Knocking on Heaven's Door

Inspired by the Guns N' Roses version of "Knocking on Heaven's Door." I decided to make up a photo-manipulation piece that projects my view on death. Peaceful. Bittersweet.

I know that when I cross over to the other side, this is the way I want to go. The floating sensation of your soul as you approach heaven's gate to meet your maker.

Of course that seems kinda "fairy tail-ish" for a cruel reality.

On  to the technical stuff:

I used around 3 sky stock images, one really fascinating door  image and a girl holding a yellow balloon. A grungy effect was added by a grunge texture courtesy of the Computer Arts magazine I picked up a few months ago.

Stock images from fellow Deviant Artists, find them HERE. 

No brushes. No text. (which goes against my basic instincts because I grew dependent on them for a while.)

The whole thing took me two days, but that was because I took about half an hour everyday making this between jobs.

I hope you like it! This is my first real photo-manipulation piece that I could be proud of and brae enough to show to ... anyone! I'd appreciate the feedback! 

My Favorite Renegade - Wallpaper

Hayley Williams first broke into the music scene with her bold orange hair and in you face attitude. I've admired Paramore since "All we Know is Falling", and after "Misery Business", I was just hooked! 


I decided to get into vectors. I've already started with a couple of wallpapers, but this time, the challenge was a face. The face of Hayley Williams. 


This is the process of creating a vector, somewhat vintage and all around lively wallpaper. And all you need is a picture of a face, and Photoshop! 

The image we're aiming for is this: 

And we're using this to start with: 

The is an image I pulled up from Google. It doesn't matter if the image is clear or unclear, but personally I chose a semi high-res picture. As you can see, Hayley has red hair, but I took the liberty to change things up. 

Let's get started! 


1 - Take your image, and trace the skin area roughly or accurately if you wish. I was accurate around the shoulder area only, making a huge white blob covering the skin area. Of course when you trace with the pen tool, a layer would be created over your original image. 

Looks creepy, right? 


2 - Change the opacity of the skin layer, OR hide it, and trace the hair this time. Remember to make it a different color than the skin at least, but you can change it up later. So that's your second layer. Take your time with the hair, so It looks great: 

3 - So how do you make the hair pretty? you make small strands (not to small) and follow the flow of the original hair blob you traced. make in a lighter shade (or a darker shade). This also doesn't have to be accurate. The smaller the strands, the more you'll need to make. 

The Left side. 

Both Sides!

Cheat: Make a couple of strands, and duplicate them. Re-size and place where you think it's appropriate. You don't have to make each strand separately. For example, I took the strands from here, and placed it on the left side.  


4 - Eyes are difficult, because of the amount of detail you choose to put in them. Here's how I made Hayley's eyes: 

I worked from the outside starting with the base color of the eyeball, then the smaller details within. Total? Six layers, and that's only within the eye and lashes. 


You can duplicate this eye and flip it to match the other eye. But some adjustments should be made while using the original picture as your guide. 


5 - While your white blob layer is still hidden, trace the shadows in your picture (under the chin, the nose, the smile marks, shadows of the eye-lids, collar bone) ... etc. I used a brown color for the shadows, but you can use grey and lighten or darken the shade according to what you see best. 

6 - The lips! Just like the eyes, I zoomed in to be accurate. It just has three layers: Lower lip, upper lip and the line in between. I tried making one huge lip blob and putting the line in between, but that didn't look good. 

7 -  The White blob is back! Un-hide the white blob layer to see the results of your hard work!

Now, to be a wallpaper, you need a background for the face you just made. 
To do so, Open a blank new Photoshop document, and select the size you want for your wallpaper, example 1024 x 768. 


We're going to be making radial strips with polka dots for a vintage-ish feel to your images. 


Start of with a background color, then make some radial strips using the pen tool. Again, I just made one and duplicated it all around: 

Now the question is, how to make the polka dots? 


Go to your layer, then select Filter from the menu on top. After that go to Pixelate > Color Halftone. 


You'll get the following box: 

Change the Max Radius to 25 (Personally, I made some strips with 15 and some with 25 in rotation). The bigger the Max Radius, the bigger your circles will be. 


Now to turn the white polka dotted strip you see here: 

Go to the layer and change it from normal to Overlay. 


Now you'll have a bunch of Radial Polka dotted Strips, so just add in Hayley to the Mix, and maybe a line or two, like so: 

And there you have it! 


For all the Paramore fans out there, this wallpaper is downloadable HERE. Just dive into the folder and choose the size that suits your screen, or download all of them if you're not sure from my DeviantArt gallery, HERE. 


I hope you liked this one, and I'm pretty sure you can use the same techniques to create your own wallpaper, with your picture, or the celebrity of your choice. 

Drawing On Wood

I came across some wood the other day, and decided that it would be a pretty good surface to draw on. 
To start you'll need four things: 

Wood surface which can be as small or big as you want it to be, a pencil for initial drawings and a good marker or pen. And of course, imagination!

Test your pen / marker on the edge of the wood piece before you start (I tested a couple before finding a really dark one), and then you're set! 

This is Step 1: Draw initial drawing with pencil (and yes you can erase). It's a good guide so you don't mess up the actual permanent marker drawing. When you're happy with what you drew, move on to the next phase.

Step 2: Draw with permanent marker. Easy right? My advice: Use a thinner marker to get more details in there. 

The results look pretty good, but I'm definitely going to do better next time around. Drawing on wood is not like paper, some types of wood tend to absorb a lot of ink so you'd have to go over it once or twice. I have huge pieces of plywood scattered in the house, so I think I'll take this to a larger scale. 

Heavily influenced by tribal tattoos. 

