Thursday, January 29, 2009

"Beauty and the Beast"

I was just reading about the Disney classic on Wikipedia and learned that Beauty and the Beast "is the only full-length animated feature film to ever be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture." Crazy! Anyway, this little girl wanted to be a Disney princess so we made her dreams come true and stuck her head on some Belle in a parade. Do you have a dream too? :)



Details: I edited this photograph in GIMP. (The original photograph I simply found on the internet. Using copyrighted materials to create parodies falls under fair use in America, thankfully!) :) When blending two images (in this case, the face with the background), I find it very helpful to keep the two layers separate while working so that towards the end you can recolor the layers to better match one another. I like the "Curves" tool best for this kind of recoloring.

Blog Headers and Backgrounds

You remember my needy sister from last post, he he, right? :) She commissioned for a header and some background images for a family site she runs. The font I used is called "Scriptina" and was created by Apostrophic Labs. It's a freeware font you can download from 1001 Fonts.



Details: I made these in GIMP. I recolored a photograph I took of a wooden door for the base of the images and then overlayed text at various opacities. Have I mentioned how to do that before? I can't remember, so let's just go over it again.

In GIMP, when you select a layer, you can see at the top of the layer toolbox a range of 0 to 100 with the label of opacity. By lowering the opacity, you decrease the visibility-factor making the layer more transparent. My cousin taught me that. So thanks goes to her. :)

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

A Holly Jolly Christmas!

Update: That third image looks really bad against the black and purple of the blog. Picture it against a cream or a white. :)

I know I really missed the boat on posting these Christmas designs in a timely manner, but I didn't think about posting them here until a few days ago. And then I was lazy. :) I made them for my sister who wanted some digital scrapbook-like images to mix and match.


Details: I know they're nothing revolutionary, but for my lack-of-being-able-to-make-scrapbook-paper, I was happy. Most of the others were much worse, if you can imagine. :) I made these in GIMP. I inserted a photo of a wooden door that I took and used that as overlay and background to get a textured look on the holly. I then used GIMP's cool paint brush copy feature* to produce multiple hollies at different sizes and so on. I did some recoloring and other stuff, but you get the idea. :)

*If you select an area in GIMP, copy the selection, and then click on the paint brush tool, you will see the selected area as the first paint brush tool option when choosing which brush to use. It's amazing! You can still resize the brush like normal and continue to paste until your little heart's content. :) I kept pasting hollies at different sizes, then copying all of my new hollies together in order to paste and re-paste them. Among other things, this tool really helps in simplifying what would otherwise be a time-consuming copy-and-paste job.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Request for Pictures! :)

I've had a few requests in my life to do some fun editing to pictures from my family and friends. I want to extend the offer out to you now. If you think it'd be fun to have a model airbrushed picture of you, or a different hair color, or a pencil sketch, or a mystical background inserted, or a different race, or whatever, email me a picture to work on.

I think this sounds really fun, so I hope at least a few of you really will send me pictures. Keep in mind, I'm a prude, but other than that, I really will work on pictures sent to me. :) elizabeth.photomania @ gmail.com.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

"Crying Men"

"Crying Men" is an amazing series of photographs shot by Sam Taylor-Wood of famous celebrities caught in the different stages/emotions of crying. I saw some pictures from it almost a year ago now and I was just so blown away by how powerful they were. (I highly recommend taking a look.) Anyway, so I loved the idea and wanted to try and take some of my own crying pictures. I don't really cry on demand, so I just poured water down my face. :)

Details: I did some light editing in GIMP. In particular, I used the paint tool in "overlay" mode to darken some of the black-ish colors on the eyelashes, hair, and tear stains.