be very relaxing; and I get to have just a cousin's couple of days! Well off to bed....extremely tired (still trying to get use to the time change).

Day 1/Day 2:

2009-12-15T06:50:00.001-08:00

My 3 week vacation to the Philippines is finally here. My goal is to keep a record of whats going on here and post some of my findings every day. I kinda have a late start since I started flying on the 13th of December. But I can make that up no problem.

We took Hawaiian Airlines since it was the most direct flight from Portland. My family and I woke up at 6am to board our plane at 8 and we were off to our first stop; Honolulu, Hawaii. Our flight had a 24 hour layover in Honolulu (which I must say was wonderful) so when we arrived we decided to go out for lunch and then go for a swim. 81 degrees on a December day. Anyways our little stop there was quite nice and I just couldn't come to the fact that I was actually in Hawaii. Just insane since I haven't had a vacation in a while (about 6 years since Hawaii I believe).

But this morning I woke up and took a pleasent walk on the beach. Watched some locals catch some small waves and tourists waking up and flocking to the beaches. At about 10.30 my family decided to head off to the airport. We arrived there and waited our usual 2 hours. As everyone was waiting an announcer came over the intercom saying, " Ladies and Gentlemen on flight 422, we are sorry to inform you that there will be a slight delay in our flight..." a slight delay in the flight? What? Why everyone was wondering, "Since our plane is too heavy we need to make a stop to refuel the plane before making the final trip to Manilia." Little did I know that about every single Filipino on that flight decided to pack their whole lives plus another families worth of luggage with them, "Our flight will make a stop in Guam to refuel and then you will be on your way. If you have any questions or concerns please ask the front desk and they will assist you as best as they can. Thank you and Mahalo." So....everyone was shocked that we needed to stop since our plane couldn't carry enough fuel to get us to our destination. Has this ever happened to anyone else? I have no clue...a first for me. I believe the only really good thing about that flight was the movie's they had for us to watch. Made the time go by a little faster than it would have otherwise. But anyways; never seen Guam before so when we saw land everyone was looking out their windows (myself included) Took some pictures coming in and of our lovely fill up tank...such an interesting island...didn't think it was that large actually.

It took about an hour to refuel the plane but we were off again. This time it took about 3 hours to get to Manila. But finally we saw lights! From there it took about 30-40 minutes to get to the Shangra-La Hotel. Man, driving here would kill me. I'll try and get a video of it cuz it's so crazy but I'm glad we had someone drive us. It looks so different than I remember (course it was 1998 the last time I was here). But more will come. 2 days down; 21 more to go!

New Project

2009-08-11T14:49:00.000-07:00

This is the new project I'm working on. It's called Release; and I have had the idea for a while in my head and I had a color theory class. They said I had to work on a final project so it gave me a perfect excuse to take this idea and actually create it. The idea is that this vessel is containing "energy" and it will crack and things will be coming out of it.

For the colors I used a cyan and mixed it with a little bit of black to create that nice midnight blue. For the brown, I created a red orange with magenta and yellow. Added some black to create that reddish brown. All the colors here were mixed by me which is good. When I start working on the "energy" I will be using some store bought colors but changing them a little bit with the paint I have now.

Cartoon Bubble Tutorial

2009-06-07T00:01:00.000-07:00

Again this was a test before I would do my Hoots book. Found this way from a guy on youtube. Was interesting on how he did his, and a little bit obsessed, but oh well, to each his own.

So this is how this guy started out: First draw a circle around the text and then make a copy of the circle. Send the copy circle to the very back layer and put it flush against the top circle. From there you will make the bottom circle slightly bigger to make a more "realistic" or handdrawn effect. *Note: you will also want to put the top circle in a white middle and no boarders that way you will have no interferance when attatching the arrow.

So here you have this starting, now all you would have to do is add the arrow pointing to someone. He suggested to use the pen tool which is very handy. From there, you would have your own arrow that would be apart of the bubble except for one thing: the arrow is on the very top. That is easily remedied.

As you can see I fixed the arrow by sending it backwards one layer. I found this excercise good to know, but I found another way to do this sort of thing. If you wouldn't want the whole thick circle around the bubble, then you could just take your pentooled triangle, and circle, overlap them the way you want them too and then use your pathfindertools and combined.

Mesh Tool Tutorial

2009-06-06T23:39:00.000-07:00

So this little tutorial I found on youtube. I wanted to do a gradient mesh for one of my Hoots Owls so I looked this up to figure out how to use it. It almost works like a gradient, but it gives objects more shading properties like you will see in this demonstration.

