Fan Art - Blimey Cow

Calling all Blimey Cow Fans! Here is some fan art of Jordan for his new music video, "Separation is Natural". You should check out his new music video here! I really enjoyed listening to the new song because it was so relaxing and well written. After watching, I decided to make some fan art and this image was born!

Long story short, this started as a screen shot from his music video and ended up as this beautiful image. This was actually a really quick project, which surprised me. I guess when you feel inspired, you get things done! The look I was going for was a cutout vintage indie poster. The background began as a gradient from black to Jordan's shirt color. I added texture on top of the gradient to get the paper look and then layered in Jordan. After cleaning up the background from a screenshot of the music video, I was left with a rough cutout Jordan. A few lighting changes and cutout filters later, I got the Jordan you see in the image. For the words, I just selected Jordan and removed any letters on top of him. 

If you'd like to make your own fan art or cutout vintage indie image, I'd love to see it! If you're confused about any of the details, just see the individual images of the layers below. Of course, in the final image, they're faded and have different settings but it'll give you a good idea of where to start. 

Here are the individual pieces of the image: (minus some little details)

 

Free Phone Background - Doctor Who

Calling all Doctor Who fans! Here is a free phone background with a quote from one of my favorite T.V. shows. This particular quote is from an episode featuring the weeping angels. It is also one of my favorite quotes from Matt Smith's version of the Doctor.

Making this was challenging because of the margins. I wanted to have a door in the picture to connect to the quote. The fonts are several different sizes and the line spacing had to be set manually for it to be set how I desired. Usually, I stick to one font in my designs but this background features two.

The blues are actually TARDIS blues. I looked up Matt Smith's TARDIS to find the exact shades of blue. One of my favorite parts of this piece is the contrast between the blues and the bright white.

As for the texture behind the door, I used several brushes to get this look. I started with a solid navy. Next, I mixed lighter and darker smoke brushes in the background. To top it all off, I used a crumpled paper brush, which was slightly faded. The door itself, is just a gradient with two slightly different navies.

Do you have a favorite quote or episode from a T.V. show? Want it made into a background? Just let me know and I can make you a background! In the mean time, share this with your fellow Whovians!

Free Phone Background - Love in the Air

Lately, I have been experimenting with creating clouds in Photoshop and here is the product! It is a vertical phone background and it will work for iPhones. Today, I am going to share how I made this background. Although I usually just post the backgrounds for everyone to share, today I feel like writing a more lengthy post.

To create the appropriate blue hue for the sky, I started with a light blue and a slightly darker blue. Not too different because the difference would have been obvious. The background is a gradient of the two different blues. I wanted it to be the same hue of a Texas sunny day.

For the clouds, while they appear white, they are actually a lighter version of the sky blue. It is close to white but not quite. All clouds are pretty unique so I tried to make each cloud as unique as I could. Except for the cloud hearts above the, "I"s in the words, "is" and, "air" because I wanted those to match.

Lastly, I added the words on top of the picture. This time, they started out white. To get the cloudy color on the words, I faded the words until they looked as desired. Placing the words was a bit more challenging because it was difficult to read the words when they were placed on top of the clouds. I also wanted to keep in mind the iPhone tool bar at the bottom of the screen. If placed too low, the words cannot be read. To finish the picture, I added my logo and faded it a bit to ensure it doesn't distract from the whole picture.

The inspiration from this picture actually comes from all the engagements, weddings, and babies that have been happening in the lives of my friends and family. (Well, no babies in my family... yet.) Seeing all my friends and family grow up, move out, and start families of their own has made me think that there must be something in the air.

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1 Corinthians 13:4-7 "4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance."

Art and Resolutions for 2013

Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone has had a wonderful break! I wanted to share with all of you just a few goals of mine for the New Year. If you'd like, you can share your New Year's Resolutions by commenting. 

Some of my goals for this year:

• Go at least a month without a soda. (1 day down and 30 more to go!)
• Do more art and graphic design and share it here!
• Keep my good grades up.
• Spend more time reading my Bible.

To close this blog post, here is a Bible verse to meditate on: Psalms 37:4 - "Delight yourself also in the LORD: and he shall give you the desires of your heart."

I just want to live, laugh, love, and learn more this year like the poster says. May you receive the desires of your heart in 2013! God bless all of you this year!

Free Phone Background (Wide) - Elephants

Today, I had a request to make a phone background from a very special friend! She wanted an elephant phone background. Here it is! It is made for Android phones, which allow you to scroll through the backgrounds side to side. Usually, I make iPhone backgrounds because I know many of my friends have iPhones. I can make backgrounds for anyone who sends in a request so comment away with at least your phone type so I can make a version for your phone too!

The look I was originally going for was a bright and colorful background with multicolored elephants. They had colors splattered all their faces. But, then Victoria, my friend, tried out the background but I mixed up the dimensions! To fix this blunder, I mixed up the colors and the image to create a new look that would fit her phone. In the end, I like the collage look better than the other image. The logo even fit in perfectly! 

Like the photo? Share it with your friends!