I tried following a tutorial on a vector wood grain texture, though it didn’t seem to come out as well as the tutorial. I’m assuming this has something to do with the tutorial having been made for Illustrator CS2, or 3, while I have CS6. I gave it a whirl, just the same. This was the end result:
Not terrible, but not that great, either, especially considering all the vector images of wood and wood grain textures I see on places like Shutterstock.
I’ve fallen behind big time. I haven’t found the energy and have been struggling with a very large creative block. It’s ridiculous. It’s not that I haven’t been creative, I have in other ways, but I didn’t want to share as I find it to be part of my freelancing business (i.e. requests for flyers, logos, etc.). If it’s cool to share those, then I’ll share them, but in a strange way, I find it to be “cheating”, I guess. I don’t know. This year has just been sucking for me creatively, I guess.
All that said, I decided to dabble in a tutorial. This might be my thing when I don’t feel creative, or don’t feel like doing anything other than following steps. Hey, at least I learn new things in the process, like Clipping Masks, for example, which is what I learned making this CD. And it’s not the greatest. I wanted to make another, but curse my meticulousness! It takes me far longer than it should. At any rate, here is my creation for the day.
And a blue version… I’m sorry, I’ll eventually get around to drawing. The demons in my head sometimes win me over into thinking I’m a talent-less hack. The blue is actually a bit lighter than it appears in the photo, but I like how this one turned out, too. I need to find me some black flock and white flock, because I’ve been wanting to make one on a pink ornament and I think it would look killer.
If any of you have any ideas, throw them out my way. I’ve got small red satin ones, large deep red satin, large light pink, hearts (which are clear glass that I paint and have since decided to paint the outside, since nothing sticks on the inside anymore… have yet to figure out why that is), and more. Oooo… I do have square ones I’ve set aside that already have been painted with glitter… I might end up forgetting about them, of course, but we’ll see.
Here’s another one. A pink version I made the next day. I still have quite a bit of catching up to do. I think this one came out a little better.
For those of you who know nothing about me, I paint/modify ornaments of all shapes and sizes. I’ve been doing this for a few years now, having started with a heart ornament and making it into a “zombie heart”. I rarely ever post them here, for fear of ideas being stolen, especially considering trying to sell these on etsy. Oh yeah, I’ve got an etsy shop. :o)
Anyway, I was not really feeling up to much, had a lot on my mind, as well as a lot of other things to do, so I came up with this little pretty design. I like how it turned out. Definitely “nicer” than what I’m used to making. :o)
This may seem like a “lazy” attempt at a creation, but it still took a little while and also gave me the added benefit of hanging out with my 7 year old nephew. I’ve been trying to get him to build more. He definitely helped, but ended up “spacing out” (it was getting late), so I just ended up doing the rest. He wanted to add the lightsabers himself, as well as Grievous’ rib cage, chest plate and head.
Aesthetically, Lego’s BEST Star Wars “action” figure set. Kind of makes sense, considering he’s mostly robotic/cyborg.
My apologies for the image. Not the greatest.
I initially wanted to do something different this year, like, catching up on old projects every day, but I was also torn with drawing, as I am in need of practice. THEN, I started thinking about other things.
So I guess I’ll have a little bit of whatever I can fit in this year, but hopefully I’ll be able to get in more drawing, but sometimes trying to get it in every day is difficult due to reasons I am unable to share on the Interwebs, due to stigmas and such.
Looking forward to catching up this weekend and showing you all my stuffs!!!
Happy Thing A Day!
Finally, I’ve finished the invitations. I got the pizza part of the idea through someone on Etsy. I would give credit, unfortunately, the item was no longer available — or the image — or what have you, so I couldn’t give the store/artist/crafter credit (none associated with the image I found on Google (Pinterest – ugh). Here is my variation. I don’t have a Cricut anything, so these will be printed on heavy cardstock and cut by hand, though I doubt I’ll bother with around the head. :oP
To finish Leo off, I decided to “ink” and color him using Illustrator. I think it turned out pretty gosh darned good.