This is my first object. I drew a circle and I made the insides green so that way I could make a green ball. I then selected my circle and went to the mesh tool on the tool bar. From there, the only thing you must do is point to a spot you wanted there to be part of a graph and click. Once you make your desired graph, you can use the direct select arrow to reposition, or change the curves to the graph all within this one little object.

So here in this picture you can see my little graph within my circle and what I am trying to do is eminate a ball. The gradient starts from one of the dots and then gradually decreases as it goes out from there. As you can see I'm using my color swatches to change the colors among the circle. *note: in order to change the color, you must first select the point in which you want the color to go.

This is my final rendition of my ball. I just made a quick sample of a ball using different shades of green/yellow to create that sort of effect. You just have to tweak it around and play a bit to get it right, but overall, it is a great skill to have when you are making 3 dimentional objects.

Brightening up a dull photograph Tutorial

2009-06-06T12:54:00.000-07:00

So this tutorial I watched before and I have many "dull" photos since I live in a grey state. Beautiful but still grey most of the times. Anyways I decided to use one of my pieces when I went to the beach.

As you can see, the picture has a lot of combining tones and is just dull beyond belief. That day it was windy like none other. It was kinda cold too; a hoodie and some jeans were required. But this picture I loved.

So what I did next was I went to my levels to change them. As you can see on the right hand side of the page, when you change the levels, it creates a new layer.

From there I just fiddled around with the levels. I brought in the darks so its a little clearer, mess only a little with the medium tones and then just a little from the lights. That way more detail would be seen thoughout the entire piece.

Now I wanted to make some things just a little more brighter of a color. Going in to Hues/saturation is the key for this. I used the Edit: Master to make the entire photo a different saturation. If someone wants to just adjust a certian color like blue, you would have to go up to Edit:Master and there is a selection for blue (or various other colors). If you don't know what classification a certian shade is, you can use the eyedroplets that are there above the 2 color lines. This will help you select a certian area in which you would want to change.

So here you can see I have 3 layers. The original picture, the changed levels I customized, and finally the hue/saturation level in which I explained on how I did that.

This is the final piece. As you can see, the wood is a different shade of brown and the sky and water are bluer than they use to be. This tutorial was very helpful and I hope it helps anyone else who is wondering about the same thing.

Week 5: Tutorials

2009-06-06T12:14:00.000-07:00

So my week 5 tutorials. I found this website called photoshopsupport.com. And there are some interesting things in there that I didn't know about. Although, these tutorials are samples from their larger CD; so some of the tutorials start off in the middle of a big tutorial.

So this is the guy that talks during the tutorials and his name is Chad I found out. In this tutorial he demonstrated how to get rid of red eyes easily. I thought just taking a black brush would do the trick, but he actually used the red eye tool which is under the spot healing tool. From there all someone would have to do is to point and click. Simple yet effective.

This one was actually really interesting and I learned a lot from this little exercise and I want to do it with one of my dull photos. So that will be a later addition to my weekly tutorials that I must do. He started out with a dull grey picture and what he did was went into the levels selection to brighten up the image a bit. Next he wanted to brighten it up a little bit more. He went to the hue/saturation and started changing the whole thing to be a little brighter. What he did next was very interesting and I had no idea that this was an option. There is a way to edit just one shade of color. So for example, he selected the sky which is blue, and selected it to change just the blue. Then he did it for the grass as well to make it more green. Wonderful tutorial and very helpful since living in Oregon a person doesn't get the best of weather to shoot in.

I have had hard times with some of the select tools so I found this one about the direct selection tool. One of the helpful ones that I liked. He gives little tricks along the way on how to make the "brush" larger or smaller at the hitting of one button, and he explains how to make sure you get most, if not all of the item that you want to select. He also shows that if someone doesn't want to have an area selected you hit shift I believe and it makes the direct select tool opposite to what it is suppose to do. Quite helpful if I have to do that sort of thing.

This tutorial was quick and somewhat helpful. This is the one where there was a bigger tutorial happening, but they only showed one step in the process. I think it would be fun to do it, but overall, it wasn't the most helpful.

Week 4 tutorials

2009-06-06T01:37:00.000-07:00

This tutorial was about how to rightfully change things without damaging the original image. What i learned was to make a copy of the background, but what this tutorial was saying is that you could use the button next to the add new layer. That will add an additional layer, but it will help from changing the image and possibly damaging it to where you cannot do anything to it.

