WIP it!

I hate it when I’ve got an idea stuck in my head. Don’t get me wrong, ideas are good, but sometimes I get so consumed by one, I have to put everything on hold until I make it happen. That being said, for the first time I’m sharing a work in progress. I don’t usually do that, I like to wait until things are appropriate for public exposure, but since I don’t really know how things are going to evolve from here on, one picture won’t do any harm. Maybe I’ll get some tips…?

It’s also the first time I’m using Photoshop to create something from scratch. Of course, I did a pencil sketch first and used a reference photo, but the digital shading is completely new to me and I’m pretty proud of what came out. The problem is that I worked at a very small resolution and everything looks sort of weird and low quality-ish. Can it be fixed?

There is a lot more to be done, and maybe I will stick with the original idea, maybe I won’t, but hopefully the whole thing will be done before Friday, when I leave.

Oh wait, that’s two days. Well shit, now I have to choose between playing Assassin’s Creed or finishing this. Or perhaps doing something productive…?

Fractals

I think I’ve never more fun taking photos than I had today and to think that it all started with me roasting in the sun with a book on my lap…but enough with the cryptic attitude, here’s what happened.

Until some weeks ago I had no idea that grapefruit can be, and normally is, eaten with a spoon. As far as I knew, the only way one can eat a grapefruit is to peel it and eat like an orange, after removing the bitter skin. That’s how I’ve done it, that’s how my family’s done and that’s how everyone I know has done it. Apparently it’s wrong.

So today I was sitting on the balcony, properly eating a grapefruit and trying to read a book at the same time – not a smart thing to do, since grapefruit juice and white pages are not a good combination. So as I was trying to balance the spoon, the grapefruit and the book, I noticed this really beautiful pattern made by the shinny spoon on the book. Call me crazy, but I’m a sucker for the things light does – intriguing shadows, enigmatic light-rays, reflections, they are all fascinating to me. Hence, I did the only normal thing to do – I got my camera.

I’m rarely truly excited by the photos I take, but this time, oh man, I love them! The process was so impredictable and I think the results are just beautiful. I’ll definitely try this some other time, with more preparations beforehand though, because managing the camera, the spoon,  the remote control and the manual focus simultaneously is nerve-wracking.

They are just as nice raw, but considering my currently obsession with colours, I had to edit them a bit. I was thinking about making some PS brushes out of them…should I? I mean, they are certainly workable.

Taken in broad daylight with nothing else than paper, some shiny cutlery and the sun. Added some colour layers in Photoshop. Head to my flickr account for some more!

Doing it myself

I painted a table.

I wish I could say that I am a crafty person, but truth to be told, I am not. I can’t sew, I can’t paint, I suck at anything you can find a DIY project for, but somehow this worked – the painting of the table, that is. I took a look at the ugly white table sitting on the balcony and thought “Hey I could actually make something pretty out of it!”; and while this kind of thinking usually leads to disasters, this time it turned out just fine.

So I gathered my supplies – acrylics, paintbrush, sticky tape  and an elaborate pattern found on colourcovers.com – and got to work. I even planned everything in advance, down to the last square, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to fuck the pattern up at some point (I like to call it improvising).

And then the fun part started: mixing the paint, colouring in the little sticky-tape squares and stopping every now and then, to take a photo or two. Not too often, though, because I had my mind set on finishing the whole thing that very evening.

I didn’t. Nor did I finish it the second day. And by then I’d already started to regret choosing that pattern. Not that it made any difference because in the end, as you’ll see, the real thing looks nothing like it.

 

Do you see the seahorse?

 

I’ve had these acrylic set for ages yet never really used it to its full potential, mainly because I can’t paint for dear life. Nevertheless, I love colors – like, as of recently, LOVE them!! – and I took plenty of photos of the coloured squares, taking advantage of the really bright light ( second day, are you keeping count?).

 

And on the third day, lo and behold, the table is finished. Incredibly, I don’t have a photo of it in daylight, but it is awesome, it’s colourful and although the paint already chipped in some places (it stuck to the sticky tape – it was terrible disappointment) and it is probably not going to last one month, it brings me joy to see it prettifying the balcony.

Now that spring is here and I plan to get out more…my laptop and I will be perfectly comfortable at this table, watching the sunset from outside.