Well I was gathering up some old photographs the other day and compiled a pretty solid collection of photos I took in Sackville, NB mid November. This one is my favourite, just the pond in the middle of town. You always see people there, whether they're just hanging out or feeding the creatures that gather to say hi.

For most of these photos, I played with the curves and contrasts, sharpened some areas, and increased the vibrance in some areas.

The rest of the photos can be found on my DeviantArt gallery profile: http://wolvydesigns.deviantart.com/

Tattoo God

Why?

The reason I started making this in general was for a SOTW(signature of the week competition) on fringefx.net. The idea just popped into my head from the start, no real inspiration. All I knew is that I wanted his hand to be shooting out ink.....and then came the needle.... and then came his body tattoos...and then came his melting arm...and then came OWLS.

What Was Edited

I did a few time consuming things with this piece. Starting with the fact that yes, his arm is a needle and yes the intent was to have it be shooting out ink. I simply chopped up his arm and blurred/burned around the edges, filling the spaces in between with cut out pieces of the needle image. The tattoo is an overlayed design, the real time consuming part of this portion was making the tattoo come out into a solid gradient by his top left shoulder. I threw in some splatter clipping masks and played around with several images for the background. Why owls? Why not? I asked my friend to tell me something random (or something along those lines) and they said "OWLS" so i used owls.

Angels and Demons

What Is THIS?

In graphic design class, we were asked to create a surreal imagine by combining several unrelated images in one. I was browsing through some stock photos looking for some inspiration when I came across this abtastic model and I just thought, "I have to do something with this." I recalled seeing many manipulations where people turned other people into robots. I figured I'd give it a shot with my own twist. 

This is How We Do it

I worked everything around my background. I added my BG, placed the rendered model, then placed the robot and tied that briefly together. I fixed lighting and whatnot by using the dodge and burn tool, and also darkening areas with a soft, black brush. I burned the edges where the metal touched the skin and dodged the areas where the sun hit. I also used quite a lot of white, radial gradients to help strengthen and define the lighting. For the lighting through the wings, I desaturated and blurred a fractal then erased areas that I thought would not shine through as strong as others. I drew in some red for an added bloody effect, and switched out his eyes for some new and improved robot ones. After spending about 5 hours tying everything together, I used numerous layer effects such as levels, curves etc. and a lighting effect to easily darken surrounding areas to give you the image you see now. Things I personally feel could have been better is there area where his feet come in contact with the ground, and the rough edges of the wings. The wings are not a smooth/straight rendered line yet they still look off through my eyes. Oh well, I still like it in the end!  

First Human Vector

 Here we have version one of my very first vector attempt. No fancy backgrounds or funk designs flailing out from his head/face, just a fairly clean look at my friend from a flat, vectored perspective.

Here we have the opposite of everything I just said. Flailing designs and a touch of blue included. Which is more interesting? That question depends entirely on the personality of the person viewing it.











How It's DONE
You're probably wondering how I achieved something so amazing as this. Wait, you're not? Well I shall express this info to you through text despite what you replied with in your minds.

For this, I had an image reference. Using the pentool, I traced along the edges of his face creating a solid colour shadow of his neck/head. The rest was also done entirely with the pentool, just adding new layers on top of new layers on top of new layers on top of ne- you get the point. All in all, very time consuming, but I will surely do it again.

For the background, I drew a few circles just using the circle selection tool. I used an illustration from a "Lucid Arts" pack that I downloaded as a reference to the designs flowing from behind. I used a blue duplicate of the design to match his glasses. In the end, I applied everything to one layer and made a basic, white outline to help it stand out. His name was just a scribble of my tablet. Sorry, *beautiful* scribble of my tablet, also included in on the white outline fun.


Feel free to critique, or give me your opinions!

Deadmau5

Description
If you don't recognize this right away, shame on you! Tribute to one of my favourite musical artists, Deadmau5. This was done in a graphic design class, where we had to create an image out of words. I was listening to one of his songs at the time, and HAD to make something of it. This was done entirely of song and album titles by Deadmau5

This Is How We Do It!
I started off by drawing the outline of my image (ears and head red, eyes and mouth white). Then I followed up by just writing the titles at random across the image, guess the length and space it would take up. All I did after that was warp the text using..brace yourself... "warp text" tool. I mainly used the upper and lower arch to match the general, circular shape of the image. I then did some simple shading to give it more depth and try to make it more interesting. I did this by adding an applied image of a specific area, and drew a FG-transparent gradient map over a selection of the applied image.

Self Portrait Pencil Sketch

I'm a tad bit of a new player when it comes to traditional art methods. This is a sketch I drew in my grade 12 art class. It is probably the 2nd MAYBE 3rd serious drawing ever. We took pictures of ourselves, printed it out in B&W with added contrast, then sketched our little hearts out. I believe it to be a fairly decent job, taking into consideration my lack of experience, and would be open to any tips or suggestions on how to improve further.

Busy Lights

Description
Inspiration wise, this image involves none. Basically, I saw an image I liked and just went nuts. I find it turned out not too bad, aside from my randomness and experimentation resulting in a messy and busy piece. 

How did I do this sorcery?
Four different versions of the same image. This was basically a c4d spam (cinema 4d image developer) and I used the pentool and random images to add some added effects. I outlined cracks in the ground, and specific effects throughout that I felt should have been more bold. I did my best to make the guy stand out, and not disappear in the insane randomness of the light effects.

Top Left: More dramatic, abstract look. In this image I took my finalized one from before and added multiple "artistic stroked" applied images, setting them to screen, lighten, and overlay. Somehow that resulted in a black/blue colour scheme in which I added some photo filters to even out the tone

Top Right: For this version, I simply cut the finalized image into several blocks, changing the hue and adding gradient maps. I also inverted 3 of the blocks, because I'm just lazy and awesome like that.

Bottom Left: This one was mostly contrast blasting. I added blue and orange gradient maps, messed around with the hue, and added a few photo filters, and messed with the curves, levels, and exposure.

Bottom Right: Basically a repeat of the one to its left, but this time I used lighter, more unappealing to the eye colours, and increased the offset to wash out the colours.