This was a really neat little thing I never knew about. There is a vanishing point option within this program and the person talking in this tutorial was talking about how the grids are color coded to help understand what will work and what would not. I thought this was great because I learned from Art 119, that in order to do that sort of thing you would have to make your own lines and what not. That was horrible and I am so glad that I know that there is justice for us.

This was interesting to learn. This guy was walking through about turning colored images into black and white photos and I thought neat...lets see what this is about. Well this guy pulled up the screen showing the individual slides of colors and then what he did was proceed to talk about how you can change the shades of things depeending on what color they were before. So for example, he wanted to brighten the trees and grass so he went to the color green slide and moved that up towards the white. That brightened up only the parts that used to be green. That was fantastic to learn so that way I can still dr. my images up even if I want them black and white.

Pathfinder Tutorial: BittBox

2009-06-06T00:44:00.000-07:00

I wanted to explore pathfinder a little bit more since it is such a useful object in illustrator. I was sent this little tutorial, thanks to Kate, and it help me keep things straight and I learned about the expand button which was very helpful. Thought it could have been one of those buttons that would start the self destruct mechanisim knowing my luck haha.

Anyways, all fakeness aside, I make a quick couple of items; A black rectangle and a yellow star. I placed them on top of each other and then selected them both. This little demonstration you see above is the result of me clicking the upper left corner "button" right below the words "Shape Modes". It is the Add to Shapes area. This combineds the two shapes together into just one. The color takes form from the top shape hence why you see yellow. If a person wants to make this just one object, the person must immediatly click on the "expand" button on the far right of the menu.

This is the second in on the left hand side of the top row. This is called the subtract from shape area. This minuses out the top layer and leaves only the remains of the top layer and the bottom layer. Again, right after clicking the button, a person can click on the expand button and make a single shape out of it.

Third in from the left. Intersecting Shape Areas. This little button will take the overlapping parts of the objects you have selected and then making those overlapping parts the only parts you see. As you can see, two parts of the star are gone, you will see where they went in the next capture.

Last but not least, the Excluding Shape Areas. This creates the opposite effect of the above capture. It is taking the outside of the top shape and making it into an cutout.
Overall, in each of these pathfinders, a person can click on whatever shape area they want and then make it into its own shape by itself by just clicking the "expand" button. Love this little tool and will most likely use it a lot in the future.

Photoshop Tutorial: Photoshop Text

2009-06-06T00:11:00.000-07:00

This was a photoshop tutorial that I needed to do for my book. This was a test trial one that I did before I went on to do my final Hoots piece. So you can start off with any photography that you want within the words. I picked a photography I had used previously for my tutorials.

So the first step is to load up your image and then drag the "background" layer down to the bottom of the layer page and make a copy of it. Simple so far.

Now what you want to do is to create a new layer and put it between the two pictures (background and the copy) like what you see above. Now fill the whole first layer with white; you can use the paint bucket from your tools to get that.

Now clicking back on the background layer, you click on the "T" tool (text tool). Now you write whatever you want. I choose to say that Riley is the best horse ever! (true fact actually; very sweet horse) You can do a free transform of it so that way it will fit how you want to ctrl+t (PC) or apple+t (Mac) *Note: make sure your text is bold enough so you will be able to see the background image. Cursive is not recommended

Now you must put that text layer below the background copy. It was above, now it must be below. This step insures that you will still be able to see the text when you move on to the next step. Now what you must do next, once you have that set up is to go to your layers bar up near the top of the screen and drag down and select the "create clipping mask" or you can hit alt+ctrl+g (PC) or symbol (don't have an equivilant on the PC)+apple+g (Mac). *Note: will be under the exact same layer selections so don't worry. It actually is sometimes difficult to find the right symbols to tell people for macs. O well, grew up on PC's and it seems to run these programs fine at this moment. Anyways, once you create that mask you will be in business.

So this was my final image. I think I could have gotten the text larger if I used less words, but its a text trial and it worked so what the hey. Hope this is helpful to anyone.

Final Book Project and Final Thoughts

2009-06-05T16:01:00.003-07:00

So this was the final project in Art 120. This book was a fun one to make; Luckly I ended up with no pix. or anything really going wrong with my prints. Overall, the creating was the easiest yet the production of the book was a bitch. I never sweated over making something this much, but for all that sweat and panic at times, I am very happy with my first book. I loved the paper I used (and thanks to the wonderful staff at Paper Source for helping me) and the whole thing was just fun. No real regrets that I can really complain about.

