Ok! Back to happy upbeat things for a while!  Fun weird fact: while I was taking a bath this morning, Ennio Morricone’s theme from “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” got stuck in my head.  I haven’t listened to that in forever, and I don’t think I was thinking about anything related, so it’s kinda odd that the chanting Indians and whistlers and guitar players decided to join me while I was washing my hair.  Lol, I should draw that.  It would be a funny picture.

But on to the subject at hand– Photoshop sunrays.  You’ve probably seen this everywhere but haven’t noticed it but now will see it everywhere because I’m pointing it out:

It’s on the internet, in TV commercials, and on the labels of half the products in my kitchen and bathroom.  And you don’t even have to be able to draw to make this perfect design.  I made the above just by Googling the phrase “photoshop sunray tutorial” and following the first tutorial I found.  All it is is a linear gradient from two colors that is then altered with the wave filter and the polar coordinates filter.  I don’t understand the math behind it at all, so I’m glad my computer and Photoshop work out the wave functions for me!

If it’s this popular (just a little bit ahead of the ink blots and organic vine designs that I have yet to learn how to create) I wonder how much longer it will be cool to use such a trendy design.  But oh well, I’m not a graphic designer officially.  I just learn the tech and try to apply it appropriately to my own artwork.  I’ve temporarily lost access to the drawing that I wanted to apply this to, but after some noodling around yesterday and experimenting with the distort filters, I made this banner:

But I discovered a weird problem that I’m going to post to a Photoshop forum because I don’t understand what’s going on.  When I tried saving my distort filter experiment files using the “Save For Web” option to shrink the file size, the colors got all washed out!  Like this:

 Whaaaaaaa??? …the Hell?

But I could keep the intended coloring by saving the file as a giant .jpg without saving for web.  Weird.  I don’t like saving big images like the first one, because the file size is like five times what it should be and it takes twice as long to load the picture on a web page! Even Flickr gets tripped up.

It just goes to show, no matter how well you think you know your tools there is always something more to learn! 

Whoa, check it out! Panoramic image of a Yayoi Kusama exhibit:  http://www.mediavr.com/kusamaqt.htm

(Try not to navigate it too quickly, it’s not for those who are prone to motion sickness!)

Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist who often uses multicolored dots as a repeating motif in her work.  She committed herself to an asylum and only leaves to attend her art show premieres.  She likes to wear bright colors and wigs to match her art.

The badge on the glass and bandana says “Don’t Pet Me– I’m Working.”

For today, from photo reference on Google Images:

More on the seahorse tomorrow, I think.

The background contains fluorish brushes made by user Nadnouda on Deviant Art, which I used as stamps.

From yesterday:

“Box of Rain” is my favorite Grateful Dead song. Even though it makes very little sense to me. It’s one of those songs where you just feel the meaning. It seems to be about figuring out life problems, but the box of rain in the song is probably something you’d have to be on drugs in the 70s to appreciate.

Why all the Grateful Dead lately? I don’t know. I don’t even like them that much, though American Beauty was definitely a good album.

I’m trying to get in the habit of doing a daily ACEO card.

I used smoke brushes made by ro-stock on Deviant Art, and I think I got a bit carried away. But oh well. Maybe it’s just a particularly foggy day!

Inspired by the Grateful Dead song “Truckin’” which I listened to a live version of this morning after I tracked it down as a reference in the MST3K short “Posture Pals.” I was watching that short and the one titled “Speech: Platform Posture and Appearance” (riffed version in the Red Zone Cuba episode) as references for a silly forum art piece I did to entertain my fellow MSTies. If you’re curious about that, it’s here: pretty funny if you have noticed the posture of the Titans as they riff movies in the shadowrama theater.