The Holidays

     Hey everyone, I am back! Alright, I wanted to mention the holidays and a few ways you can get excited for them. First off, many people feel that the holidays are not very important or special and should be barely acknowledged. Then, there are those people who love the holidays and look froward to them all through the year. Now out of those two people, which would you rather be? The excited one right?! But it is not always easy to become exited for things, I mean when you are little it is easy and it is wonderful. Excitement is what makes life worth living and as far as I am concerned, everyone need a little more excitement. So, here is how you can come across some excitement for the upcoming holidays.

     Last year I was not excited for Christmas till the day before, and that was absolutely no fun. So this year I have taken it upon myself to become excited. Here is what I have been doing:

     First since I love graphic design, (like most of you who are reading this) I use many electronic devices; my phone, computer, and Ipod. I figured since I look at them about everyday, I should make them festive. So I searched Deviant Art for the most perfect desktop wallpaper. I found a beautiful snowy golden one with little birds on it. Now every time I open my computer I am greeted by the snowy wonderland. I also have an Ipod Touch which I decorated with a Christmas tree lock screen and a green main background. I also spiced my Ipod up with seven Christmassy apps, three of which are advent calendars. So overall, my electronic devices are pretty festive. By looking at these images everyday, you gotta admit the excitement starts building up. An even better way for doing this by creating your own backgrounds.

     What next? Well after you get all of that beautiful graphic design love out on your electronics, it is time to steer back to the basics. When I say basics, I mean BASICS! I am talking paper snowflakes. Yes I know that paper snow flakes are something you make all through elementary school and once you get out, they feel like a little kids activity. But when it gets down to the look, they are very unique and cool looking. So here is what you do: You cut ten four by four inch white printer paper sheets. Then you fold the sheets to make a snowflake (if you are so old you forget how to do this, you can find directions on google).  It is difficult to cut the snowflakes since they are so small but once you do, they will be perfect. Now once you have ten little snowflakes, you tie a piece of white thread (each different size threads from 5 to 10 inches long) to each of them, then you tape each of them to the ceiling over the head of your bed. If you have time like I do, then you can make many more then ten and go all out with snowflakes all over your room. This way when you wake up you find yourself in the winter spirit. Plus the are very fun to look at. You can use different size snowflakes, but always keep them on white paper, if you do a lot of colors you start getting the springtime flower look.

     In variation to the last decorations, you can easily tape snowflakes up on your walls. This year I got two parakeets so the hanging thread snowflakes may be bad for the birds. I am putting snowflakes up on my walls for the sake of this. If you do put them on your walls, just put them on the top of your walls, If they are all over the place then you feel cluttered and do not get the great look you are going for. Of course as artists you are all welcome to change up this recipe to your own liking. Also, have fun with it, if you are sick of cutting out snowflakes than go do something else for a while and come back to it. The end result is worth it though.

     Next, think about holiday shopping! I know this is very scary to many of us who like to hide in the house while our family does all of the shopping. Many people I know, like to skip the shopping because it is overwhelming and unnecessary. But in truth, shopping is part of the holiday season. When you start thinking about what you are going to get people, you get excited to give things to them and to receive things yourself. Last year I waited till the last minute to go shopping and I felt no excitement or joy from it. Shopping was a hastle since I had no idea what to get people and frankly, I didn't care. But this year I started thinking about presents for my family a month in advance, yes this was extreme but I am so excited to get them these things! For me presents are a big part of the holidays but the best part is giving them to others. It is so wonderful to imagine their face when you give them a present. So start thinking about what you want to get people, even though it may sound early.

     My last tip for getting some holiday excitement is to decorate your house with the people you love. No, I do not mean decorate the outside of your house with cheap plastic candy canes, I mean decorate your living room with warm decorations you have gathered over the years. Since I celebrate Christmas, my family gets a Christmas Tree. My family has gathered about a hundred unique ornaments over  the years. Each ornament has a meaning and if it is one that we don't care for, we leave it off the tree. What I am trying to say  is that decorating a Christmas Tree is so exciting and beautiful. I love decorating with my family but over the past two years I have been left to do it by myself. Now this is no fun, the fun is to be with people you love and reminisce while adding each ornament. So have fun and set out some cookies, and decorate. People decorate for the reason of fun and celebration! Try it.

     So those are my tips, I hope they help you and I hope you become more excited for the holidays than you ever have before.

Ideas and Projects!

     Hey everyone! I know I have not been blogging over the past week, and I have generally moved away from the topic of Graphic Design. So I come to you today with a brand new page about ideas.