This right above is the inside cover of my book. The book is titled "Hoots!!!" and it is a short narrative about a little carved owl he got in India. The page opposite to the title page actually has my wax seal on it. My wax seal is of a peacock with green wax; found that my first year of college and I loved it. Now I use it on my pieces to signify that it is indeed mine and also I sign my name (on Pen Hoots, a page within the book, I actually incorperated my name).

This is a close up of the front cover. As you can see I used a french roast brown to go on the binding to go along with the bright yellow and white paper used for the actual cover. The cover is actually used with a lightweight book cover that was on sale for 50% off at Paper Source. It has a papyrus feel to the white parts of the cover, but the yellow parts are slightly raised off the main sheet. The texture is almost a "rubbery" feel? Well thats what I feel, but just wonderful stuff, and I still have some left which is fantastic since it is such neat paper.

This is a side view of my book. A total of 30 pages; some are double sided making it really 38 pages.

And the final veiw of the book. I loved how it turned out, and except for a few bumbles such as glue, and "exposed" book binding, the book has turned out very well. Only one other person created the whole book binding like mine and so I was proud that I spent a little more time to create something different (although some of those other books were fantastic I must admit, there were some that I just wanted to have a copy of just because they were so neat like the straw one, or the barn one)

Starting Book Images No. 2

2009-05-25T03:37:00.001-07:00

A live trace and live paint to the owl. The photo was made in photoshop, but I live traced it and live painted it in illustrator. I thought that the brown color for the wood texture and then the green eyes to give it a different look was good.

Where is Hoots? My pen rendition of this little owl. I used the illustrators mesh tool to create a funky background for my owl. And for this I was inspired by the fashions that are coming back. The summer of love is a huge hit, so I wanted to use some psychodelic colors to emphasise this aspect. And because everything was so different, I used a smaller owl and made the colors more outgoing.

My Pencil rendition in photoshop. I scanned in my original piece (just the hand drawn owl) then I made it so I could knock out the white. Copy and Pasted him in a 7x7.5 postcard and then added some color with the paintbucket. It was hard because I had to thicken the line. I used the pencil tool to make lines where I needed them to be darker. Then I went with an organic, earth tone colors for the bird and then I added a night scene for him in his little tree.

Starting Book images

2009-05-21T09:55:00.000-07:00

This is Hoot. He is an craved owl that I gave my boyfriend. I took a photo of him and this is a picture of him with a filter off of illustrator. This is the stamp filter and I changed the settings around so it showed some details.

This is my tri-toned owl. I made him black and white first, then I went to image - mode- duotone. and then from there I changed it to a tri-tone. I used a m+m looking blue, m+m looking green and a yellow. I don't know how the figure has highlights but it makes it look like someone carved it out of stone.

This was a hue and saturation change. The hue was -42 and saturation was +43 and it created this really cool pink color. I thought it would be cool if there were a multiples.

This was my second rendition of this group. I thought it might need a background color. So I thought that possibly a green would be good.

This was an interesting idea that I thought up of. Just his head popping out was a cute idea. This was a combination of a photoshop image and the thought bubble and words are in illustrator.

This was my original picture that I thought up of. I just took the image I had and I put him to the edge of the page that I had.

Week 3 Tutorial

2009-05-20T15:52:00.000-07:00

This tutorial was very interesting and helpful because I needed to put text in a circle. Starting out with a circle, you would then add text to the circle. Then you would copy and then paste it right on top of the original text. That makes it so the text is bolder. From there you would go to the type on a path option. You would select the accender and flip options. You can also preview it if needed. From there you can select your flipped image and then all you have to do is rotate it.

This was interesting tutorial because it taught me how to create my own spirals. I was wondering how to do that because the spirals for illustrator are quite recognizable. So this was a good thing to know. The person started out with an elepse and then used a direct select tool to pull out one side to create a brush like stroke. Take the convert anchor tool and make the tip more at a point. From there you can go to the brushes section and create a new brush. From there you select the spiral tool and create a spiral. Then you select it and then apply the brush you just made. Then from there you can change the point size of it so that way you can thicken or shrink your spiral.

This tutorial was how to use the illustrator tutorial without really making to much change. To make a spiral then use the direct arrow to change where the edge of the spiral to match with other spirals you may have. From there you can change the thickness of the point level.

