Fix-It Friday :)

Time again for my new weekly addiction, Fix-it Friday! Since last week was my first time doing this, I decided that this week, I would do a few more edits. And because I forgot to mention last week, I use Photoshop CS3 and a bamboo graphic tablet. Here's the original:Don't know where they find these cuties, but I just love his cheeky grin. This original photo is pretty dark, so I did a levels adjustment to brighten it up overall, but I didn't want to lose too many of those dark tones. There's also not a lot of color, so I did a hue/saturation layer to bring up the cyans and some of the yellows and magentas.....I just realized how long this whole explanation is going to be....ugh. ANYWAY, here's the first edit. Just a basic "fix".
On this second one, I wanted to make it a little more dramatic. So, I turned it into a black and white image, sharpened it (b/c I don't like blurry b&ws), and did a levels adjustment to bring out some contrast. What I didn't mention before is that I went in with the paint brush to put in some highlights. Since it's so dark, there's not a lot of depth in the photo. I used white on the PB set to about 5% and painted some white highlights on his lips, cheeks, eyes, nose, etc...just to give the illusion of some natural light. Then I cropped it with a little rotation.Finally, I did another digital painting. I think I might try to do one of these every week. I know it looks similar to the first one, but I used the smudge tool along with a ton of other tricks to give it a oil-painting effect. Instead of explaining everything here, I might just do a tutorial in another post later if anyone actually wants to learn this whole process.

Soooo, those are my edits for this week. Be sure to head over to iheartfaces.com to learn lots of other tricks and see everyone's great submissions for this week. :)

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FIRST Time's a Charm!

Well....here we are. The Wonderful World of Blogging. Now, before you get your hopes up, I want to make one thing perfectly clear. I will never make the statement that I am a witty, fabulous writer. More than likely my remarks won't be condensed to cute thought-provoking quips, but that's fine with me. I enjoy writing like I'm having a conversation with someone. (And sometimes that involves not using correct grammar or even making concise sentences.) What I will do is share a little bit about myself and what is happening in my life as it happens. Well, there's no time like the present, so let's get to know...well, me!

I'd like to begin by listing one of my pet peeves which is describing myself...lol. No really, I detest it, but let's just make this quick like pulling off a band-aid. My name is Jewel (just jewel, not julie, or julia or juliet or anything like that). I reside in eastern North Carolina with my hubby, Jeremy. We have 2 cats (Mr. Anderson & Hitler) and a border collie (Topher). I am a sucker for animals and would have more if Jeremy would give the ok :). Photography and Art are my passions. My degree is in graphic arts, but I like letting my creativity loose on other mediums besides those that involve a keyboard. That's mostly what you will be hearing (or reading) about here. My next post will just be some examples of my latest work. I love meeting new people, so feel free to leave me a note :) Til we blog again....

Lots of Love

-Jewel

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