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Learning about real photography and playing with a borrowed Canon EOS 400D and Camera RAW format in my newly-found free time! I put this in the category of "continuing education." Maybe it will help with a client project one day, hehe. The real story is that I had my carpets cleaned last week so I put my shoes up on my window sill and I thought they looked just lovely up there so I had to snap a few shots before taking them down. If I decide to take them down at all...
This time-lapse video compresses more then 4 hours of drawing into about 5 minutes. If only I could draw this quickly! I actually had a more aggressive vision in the beginning, as you can see I already sketched and began coloring two lion-looking figures (would be a leopard and her cub if I added the spots). I suppose as the saying goes, Rome wasn't built in a day, and I certainly couldn't spend more than that on these drawings. Adding it to the bucket of unfinished projects, for a rainy day...
In the meantime, I envision this graphic being printed on the back of a set of playing cards. Any takers?
This year's Drawing Day occurred on Saturday, June 4, and I was determined to participate. I called off social engagements, locked myself in my room, and stayed off facebook for an entire weekend. Well, for a few hours at least. As a result of this, I am pleased to introduce to you Mr. Nouveau, a very friendly peacock I drew over the course of a few days, first on plain paper, then on my graphics tablet. I don't get to use that thing nearly enough.
My photo reference was taken at my sister's graduation party a few weeks ago at Grounds for Sculpture in Trenton, NJ. I will post some of the pictures from that day soon as well.
About Drawing Day: One day a year, the world stops to remember that joy we had when we first picked up a pencil and created our first piece of art - that's what Drawing Day is all about. The goal for Drawing Day is simple - to create enough drawings to make some noise worldwide for the sake of art.
- http://drawingday.org/
My friend Sylwia is starting her own photography business. I volunteered to be her model one cold evening in April. She had just moved into a new building next to Rittenhouse Square and mentioned that there was a roof deck that she hadn't yet been to. "Let's go!" I exclaimed, up for an adventure. So we wandered around her building trying to find the correct set of stairways to lead us to the top floor with roof access, and made our way into the cold. It was just before sunset and the lighting was perfect, as was the view. Here are a few of the photos she edited in her own colorful style:
Photos courtesy of Life Goes on Productions, April 2, 2011. Thanks Sylwia, I'll be your model any time :-)
This weekend, I spent every last minute enjoying the abundance of cultural, and even some non-cultural sights and sounds my newly official city of residence has to offer (yes, it's official, I have the driver's license to prove it - ahh).
Friday evening went downtown heading for Rittenhouse square, stopped at Alfa, and ended up in Old City at Brasil's a bit later for some dancing and bottle-service-for-no-real-reason with good friends.
Saturday afternoon wandered down to the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts (PIFA) with one of my former and one of my current roommates - Brittany and Ashley. We walked around enjoying the cool but sunny weather, and eventually ended up on a lawn transplanted to the middle of Broad Street, which had been partially closed off from Chestnut Street (City Hall) to Lombard Street.
As we found it increasingly difficult to navigate the crowds, we took a 2-hour break for sushi at Makiman. By the time we finished that, people were beginning to gather along Broad Street in preparation for whatever the night's event, the finale of the 25-day-long festival, was going to be. At this point we had no clue what that was, and neither did most of the people around us. For this spectacle, I will provide you with some visual and auditory descriptions because word just won't do!
The evening was topped off by a visit from a friend from New Jersey who I of course had to take to Cavanaugh's, and then my favorite secret swanky spot, hidden on a small side street and lacking a sign to announce its presence to the rest of the world. I'll only give one hint because I am selfish and want it all to myself: RR.
On Sunday, I stopped at my favorite cafe in Mount Airy, called High Point Cafe, for my typical Sunday morning fix of cappuccino and crepes before heading to the Chestnut Hill Home & Garden Festival.
This street fair also featured a length of pedestrian-only traffic along Germantown Avenue, another popular street. There were plenty of vendors and right when I walked up, I spotted an awesome coffee table that I immediately snagged. Well, I put the cash-only deposit down as fast as I could, and returned later to take it home with me. It matches perfectly with our Victorian-style couches in our living room. I also picked up an old Chinese lamp, a glass doorknob, some business cards, and some delicious Sangria. When I got home, I grabbed my beach towel and laid in the backyard for a bit, something I've been wanting to do for a while now. The weather was even better than the day before, and I actually noticed that I got a bit of color while wearing my sundress... time to break out the sunscreen for the season!
So happy that Spring is finally here. Till the next time ;-)
Important update: April Fools! My cousin sent me one of these, and I found the other through further research as well as a host of others. For more tech-related jokes that big names played on their poor and unsuspecting audiences this year, check out this great list by TechCrunch. Sorry, and you're welcome ;-)
Back in September, Twitter began rolling out a sparkly new layout and a few new features to some of its users, and officially completed it in October. Users are still given the option whether to use "old" or "new" Twitter, and I'd personally kept to the old one for a while for a variety of reasons, including my typical resistance to anything my favorite services try to change for the sake of changing (if it ain't broke...) but also because of the "new" version's wider layout, which fills most of the screen horizontally.
The implication is that less of the user's background image will be showing. A little *ahem* background... on Twitter's backgrounds. You basically get three options when designing your Twitter profile's background appearance:
This is a bit different from normal Web pages, which allow you to set a variety of options in HTML and CSS such as whether the image will be centered or stuck to a different side of the screen, whether it will be fixed or scroll with the content, and more. To be fair, most social networks do limit customization in order to maintain some kind of consistency for the user experience. Twitter in particular has always had a very streamlined interface and sometimes an overly-simplified approach to its service. The great thing about getting millions of minds together online though, is that often people will come up with extremely cool ways to work within the provided framework and still show off their creativity.
In the case of Twitter, one of these ways was to create custom background graphics which either reinforced a brand image, pointed to other social networks (Twitter limits you to one hyperlink in your actual profile), or just looked darn cool. There are plenty of nifty "Twitter background" roundups and tutorials floating out there which highlight this trend, but they generally display the narrower layout which provided more real estate for these creative backgrounds.
Now, I had not taken the time to design myself a cool background before this point, and in a way I'm glad I didn't because it's a shame for all the people who did, only to have them hidden today. However, in light of the imminent "You’re using an older version of Twitter that won’t be around for much longer" message posted along the top of every page, I decided that there must be a way to have a cool-looking graphic that fits in the new space provided.
And so, in honor of Spring cleaning, my new MacBook Air, and the design community at large, I put myself up to the challenge.
Thought process:
Time to sit down and design. Approximately three hours, one drunken roommate, some Pad Thai, and a few bathroom breaks later, I was finally satisfied enough to test my design...
Eureka! It worked! My design didn't call for any specific top padding, and I eventually trimmed it down a bit, but I was very happy with how this looked online, how it scaled with the window, and of course, how very "Amy," my new Twitter background was.
Now off to write a how-to reference for the design community on http://color-and-code.com
The tin man and Dorothy celebrate Valentin's Day on February 14th.
Really though, I just wanted to share this lovely piece of art by Franz Steiner. He photographs the real-life female models and composites them with computer-generated robots, backgrounds, and other sci-fi/fantasy objects of the not-so-far-off future which he creates in 3DS Max. The result is incredibly believable and provocative, which I thought was fitting for today's post.
Happy Valentine's Day everyone, whether flesh or bot.