For the Andy Worhol look I looked up http://www.melissaclifton.com/tutorial-warholphoto.html. From there I learned a way on how to make my own pop art with my own pictures. First you want to create this main picture in another layer so that way you will still have the background to work on. From there you could pen tool the outline of the objects you want to see. Then you would use the desaturate and change the brightness. From there you would use the cutout filters to make the levels change to the picture up above. To get the colors that you want, you could fill in color to the background layer the color you want. For the people colors you could it this way.

Create a new layer in the "frame 1" set and rename it "pc". (That stands for people color, not very imaginative). Place this layer between the two existing layers. See below picture. Now holding down Ctrl click on the layer "photo" in the Layers Window. You will see a little dashed-line square appear on the cursor hand. See image below.
Note if you are HAVING PROBLEMS WITH THE ABOVE, instead click on your "photo" layer in your layer palette thenSelect >> Load Selection
Look at the canvas and you will find the "photo" subject/s perfectly selected. Now still working on the "pc" layer, grab the paint bucket tool and fill the selection with you a vibrant color.
Now click on the "photo" layer and change the mode to Screen. See images below. That's method 1 done
Create a new layer in the "frame 1" set and rename it "pc". (That stands for people color, not very imaginative). Place this layer between the two existing layers. See below picture.
Now holding down Ctrl click on the layer "photo" in the Layers Window. You will see a little dashed-line square appear on the cursor hand. See image below.
Note if you are HAVING PROBLEMS WITH THE ABOVE, instead click on your "photo" layer in your layer palette thenSelect >> Load Selection
Look at the canvas and you will find the "photo" subject/s perfectly selected. Now still working on the "pc" layer, grab the paint bucket tool and fill the selection with you a vibrant color.
Now click on the "photo" layer and change the mode to Screen. See images below. That's method 1 done. (Taken from the website)

Photoshop Tutorial: Lynda.com training

2009-05-19T11:03:00.000-07:00

Watched a movie on how to do select tools.

We started with magic wand tool. I used one of my own photos of a little owl.

This is my selected picture. When watching this movie, this guy showed many ways to select the part of of the picture that you would like. It almost is too much information sometimes. He is using a difficult photo where I'm using something simple-ish. Then he wanted to use the quick selection tool. The Quick selection tool is used for painting within the image you would need.

He went through his process and I found the entire tutorial very informative yet almost too much. He was funny at times but I almost fell asleep.

Book Ideas No.2- Random Objects/1 drawing

2009-05-18T18:25:00.000-07:00

This is a neat wine bottle that my father had in his wine closet. I have really grown up around wine so I thought I would fine a wine that was decent and had a good shape bottle to it.

This is Hoots the Carved Owl (named it that; was going to go for Hooters, but then people would get confused). I thought that this would be interesting just because he just looks so neat. I would have to use a better camera to take his picture but overall I think it is a great idea.

This is one of my shoes. I thought that this one was interesting for its belt buckle, and its one of the best shoes to sink your feet in.

Soy Sauce....who can live without soy sauce? If anyone could, I feel bad for them. Anyways, my family has had this same bottle for years. We have never changed it and its a staple thing on our table for dinner. Yum! (too andy worhol? possibly, but I thought of it so why not.)

And last but not least, I drew this Ice Cream cone a week ago or so. I thought that this was a great pencil drawing. so if I want to do anything for that, I would scan it in. I could see this one going a long way with how big it is, multiple colors, patterns, etc. I think this one is my favorite.

Book Ideas No.1- Outside Scenes

2009-05-14T12:38:00.000-07:00

My family and I were walking down in the Pearl and I looked down and I saw this little plastic horse figurine attatched to old horse ties. I read about it later that art students were taking different little horses and attatching them to old horse ties that have remained over the years here in Portland. I thought that it was a really neat idea and I took this picture with my phone. Turned out good if I must say myself. And out of all the ones I saw, this one was the coolest because I think it's a paint horse.

This was in my boyfriends backyard. This was taken a couple weeks ago when we actually had some sunshine here in this grey state we live in. I thought that these flowers were beautiful; I wanted to capture them from odd angles and this was was wonderful because of how the sunshine makes them transparent and brighter.

This has to be one of the coolest flowers on the face of the earth. Pink as it may be (not my favorite color in the world), this is the "Bleeding Heart". My mother has some of these in her backyard as well, but these are at my boyfriends house as well. I took his camera and started shooting everything cool I could see (he has a better camera than I do...How does that happen?). Take advantage of the sunshine....I got some color and also some fantastic pictures. I think that is a win win situation.

