FIVE FIVE

Made a little pinup girl the other day surrounded by pretty things and a skeezy guy checkin her out. I thought it was sort of a raunchy surrounded by classy (even though i love pinups and think they're classy as shit).

Fif tee four

I thought i had posted this the other night when i finished it, guess not. so here it is :)

DAY 53

Does this really need an explanation? I made a gif out of photos when i was attempting to catch water drops.

Day 52 or the first day of the new year

So last night, 12.31.2012, my dude and i were trying to figure out a place to go or something to do since neither of us have had new years eve off together in 5 years. The first new years of our relationship was the first time, and then he started working at disneyland and hasn't had a decent holiday schedule since.

So we had a plan to go to one of my friends' house and hang out in fancy, fake furs and drink champagne, but then her man got sick, and plans fell through. We didn't want to go to some giant party or somewhere that was standing room only (his hernia surgery is still freshish and he can't hang for very long).

Now we're sitting in our room, brainstorming, where do we go? what do we do? Everything was expensive and it was getting later and later into events. We finally said, "fuck it, lets just drive somewhere". So i grabbed 3 layers of jackets, some blankets, a beanie, a cooler with a bottle of champagne and 2 glasses, and my camera and we set out.

As we were filling up at the gas station, we were like, "how funny would it be if we drove to Vegas?!" We didn't end up going to Vegas, but we started on the road in that general direction.

Drove for about an hour and a half and ended up in Hesperia/Victorville at a Denny's for food.

Had to get artsy, didn't I?

Hobbit holes!

After we fueled up, we started driving again and ended up driving for maybe another 20 mins, got to Exit 169 and pulled off the highway.

This was the scary part, after pulling off, we couldn't see the road too far in front of us and drove slowly, suddenly the pavement ends, and that's where we ended up! About 15 mins before midnight!

I snapped a couple pictures with long exposures:

Then we looked at the clock and it was midnight! We cheered with a toast from the bottle of champagne we brought (and eventually finished), and danced a little.

Happy New Years!

I snapped a couple more pictures with my fisheye lens:

So it was freezing at this point. Like, below freezing. According to my phone's weather thing, the closest city being Victorville said it was 27 degrees and feels like 17 degrees. Didn't take long for my fingers to start freezing, to a point where i started to not be able to feel my finger tips when i was playing with my camera (almost dropped a lens!).

We started to freeze and decided to call it a night and did the drive home.

The city coming back over the mountain

I'm glad our plans got altered and decided to just drive. We've been wanting to go on a road trip since he got his new car a couple months back, and this was a small taste of what we could do on a moments notice. It also became the best new years i've ever had. Just get out and drive, see the stars, take some photos, and do it all with my best friend :)

40-51: yes, i really am this far behind

But i SWEAR i've been making things! here's the list!

So the last post i had done was Dec 19th, and early into the 20th i made this little guy:

That day i went out with what little money i had to try and make some christmas gifts for my mom and my dude's mom. I ended up buying a 2 pack of candles and some fancy garland from Michaels and some 99cent store ribbon and hot glue gunned together this business:

I have to point out now that i didnt have a camera handy (yes, all billion cameras i own, and i didn't use one) while making these candles, so i only have this one of my mom's after she's already lit it.

The 22nd, i went out and bought the makings for my brother and dad's gifts but didnt break into them just yet. Instead i ended up trying out "watercolor" techniques on photoshop. The tutorial i found made mine kind of ugly, so I found my own picture, used their outline and tweaked it a little and made this one:

23rd was my dude's sister's birthday and we went out that night, but not before i used my matte cutter! I  printed out a Kings team photo and framed it for my dad's christmas present. I didnt get a great picture of this one cuz the glass is too reflective and it was nighttime and i don't feel like taking a better one- you get the gist. 

Now my dumbass put off my brother's gift till christmas eve (and it was the hardest to do) and when i got home from my grandparents party, i started this guy (around 11:30 pm). It took me a good 3 hours to complete it, i started to screw parts up so i had to stop, and you know, sleep! But he loved it :)

Christmas Day was jammed packed, but i had time after we got back from our 4 house stops to complete something for the day. I decided i'm gettin a little sick of recreating tutorials, so i made a couple of my own things, by applying what i've learned in other tutorials.

So this was basically the final outcome of a tutorial (except they desaturated it and i didn't like it, so i left the colors and i used different brushes for the paint strokes :) also found different "stamp" to use in the bottom right, i found the characters for "tiger" and put it there instead.

On the 26th i made this guy:

Ok, so he was a tutorial, but they did so much other shit in the tutorial that i thought was unnecessary (they added plants and snake and made the throne green, i dont know), so i left it like this.

The 27th:

The 28th:

the 29th:

the 30th:

And last but not least, the 31st, HAPPY NEW YEARS!

I used techniques i remembered doing in that long forgotten photoshop class, like this zombie pinup. I made a "zombie" of sorts for a CD cover assignment, used cracked brushes to make "veins" and lightly brushed over the pinup stamp with color to give it character. Also came up with that snazzy tag line all by myself ;)

I did a lot of Layer Mask stuff and things I hadn't learned (or maybe i did and dont remember) to make all the other ones too. The audrey was a stencil tutorial thing that i made differently, the flowers from the 30th were supposed to be like "old photos" with the sepia tone and vignetting.

I had downloaded a bunch of brushes like the butterflies, grass, birds, trees, twigs, etc. and made all the different "scene's"

Now since it's the last day of 2012, I resolve to (REALLY) try and post more often! *crosses fingers*

Day 39

I was sick yesterday and today i didnt get out of bed till 4pm. I whipped up a quick monochromatic collage:

again, i just used a bunch of brushes that i had previously downloaded. there's 1 colored piece in the section (blue bird on the branch, bottom right).

Day 38

So i didn't feel good today, and i don't want to spend all day on the computer, so i just took a bunch of brushes i downloaded and created a collage:

i just picked a bunch of pretty things and then did watercolor brush strokes with color on top.