     Ideas are the key to a successful and meaningful image, whether they come from you or someone else. Often I find myself at a choice of making a picture or watching television. My choice is usually television because I have no ideas for graphic design. This is terrible because as a student I want to become better at Photoshop and without practicing, that won't happen. So I have created a brand new page for my blog with all sorts of ideas and projects. I hope you enjoy some of the ideas because they are very fun to think up. Check out the new page and I would love to hear feedback and see some of the images you have created from them.

Talkin about inspiration!

     Alrighty guys, I know it has been a day or two since I last posted and perhaps that is too long for you to hold interest in my blog. So, here I am, pulling you back into the world of graphic birdie. Today's post is all about inspiration for what you are working on in graphic design. My forms of inspiration are a bit different from looking at a photo or listing of ideas. Hopefully you enjoy my ways of becoming inspired to draw something!

First method of inspiration: Music
     Turn on the radio! make sure you do not listen to music you have heard over and over again. Listen to the new sounds and voices and meanings, imagine the instruments playing and what the singer or band looks like. Never look the song up on YouTube before you finish your painting, it may influence what you imagine. You are welcome to draw the people who you think are singing but I suggest you look into the deeper meaning of the song and draw that! Maybe you are making a background, with this method of inspiration, you can smoothly or sharply create a background just by closing your eyes and following the patterns in the music. So, get out your radio and start working! Who knows, you might just find a new favorite band.

Second method of inspiration: Smell
  Yep this one is a funny one, but it works for me. Alright, in this form of inspiration, take out a strong smelling food or light a candle or go outside right after it rains! Smells are often connected to memories, especially for me! So in this process you may remember something sweet, sad, funny, or beautiful, it may be the smell of your mothers old perfume or the smell of your old best friends house. It may remind you of a trip you took once or it could remind you of an old car. You never know what smells will bring up in your memory which makes this form of  inspiration so much fun. Once you find a smell/memory, draw it or photo manipulate it or collage it, Make sure not to make it perfect, use some abstraction, this will bring in the image of a foggy or forgotten memory. Not all people remember by smells and if you do not, form a fun and creative fake memory. This is meant to be fun so if it is not working to bring any ideas up for you, try something else. Never let a form of inspiration tire you out or bore you, that defeats the purpose.

Third and final method of inspiration: People
     People are incredible in how they all have their own agendas and goals. For this form of inspiration, go to a public area like a park bench. Or go ride a bus (safe bus of course). While you are in a public area, look at the people around you. Imagine what they are thinking, where they are going, why they are so calm or anxious. Create stories in your mind about thee people as a whole or individually, then go home and create a piece of art from your stories. Never take things literally with this form of inspiration, just let the basic ideas from people around you, come into your head and inspire you. Also, be polite of the people you see and never interrupt them or tell them your theories. Imagine yourself as a ghost, pretend no one can see you and you are just looking into the world from outside. Enjoy this form because you can get some pretty crazy ideas from it. Try different ages of people, maybe go to a school or a nursing home sometime.

I hope my unique forms of inspiration help you out a bit. You can't lose anything by trying them! Be safe though, never go somewhere dangerous or smell something hazardous. Have fun and feel free to share your art with me from these forms of inspiration!

 

Shading Tutorials!

Ok, now after all these days you have been waiting, I am going to post some tutorials. These tutorials are for learning shading for digital painting. I have always struggled here and finally found some decent tutorials. They are mainly for photoshop but most, if not all f the tools used, are available in other programs. So enjoy, I hope they help you as much as the helped me.

http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm - This is a detailed description for everything shading, it is a great place to start but it is very extensive. Don't let this tutorial scare you.

http://www.cellesriaart.com/resources/basic-blending/ - This is an overview of blending techniques if you are struggling with how to blend your shading

http://www.melissaevans.com/tutorials/pencil-sketch-to-smooth-digital-shading - This is a tutorial on how to turn pencil sketches into digital paintings. I found this very unique and helpful if you are better at traditional drawing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxO8u-loAEc - This is a tutorial on how to shade a sphere

Soon I will have some tutorials on how to shade people because I find that very helpful.

i made these with some shading help. The orb is from the YouTube tutorial 

Latest and Greatest

Hey everyone surprise its me! Over the weekend I had a fantastic experience of learning how to shade people, It is only a brief start and with all the flaws, I am still proud. I have been trying to learn how to shade people for quite some time. Oh, keep in mind this image is not meant to look completely realistic. Enjoy
I will have several shading tutorials up in a moment

oh and the hair was just a last minute effort

I forgot eyebrows! that's what was missing. I will fix that.

Thought I would share a quick painting that i found while browsing through old files

Learning Pixel Art!