This picture was also at my boyfriends house. This was a potted plant that was in the shade. It had the smallest flowers ever, but they were so cool I just had to zoom in and shoot it. These flowers are about the size of my thumb fingernail. That entire cluster. Just so small and delicate and yet so neat.

Art Building Proposal: Final

2009-05-14T09:37:00.000-07:00

This is my first proposal for our art building. It consist of a meerkat that I took a photo of. I decided on the meerkat because I think these are fasinating creatures. They live in a colony yet their individuality is still extremely strong. I believe that that is what art students have to go through. People who are in art are linked together in the same way as meerkats are, more experienced people will help the "young" ones.

This is my second proposal for the art building. I designed this in mind that there are hundreds of flavors of ice cream in the world. Each flavor could represent what art students are. Different yet still the same basic thing. I used the unity of only two flavors because art students are not just "designers", but they can also be in the entertainment side of art (theater, etc.). So the two types of ice cream is a quick representation of that. Again I use the idea of re-painting the brink to give them a little more punch rather than keep them the weathered things that they are now.

This is my final proposal for the art building. I used a picture I took down in Las Vegas's Bellagio Hotel and Casino. This piece was made by Dale Chihuly and it contains over 2,000 individual glass flowers. I took my photo and transfered it over to photoshop and then used different sections of the photo to create a different view for each side.

Illustrator: Masking

2009-05-03T17:48:00.000-07:00

I watched a tutorial that helped with masks and I decided to try it out.

So this was the picture I picked to try out. The great thing about CS3, to put a mask on a photo, all you would have to do is click the Mask button. From there I could shrink the mask to fit the main part of the photo

So this is the "new and improved" picture. I shrunk the photo so it just encases the only part of the photo I like

The next thing I learned was that I could make a curve to the mask since it has individual points. So what I did was I curved all four sides of the picture and then fit it more to just fit me and the horse Riley.

So this was the last little bit. Not really refined, but it was a great skill to learn for illustrator without having to go into photoshop.

Week 2: Reading Tutorials

2009-05-03T12:46:00.000-07:00

This tutorial was about making 3-D Stars. I read the whole process about how to do it. This person that made the tutorials went into great detail about how to make gradients for the starts and how to make it look "realistic" They used the illutrator star to demontrate the capabilities of this process, but I am sure that a person could do this with their own designed start. It would just take a little bit longer to do.

Making a business card I think is an important thing for when you want clients or you just feel like you want to pass them out. I absolutly love looking at peoples business cards so it was nice to see a tutorial on how to make one. They used a simple and boring design, but it gives a nice starting look to see how these things are made and what you would have to do to get it started.

This tutorial was absolutely confusing. The person had three different ways to make a vector cd look real, but none of them went into great detail. There were some that seemed really easy yet another that was explaining how to get the rainbow effect on the cd, so that was really hard to understand.

More pen tool of course, one of the most important. Saw this first and was just watching it. A very good tutorial. One of the only ones that I found that was in video form, Adobe live docs sort of thing. Excellent way to demonstrate the use of the pen tool and step by step actions on what to click and how to use it.

Vector Pen Tool Excercise

2009-05-03T12:31:00.000-07:00

This tutorial was used to practice how to make the word vector with just the pen tool. I saw that people were doing it so I wanted to practice the skills I learned by myself and see how they did it.

This is the starting point of my tutorial. The straight edged letters were really no problem for me. Those are the letters V, E, and T. Vet...funny stuff. Anyways, those letters were easy as making toast ( or scrambled eggs) but the parts where I really learned on were the curved letters C, O and R. I had a little snafoo with the letter C because on the lower straight edge of the C, I couldn't get a line across there. Fortunatly, I figured out that I wasn't clicking there to make the line so that was my issue. Quite simiple remedy actually; but overall, that experience was enriching since I had never done anything like that before.

This is a tiny picture of my final piece. Very colorful if I might say. The whole vector thing took me about 15 minutes or so. The R and the C were I must say the most interesting to do. I might try other words and see how those go. Alphabet? Maybe not till summer time haha.

On tutorials

2009-04-30T08:59:00.000-07:00

Kate...I haven't posted them yet but I will have them all by Sunday.

Thoughts about the logo that I needed to learn to recreate

2009-04-23T11:08:00.000-07:00

I had to learn how to remake the Texaco logo. This above is the contemporary Texaco logo of today. The new logo doesn't have Texaco text below it because people believed that it didn't need it anymore since it is a well known logo by now.