Something abstract, called Roots. 

Rose buds, but a symbolic one rather than a representative one. 

Roses have thorns. 

And this is how they look like side by side. 

I can't really use them as coasters because that marker I used is not water proof, but I can frame them in an old frame I have sitting in my room, but without glass. All I need is a background to stick them on. 

Where did I go wrong? 

- Used a fat marker. 

- Used a non water-proof marker. 

Avoid my mistakes! 

So If you have pieces of flat wood in your house serving no purpose, it's time to turn them into pieces of art. It's fun, and I'm pretty sure the kids will love it! This was something I did purely for fun, as I got bored of drawing on paper. So glad I did it!

Another Plant looking Vintage Pattern

My fascination with vintage floral patterns never seems to end. My first attempt to make one was a bit of a hassle, because I didn't really know what to do. 

Photoshop is an artist's best friend. So if you're crafty or artsy and want to transform what you do on paper to a computer screen, making something such as a pattern is a good way to start. 

Before I move on with this post, a couple of things you might need: 

• The tutorial I used to help me create my custom pattern HERE! 
• And for those there who aren't familiar with the pen tool,but want to get started, another useful tutorial: HERE!

This post if for every person out there who wants to turn their sketches into digital art. 

I took it to the next level by sketching out a floral pattern, which was a bit complicated than the last one, but looks way better. 

The sketch has two parts:

Sketch No. 1 inspired by Corn Cobs!

Sketch No. 2 Just looks like half a normal floral pattern. 

Now the question is: What do I do what two half sketches? 

This is where Photoshop or Illustrator come in handy. Both sketches were traced on Photoshop using the pen tool, like so: 

You can also see that I've used a grid to be more accurate. 

After tracing, you'll end up with a shape that is identical to your sketch, if you are really accurate, or maybe even better, because sketches sometimes can be a bit all over the place. It's up to you if you want to stay close to the original sketch or make a few amendments while tracing with the pen tool. 

I decided to stick as closely as possible to the original sketch, and did the same with shape 2. 

So now you just duplicate the shape and put is side by side with the first one you already have. You'll end up with something like this: 

Looking at it now, I see .. a Jelly fish!

This one still looks like corn.

After that you just duplicate the shapes, and crop according to what you see best. You can check out the tutorial I've posted at the beginning of the post is you aren't familiar with this process. 

After duplicating and putting sketches 1 and 2 together like pieces of a puzzle, the final pattern looks like this: 

Fun idea: You can print this on a stencil, cut it out with an Xacto Knife and paint your wall with it. That's exactly what I plan to do!

Before defining the image as a pattern, remove the background. Then go to Edit > Define Pattern > and save it. 

Open the background you wish to fill the pattern with and go to Edit > Fill > Pattern > Custom Pattern and look for the pattern you've created. The result will be .. something like this: 

Hope you liked this post and use is as inspiration to create your own vintage looking floral patterns! as always, this wouldn't be a freebie without a download link, so grab it HERE! 

Don't you just love cats? - Experimental Photography

Today I decided to go back to photography. I've been doing if for quite some time, and I have to admit, I was just lucky to get good shots without full understanding what the camera actually does. 


Now I know a lot more. So far, ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed are understood. Though the Composition still needs more work. I think I got the rule of thirds in some images, but decided to have other images without that particular rule. 


Since it was in the afternoon, It wasn't that sunny. I was also shooting on Manual for a change!


The Settings were: 



Exposure: 1/20 
Aperture: F/5.6 (F/5.0 for some images) 
ISO: 200 


I like using the "Shade" White Balance to get the yellowish effect, which looks just a bit vintage. 



After slight edits on Photoshop, here are some of the pictures I took today: 

Contemplating ...

Yaaaaaaaaawwwn!

"Interesting!"

And yes those are my flipflops! "What was that?!" thought Kittie.

Abstract photography? 

And finally she leaves. Experimenting with Back lit images.

Well, I guess my cat got bored xD Settings are pretty much similar for all the pictures, as the were taken in one environment. 

Don't you just love pets? <3 And btw, my cat's name is Poopie. 

A Squirrel's Daydream

My boyfriend has a cat with a lot of fur. His name is Squirrel because he looks like a squirrel (kinda). This wallpaper was initially made just for him <3 


It started as a sketch to plan out how the squirrel would look like. Of course, I've never seen a real live squirrel in my life, so I had to have a bunch of googled images to reference my drawing. 

The original sketch

As usual, the work was later traced on Photoshop using the pen tool. Of course it didn't turn out to be exactly like the sketch as I've tweaked it a bit. 


The most interesting question I was asked was "Why is he holding a bucket?" I replied: "To collect more acorns so he doesn't end up like that prehistoric squirrel from Ice Age!" 

The basic version

The final piece

Oh by the way! That writing on top is not actually on the wallpaper itself, it's just for the preview. Available in 9 sizes to download it HERE! 

See as my client was a loved one, I couldn't help but do and redo the elements of the image many times to make it just perfect. I had to make another "toned down version" as he was using it for both his desktop and his Google Nexus phone.

The Color Scheme

I've decided to include the color scheme here too. I love these colors, so having a ready color scheme is a pretty good way to keep them in mind. I'll definitely be using them for another project. 

They are as follows - from Left to right: 

Squirrel's Colors

Light Brown: #ab916e // Dark Brown: #847055

Background (Sky): 

Light Vanilla Peach: #feefc6 // Darker Vanilla Peach: #ffe7a9

Grass: 

Light Green: #80cb64  //  Darker Green: #80cb64 

And finally, I wanted to share how it looks like! I loved this wallpaper so much I made it my phone background. 

Pure Cuteness!