Hey everyone! another unique type of graphic design is called Pixel Art! Pixels as you probobly but may not know, are what digital images are made of (you can look up the actual defenition if you'r that interested. but anyway, Pixel art is a form of art that is created by placing individual pixels one by one. It is a very time consuming project but each peice is unique and usually very well done. Pixel art images are usually very small and used digitally on games, websites, ect.
here is an example of a pixel art piece:

 

This one is from  http://minidollz.ninique.net/

This one is by me




This one is also by me


Obviously I am no pro but people can be really great at this!
So, are you interested in Pixel art? Well here are some fantastic tutorials to get you started! They are in order for what you should learn first according to me. But feel free to use them in any order. I would also love to see what you made! These all work for most design programs with or with out a bit of tweaking.

http://www.wikihow.com/Become-a-Pixel-Artist
http://kitted.deviantart.com/art/Pixel-Shading-Tutorial-47269811
http://www.derekyu.com/?page_id=222
http://www.spriteland.com/tutorials/drawing-pixel-art-tutorial.htm

First Gimp Tutorials!

Yep thats right, here are some of the first Gimp tutorials for my blog! It was requested by a friend for me to post some great Gimp tutorials on how to make "signatures" siggys or signatures are small image collaborations with text representing a person or thing or company. They are often used on websites or forums. So here is a few tutorials on how to make pretty awesome signatures. These tutorials are for people who are allready pretty familiar with the basics of Gimp.


an awesome youtube video (one of my fave tutorials)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qweu4KxDNuQ&feature=player_embedded

here is a site with 100 fantastic links to amazing siggy tutorials.
http://webdesign14.com/100-cool-forum-signature-photoshop-tutorials/

I can post more later  but this will launch you

Beginning Photoshop

Hey Everyone! I heard via email that some people were interested in beginning Photoshop tutorials and where to start with that if you allready own Photoshop. Well, today I found a great tutorial for beginning and learning the tools of Photoshop.  So here it is:


http://mashable.com/2010/08/12/12-beginner-tutorials-for-getting-started-with-photoshop/

enjoy! and any sugestions on things you want to learn or see here are welcome!

A piece of my own artwork just to throw out an example of graphic design : )

For New Graphic Designers

This Blog really needs a jump start so I will start with the point of this blog! Right now I will be doing a different graphic design learning topic each month, most of the tutorials if not all of them, will be based off photoshop but If you want you can request a different type of program such as Gimp or Illustratior or other things like that. I have not picked the first topic yet but I will soon. For newcomers to graphics, read below to start. For older graphic designers, I will start posting tutorial links and other fun stuff asap!

- If you are brand new to graphic design and do not have a program to work off, I can get you started on where to go and how to learn. First, If you have a PC which many people do, you have this great free program called "Paint" which is a great place to start digital drawing. If you are more interested in web design and photo-mainpulation I strongly suggest a free downloadable program for both Mac and PC called Gimp. Gimp is basically a downgraded free version of Photoshop. Due to the fact that Photoshop is several hundreds of dollars, Gimp has several flaws and errors but is a fantastic way  to start graphic design. If you allready have a program like Photoshop than thats great and you can strt with it but if you do not have a program allready on your computer I HIGHLY suggest that you do not go out and buy one right away, Graphic design is certainly not for everyon but there is a chance it may be for you like it was for me. On a personal note, I started graphic design on Gimp and later bought Photoshop. If you plan to buy photoshop and are a student, make sure to ask for the student discount. Here are some helpfull Links for launching into the world of graphic design. I will also post the link to the GIMP download. (always make sure you are on an official website for downloads, if you download from a false website it may give yourr computer a virus.)

-Where to download Gimp for Mac or Windows
http://www.gimp.org/

- Downloading instructions to beginning project tutorials
http://www.vtc.com/products/GIMP-2.6-Tutorials.htm

-Gimp tutorials! provided by gimp, great place to start after instilation
http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/

-Microsoft Paint (ms paint) the basics and where to start
http://www.lkwdpl.org/classes/MSPaint/paint.html

I hope that launches you off to the incredible world of Graphic Design!

New and Learning

Hey everyone who happens to read this blog! I am a student who is here to help you and myself learn more about Graphics and Graphic Design. How exciting is that! I am in a blogging class so that is another reason why I am creating this blog. I would love to share with the beautiful tutorials and learning techniques that I find across the internet or perhaps outside of the facinating electronical box(computer). To start off I will introduce you to some of my work which is just a start to the future. I would also love to hear any feedback that you have about my artwork or website. So, without further adue, here is my website! http://stewartart.weebly.com Enjoy browsing! Also if you have any suggestions for Graphic Design topics you would like me to help direct you with, please tell me! Iwould love to hear any comments or questions from visitors.