My process was quite easy. I made a red circle the same size as the original, then I eye dropped the color from the original logo to fill in the circle. Then I used the illustrator star tool to create a star. Although I couldn't figure out how to make it more like the Texaco star; so I pen tooled the star above the original logo.

After deleting the illustrator star, I moved the penned star over to my own red circle. Now the only thing left was the letter T for the finishing touch. I used a different color to show the difference between the two. I tried many different styles of text before I found the right one. It was size 138 Franklin Gothic Demi Cond. Once I got that over to the other star, I changed the color of the text to the same color of the circle.

Finished product.

Shapes: Tutorial

2009-04-23T10:44:00.001-07:00

For this I tried to figure out how to do the shape tools. It was helpful to learn little tips to help me how to produce them faster and more efficient. I knew what to do basically (shift = even proportions) but some things I learned were that if you held down the shift+alt keys together, the shape will expand from the inside rather than the corner. The alt key will expand the shape from the inside. Also, if you press the space key you could move the shape without deselecting the shape. Also with the polygon and star tool, before you deselect the shape, you could hit the arrow keys up or down to add or subtract sides to the shape. That was very important to know, because in CS2, I learned that there was a menu that I could use to help me and in CS3 it is completely different.

This tutorial was great. I love learning new quick keys that will help me with illustrator. Some things I already knew, but the space key, alt key and arrow keys were new. That is great to know.

Backs of Postcards

2009-04-23T10:26:00.000-07:00

Front Postcards

2009-04-23T10:22:00.000-07:00

Postcard Crits.

2009-04-15T22:06:00.000-07:00

Postcard 1. Not quite done yet. going to change the font and also add his tail onto the back.

Postcard 2. Salad eating Caterpiller....I like this. The font on the front is different than shown here though.

The Caterpiller is sleeping and dreaming of his salad that he will recieve in the morning.

Cherrie!!! This is for you!

2009-04-15T19:58:00.000-07:00

I drew my hand in like 15 minutes.

So this was the one that I wanted to frame. Our professor made us look at a fuzzy picture then slowly made the picture clearer as time went on.

The next three pictures are a series. This was the first painting that I did. This was the picture that I sold before.

This was the last picture that I did. It is the same size as my next piece is going to be. This one was called Amour

This was the second piece. Amity is the same size as the Ardor piece.

Process Postcard

2009-04-14T15:23:00.000-07:00

two different styles of Charles going to eat salad.

Process Notecards

2009-04-14T10:01:00.000-07:00

So I saw Frank's work and I saw his animation Jail Bird that he did. I decided to bring a character that I created called Charles the Caterpillar. I started by creating Charles first. I though of different ways that he could become a part of "society".

I thought that Charles could be coming out of an apple.

I put then the two of them together. I had Charles on one layer and the background apple on another level.

Frank Chimero-What Makes Him TIck....J.K. Just Some Info

2009-04-09T10:42:00.000-07:00

Frank Chimero was born in Long Island, New York. His family moved to Springfield, Missouri when he was 8 years old.

Chimero states that he never really "dreamed" about being a graphic designer. His graphic career started to bud when he was in high school because his friends needed some advertisment for their band (t-shirts, posters, etc.). He then went to study at Missouri State to advance his design and illustrating techniques.

After college, he really was nervious on what his next step should be. He set up base in his hometown and become a freelancer for the summer. Afterwards though, he had enough clients that paid his bills so he decided to keep with being a freelancer. Although he is a freelancer, he is not really big on being alone. He moved his work into an office with a few friends that way he gets some interaction with people. He also teaches design at the university.

Interesting fact: Alan Fletcher was a big insperation for Chimero. To him, that was the only person out there that wasn't so "serious" about design, but designed in a way that was happy and innocent.
His clients include: The New York Times, Business Week, Starbucks, Fast Company, American Airlines, Edizioni Corraini Press, and Good Magazine.

Reflection on Patterns

2009-04-09T09:20:00.000-07:00

Making patterns with different fonts was an interesting art form. I had never done anything like that before and I really enjoyed my first pattern for it's delicate looks (that was my edwardian font J). I really enjoyed seeing other peoples works but I don't think that I will continue doing this sort of designing. It's just not my style, but a person always has to try things once in life. Or in this case 4 times.

