WIP: Vector face

Ever since I've been searching for more artwork to put on my wall, I've had this itch to make some artwork myself. Now, I know that I'm a designer, but being a designer doesn't always mean we can do fine art. In fact, my fine art skills are terrible. I can easily copy an object or image that I see in person and transfer it over to my own canvas, but I don't come up with original art very easily. Perhaps I lack imagination......but I'd just like to think it's not in my technical skill to draw well. It's kinda strange because as a child, I was drawing all the time. But it doesn't matter because there's always vector art! Vector art is basically illustration for graphic designers. The art is purely 'vector' based, which essentially means creating art with lines in Illustrator or Photoshop. It's a bit complicated to explain, but vector art does not use PIXELS so you can blow the image up 1000x's and it will still look clean. This is my work in progress to revamp my vector art image for my own branding. The first image is the old art.

 As you can see, I cleaned up the image a bit so it has cleaner lines than the previous work. I also added subtle details while still maintaining that minimal look that vector art uniquely obtains. I figured it would be nicer to show that she has a nose and some details in the ear.

I made this girl more advanced because she has shoulders! lol The old image was just a floating head, albeit a cute floating head. When it's finished I'll display how I use this image in my own branding. 

Decorating: Prettying up my wall!

A few weeks ago I went to an anime convention in San Jose called Fanime. For me, it was more like a nice, relaxing vacation than anything else but I got a couple of art pieces from the Artist Alley there that I'm super in love with. I'm not one to try and justify paying a ton of money for art pieces, but when I see something I like I know I have to have it. Besides, cats from Sailor Moon and something related to League of Legends? How could I resist?

I posted this on my Instagram. It's sitting nicely above my desk. 

As you can see, there's not much on my wall. But that will soon change. 

Here's a close up of the artworks

(By CHIKADRAWS)                                                           (By JUSTDUET)

In previous times, I've always just put up random things on my wall but I kinda want to be more conscious of what goes up now. I loved framing these two and I think all my future artwork will be framed as well. Framing just gives it a nice, clean structure and doesn't seem so random. I've talked about it several times before, but I hate decorating when I know I won't be living in the same place for a long time. I don't know how long I will be at this apartment, but I don't want to fill my wall with a bunch of stuff only to have to take it down. At the same time, I want my home to be a place where I can feel happy and be proud to be at. Over time, I hope to collect pieces of artwork that I can really cherish for years to come. Of course, I'm not talking about Picasso paintings. Let's be realistic, even if I could afford a fine art piece, I wouldn't put it on my wall. I'd rather support not-so-well-known artists that create art pieces I really LIKE based off characters and places I actually admire.

Do you have artwork hanging on your walls? If so, what do they mean to you?

Photoshop tip: All natural baby! (sorta...)

I'll be honest, when it comes to photo editing, 'subtlety' isn't exactly my best practice. It's mainly a personal preference because I sometimes like the overly done, obvious filter applied, obnoxiously colorful photograph. So it's not everyone's cup of tea but it's just what appeals to me. But to be fair, whenever I'm working for someone else on their photographs, I can't simply edit the way 'I' want to edit them. Most people opt for the clean, subtle and 'natural' looking photographs because most people want their photographs to look genuine and not overly photoshopped. And when it comes to being 'natural', I rely on these FOUR photoshop tools: Brightness & Contrast, Levels, Exposure and Curves.

I will have to preface by saying that how your original photograph was taken will also play a part in how nice the photograph will come out. Anyone even remotely familiar with photography knows that lighting is pretty much everything, but many people who aren't familiar with cameras do not realize that a photograph isn't just post-processed to look good. If the original photograph has bad lighting to begin with, it will always be difficult to get it to look any better and 'naturally' better at that.

Take for example this photo above of my ZOYA nail polish remover. The image on the left is straight from the camera. The product was taken with natural lighting on a cloudy day, which according to some photographers, say is the best damn weather for lighting and I have to agree. The image on the right is post processed in photoshop with some light editing here and there. The difference is still very apparent.

Whether your photograph has great lighting or 'ok' lighting, you can still tweak it a bit to look better, naturally. Here's my PS tip using the mentioned tools.

