Childish reflections

June Fri 25 2010

When I’m sick, I always catch myself thinking that the severity of my “symptom” is not as bad now that I’m older, but lately I’ve decided that my symptoms might be just as bad – I’ve just had plenty of years to get used to them when they pop up. Why do I mention this today? Because I’ve been sick!

And in the process of being sick and reflecting on my experiences as a child, I’ve been thinking about those cool things I used to do in infant (grades k-2) and primary (grades 3-6) school around arts and crafts. Things such a lino printing, screen printing, potato stamps… finger painting…

And then of course, the activity that inspired the 60 minute sketch… coloured paper, black oil pastels and a stick!

I decided venture down the path to find the colours in my life by reflecting on the things I used to find really enjoyable when I was younger and applying them in the digital space. So for the above image was created in Photoshop (and using my trusty webcam), with a mix of brushes, filters, and colour filters.

I feel like I’m a teenager just discovering Photoshop for the first time, but how excellent is that feeling?

All tapped out

June Tue 15 2010

Where should I go to find inspiration when my brain is too tired to be inspired?

Ugh. I feel so tired right now, and I have a proposal to write for tomorrow to sell something I do not understand, with a scope that I’m struggling to define. Where did the colours go in my life?

Inspiration Wall

May Wed 12 2010

So yesterdays post got me to thinking what I would do with the blank walls in my apartment. Above the desk in our study is a very blank wall… so in what was meant to be a 60 minute sketch, and which turned into about 1.5 hours of “looking for the right photos” time in addition to the 60 minutes…

Those are my cats, Holly Berry (the majority black one on the left) and Karamello (the more white and ginger one). Then it’s a photo of Vincent and I being silly on our engagement shoot (before our wedding). The photographer told us our silhouettes would make a really good photo, so we decided to make shadow puppets. The little inset up the top right hand corner is of the part of the grounds of the Château de Versaille, above which Vincent proposed. The bird and the foliage vectors are what were used on our wedding invitations. The colours used are also the colours I used for my wedding!

There are three quotations. One from James Gleeson, one of my favourite Australian artists. One from the lyrics of the Lifehouse song, “Storm”. And the third is from Martin Luther King Jr.

I did an extremely bad job superimposing this picture onto the wall, but I imagine this is what it would look like.

I could waste hours and hours of my day doing this for each room in my apartment.

A slow upgrade

May Sat 08 2010

I’ve started to put together the framework for a more “inclusive” website. Look forward to a wider variety of posts as time progresses!

My shoulder is killing me from all the mouse work (when I use programs such as Photoshop I tend to switch back to the right handed mouse rather than using my left handed Evoluent mouse) so it might be a week or so before I put any new images up on to this website, but I’m sure I can think of a few other things that I have been aching to blog about.

Please note this design has NOT been tested across multiple browsers!!

It looks best in Google Chrome and works passably in Internet Explorer 8. Internet Explorer 7 is a total bomb. Firefox has ceased to work on my laptop for some reason, so I’m unable to test it there – let me know how you go! And I no longer have a copy of Safari or Opera, so if you use either of those browsers your feedback is greatly appreciated.

I’m going to fix bugs slowly. This whole cross-browser thing is no longer an enjoyable challenge, so we’ll see how I go…

Self distracted

December Tue 22 2009

I’m so distracted right now – there are a million things going through my mind. Most importantly, we found out where Vincent’s next posting is – Malaysia. It’s really exciting, because Malaysia was one of our preferences, but now starts the search for jobs (for me) and the decision as to whether or not I should try and find work in Malaysia or try and find a contract back in Sydney. Aside from that, there are a million other things to be done between now and Christmas, after Christmas, and trying to  decide when to return to Sydney for a holiday.

So I am 99% sure that this was completed within the 60 minute time limit. The reason it’s titled “self distracted” is the fact that I was also surfing the net, looking up visa information, going through job databases, booking plane tickets, cooking dinner, (intermission overnight to sleep) and trying to phone my sister this morning.

To me the final product looks like I’m waking up with a strong espresso. Kind of sleepy, a little incoherent, and somewhat jittery.

Self Distracted

90% completed in Photoshop, with the cat figure completed in Illustrator.