Adobe Live Docs

2009-04-09T09:15:00.000-07:00

Live Docs was really helpful for the little details of Illustrator. I have had CS3 for about a year so I've been fiddling around a bit with it. So I figured out how to do those sorts of things, just maybe not as efficiant as these people did. I really learned about the masks and how to use them now. That was the one thing I wasn't sure about so I was really happy to learn about that. I want to probably do that one for my weekly tutorial.

Inspiration Pieces

2009-04-07T09:17:00.000-07:00

This is a book called Working the Plate: The art of food presentation. I believe that with anything you could make a beautiful art piece. I love watching cooking shows that present their food in a classic and beautiful way.

This is a website for a magazine. The magazine is called Wedding Style and is a couture magazine. I'm not sure who made the website but I thought that it was absolutly beautiful.

This piece was posted on deviantart by a blogger named Rozefire. It was a vector piece but it was very good.

This was made by a friend of mine in high school. His name was Ian Anaya, and he was the best at what he did. He was learning on CS2 when nobody in our school could even afford that program.

This was made by a website n.design. I thought that these pictures were always just abstracts and beautiful. It would be neat to make something like that eventually.

2009-04-03T18:16:00.001-07:00

Final product of the typography. I took away the background photo and let the letters stand out for themselves. First time ever using type to show a picture. I liked the experience of it. It was quite difficult for me but for a first time, I thought it was successful

For her arms I wanted there to be some defined color so that it didn't just blend in with the background or look out of place.

First picture I found then I started adding some typography to her.

Final 4 Patterns

2009-04-03T17:57:00.000-07:00

This one was my fourth with Stencil Std Bold print. I thought the simplicity would be a refreshing change from my other patterns that I had done

This was my 3rd pattern. This was done with capital A's with Stencil Std Bold print. What I did first was to make a star out of 4 A's. This made a neat little design so I put 4 of the next to each other this started the base of the pattern. Then though it seemed to simple so I reversed the A's so the top of the A's were touching (not the bottom like before). Then I put the reverse into the blank spots left by the base pattern.

This was my second attempt at a typographic pattern. This time I used the letter Z with the font Juice ITC. As you can see this is a very busy pattern. The Z's overlap each other on the upper right corner of each Z. It was my least favorite one because of the size of the font. If someone looked at it far away, it wouldn't show very well. A bigger font with more spacing I believe would have done better.

This is my first pattern I created. I picked the letter J and decided to use Vivaldi Italic print. The lettering reminded me of a stuck up french bistro looking thing. Tons of loops yet fashionable in it's own sense.

Add on to the tutorial section...

2009-04-01T00:09:00.001-07:00

So didn't realize that I needed to put commentary for the section I read over. Anyways, I thought the pen tool was helpful. I thought I knew most of the capabilities of the pen tool, but there were some helpful tips that could help me in the future.

Wedding Typography

2009-04-01T00:03:00.000-07:00

so, this is the starting point of my first work. I decided to work on an elegant woman in a lace wedding dress. Using letters found in 'wedding', I started using them to create a layer over top of the picture. This is the first time I have ever done typography so...I'm going to see where this ends up. I want to be able to take away the bottom layer (starting photo) and just use the type used.

screen cap for class

2009-03-31T11:31:00.000-07:00

Blogging....first time

2009-03-31T10:21:00.000-07:00

Blog Assignment #1

Computer Experience:

Not very much graphic design wise. I have never had a blog, and not very much experience with illustrator and photoshop. I took Art 119 last term, but that was a quick breeze of the programs. I'm actually really nervous because the work load seems like so much. Overwhelming? Maybe....there will be e-mails for sure. I can do that sort of things at least.

What are you excited about?:

I'm excited to be starting on the road to getting my graphic design degree. Its what I have wanted to work on for the past couple years, so I want to immerse myself in this world.

Favorite Books and Magazines:

I have many books that I like (most are fiction; I cannot stand for non-fiction). A favorite series I love would be the Kushiel's Legacy by Jacqueline Carey. The book I'm reading right now is Belinda by Anne Rampling (Anne Rice), that book is absolutely wonderful; a must read (as long as you don't mind being open minded about certain topics). But I have read so many books it is crazy, can hardly think about any other books that really stick out.

Magazines I stray towards fashion magazines. My main magazine I look at is Vogue. I love looking at how the photographers make the models look (I also like the designer clothing and bags as well haha). I have always been interested in photography.

Favorite Websites:

Websites that I normally go to consist of Facebook, MSN (for e-mail), PSU (for school e-mail), and at times deviantart. I created a Deviant Art account when I was in high school (I used it for my art work and photo's that I have taken).