the challenge: design something daily for 365 days

Designing Something Every Day

Designing Something Every Day

This blog was inspired by a blog post today on Smashing Magazine. So I decided to start a blog, invite WDG list members to sign up with me for this, and commit to posting at least once a week, what they did in the week. Of course, they can post daily too! That is the main thing, posting daily what you have done. I’ll give it a try. I am a photographer by training. I’ve actually won a contest, and have had a photo put into a NYC guide. Yay me!

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Prismacolor sketch-Sunflower

Prismacolor sketch-Sunflower

On the weekends I’ve been enjoying sketching flowers. I’m fascinated with Sunflowers and have a wild area in my yard filled with them. Here is a Prismacolor sketch I did.

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Joomla! inspired Firefox Personas

Joomla! inspired Firefox Personas

This morning I came across a posting in the Joomla! Ideas Forum that prompted me to look up how to create Firefox Personas. I created a Joomla! inspired Persona to fill the void in the community. It is an interesting exercise as one does need to examine how to use the space appropriately. Firefox allows you to test the file locally before you submit for inclusion in the FF gallery.
You can view the full size Persona at the Firefox Personas gallery.

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Jazz Festival Poster

Jazz Festival Poster

Another in the series from the Kelby training. In addition to some filters, like finding edges, this tutorial uses the pattern brush, which was new to me.  I think there could be a lot of interesting uses of it.

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Mac App and Finder Shortcuts

Mac App and Finder Shortcuts

So I’ve been playing with this for quite some time. I’ve been trying to “go mouseless” because I know it’s a lot more efficient than the “hunt and peck” habit I have for myself. (I hunt and peck everything. I can’t even type without looking at the keyboard – even though I know where all the keys are without looking. I just have to look for some reason! I think it goes back to high school – I hated my typing teacher, and she hated me. I used to do it because it made her mad LOL Joke’s on me, I guess!)

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Pencil Sketch- Tulip

Pencil Sketch- Tulip

Goal is to do one sketch a week. Here is a sketch of one of the tupils I planted.

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Sketch-Red Umbrella Windy Night

Sketch-Red Umbrella Windy Night

Digging through my sketch archives and came across this pencil sketch I did for a editorial project. Reminds me to take more time to get back to story telling through Illustrations.

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Musicians

Musicians

This is the first of (I hope) several examples from the Kelby Photoshop seminar I went to last week. This piece was done using adjustment layers, layer masks, a variety of image adjustments and a little painting.

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“Homeless” kitty

“Homeless” kitty

No, not a stray. The kitty was supposed to be a part of the logo, but the recession ate the business when we were still at the initial sketches. That was going to be a fun project for a very nice client. Anyway, the kitty now officially has no place to go, so I thought I would digitize the best sketch and put it here. The image is based on the photos of the client’s kitty who “worked” full time at her boutique. It’s almost a “could you put my pet on the web site” case.

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Spring – Empty Nest

Spring – Empty Nest

Enjoyed creating this birds nest sketch in watercolor and Prismacolors.

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Digital flower, done in Harmony

Digital flower, done in Harmony

This is sort of hand drawn, although Harmony adds its own thoughts to every stroke. Like with drawing in ink, the beauty of it is in that you can’t correct anything. There is no eraser in this tool, nor can you realiably cover mistakes using a background color :)

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