I generally start with the Brightness/Contrast tool. It's all about subtlety here, so I generally boost the brightness and contrast up only by a bit (anywhere from 5-15 is okay). Brightness is as it sounds, however boosting the brightness setting too high can completely wash out your photograph so don't go overboard with it! Contrast sets your blacks blacker and your whites whiter. Again, generally avoid going too high with these settings so your image looks more natural.

LEVELS is all about the lighting. INPUT LEVELS changes the lighting on highlights, shadows and midtones, as indicated by the three arrow marks. You really need a light hand when playing around with these levels because too drastic of a change will make your photograph look unnatural.

OUTPUT LEVELS controls the 'overall' lighting in your image. This is a good tool to tweak your image with very small amounts to give it a little boost of light if it's too dark or vice versa if it's too bright.

CURVES is a tool I pretty much use all the time for basically everything I edit. Not only does it change your color inputs and outputs, it changes your lighting as well. Some may argue what the difference is between LEVELS and CURVES if you can change the lighting in CURVES as well as LEVELS but CURVES gives you a little more specificity in your lighting and is also used to control lighting in colors. I generally tweak these points only a very small amount to give my photos an extra bit of VIBRANCY. (Basically LEVELS + CURVES doubles up your lighting options)

The last lighting tool I use is EXPOSURE. Exposure is one of those tools that you will not use often and if you do you'll probably only use the bare minimum amount of editing with it. It's a super strong tool that in my opinion, is best used for scenic photographs (landscapes, outdoor, cities, etc.) This tool pretty much tries to emulate your camera's exposure settings. The main purpose of it is to try and fix those original settings. I know it's a bit confusing because all these tools seem like they are trying to do the same things but they all change different details of your photograph so trust me, they all have their purpose. But the main reason I use EXPOSURE is for the OFFSET option, which gives my image a bit of a MATTE finish which makes shadows (or blacks) softer and not too harsh.

This original photograph (left) was taken with automatic settings in my camera so the lighting wasn't that great to begin with. It's subtle, but you can see how the details really make a difference. The white part of Jax's fur looks much whiter and clearer. His eyes look more vibrant and his black looks more black. It's really about bring out the clarity in your images. I would like to think it's the difference between not having reading glasses and having reading glasses (if you need it). Although, I wouldn't know much about that since my eyes are terrrrrrribbbble so I need hardcore glasses and it would actually look like this instead.....

(;____;)

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this quick photoshop tip! (I promise it's QUICKER once you actually do it lol)

insta-favs: simple & colorful

Haven't compiled an 'Insta-favs' since I came back and started blogging again. I thought I'd share my favorite Instagram pix from the beginning of the year until now. They're just so fun to look at when you compile them and you can also get a good sense of someone's style and what they like. I think this perfectly describes my aesthetics: simple black, white and neutrals with pops of color. I think in another post I'll blog about what apps I use. But I think it's pretty obvious here that my main squeeze app is none other than the amazing vsco app. Who doesn't love vsco? Everything looks so vintage and moody, I'm freaking obsessed with it!

Pillow Talk

I've been on an 'Interior' decorating kick lately. To be honest, decorating and making my tiny apartment a 'home' was something I was always passionate about but I always thought that this place would be very short term. I really didn't imagine that my bf and I would be living in this apartment for more than a year, because this isn't exactly the 'nicest' place. It's not "ghetto" but it's just really tiny.

But I've come to accept the fact that financially, we aren't in the position to move to some bigger fancier place. And that's okay but I definitely want to design my home so that it feels like a place I want to return to each and every night. So I've been doing some research, trying to do some DIY projects as well as purchase some things here and there to make our apartment a home for us.

I'm currently obsessed with H&M's home department. They have so many inexpensive and cool/cute stuff for decorating. And it's really all about the little things: A cute pillow, artsy fridge magnets, quirky lamps and coasters. I haven't actually purchased anything yet, but I'm planning on getting a few things for our living room. Our couch isn't very 'nice' to say the least.....it's probably the cheapest couch at IKEA currently lol. But we didn't really feel like a nice couch was necessary because we didn't want to become couch potatoes glued to the TV all day. But when guests come over, that's when I wish we had a comfier couch. Nonetheless, I figured a simple solution may be cool pillows! I've been looking all over online and in stores for some pillows that don't look too weird on our plain couch but are comfy and still add a pop of 'fun' to it. feel free to throw any links my way if you know of any good places to get cool pillows from!