2013 Free Wallpaper & the Best of 2012

2013wallpaper_screenshot_crop2

Happy New Year Everyone! I’m excited for the year 2013 and I hope you are too. Thanks goes out to my new subscribers and to the ones that have stuck with me for the past 3 years. 2012 was a major year for me filled with highs and some powerful lows, but I’ve learned that it’s how you respond to those lows that makes a difference. I accomplished some of my goals from last year and some will be a continuous effort, like blogging more (at least once a week) and producing a monthly wallpaper. Here’s my design for the month of January celebrating the new year. I wanted something strong and dark, but at the same time pops. I also wanted something that both genders could appreciate. My wallpapers so far have leaned toward the feminine. The font I used was Old English Text MT and the outlines were constructed in Illustrator and brought into Photoshop.

2013 Free Wallpaper 1920 x 1080

2013 Free Wallpaper 1920 x 1080

Whether it’s due to color profiles, some system setup, or the fact that I’m working at different scales, the image in my psd file is slightly different from the final result. I’ve included a screenshot. I like the stronger red tones.

2013wallpaper_screenshot

A new year triggers a review of the previous in a culmination of “Best of” lists. Here are a few “Best of 2012″ from some blogs I follow:

From up North – Best of Digital Art & Typography
bestof2012_fundigitalbestof2012_funtypography

Line25 – Best Web Designs of 2012
bestof2012_line25

Good.is – The Best Smart Products of 2012
bestof2012_goodis

Architnect’s Top 12 for 2012
bestof2012_archinect

Blogspoon Graphics – Greatest Tutorial Hits of 2012
bestof2012_spoon

Digital Arts – Best Creative Tech for 2012

JUST Creative – Popular Posts of 2012

Wising Everyone a Bright
and Prosperous New Year!!!

 

 

All You Need Is Love

One of my favorite shirts is a black one that says The Beatles and every time I wear it I get asked “You know about the Beatles?” My reply, “Yeah, of course!” I guess at the ripe young age of 24, they’re supposed to be beyond my generation, even though I think all my friends know who they are and some listen to them too. Anyway, there’s an installation at the Miami Airport made out of flowers that inspired me to create the piece below. It said “All We Need is Love.” I couldn’t help but smile when I saw it and of course think of the Beatles. With my image I wanted the word Love to be the main focus. It needed to be big, very red, and pop off of the page (view in portfolio).

I’ve been eager to work with splashes or the liquid effect. They bring such a sense of life and movement. Not to mention, they’ve been quite popular and appear in many different graphic works. Just check out the Ultimate Roundup of Photoshop Tutorials from 2010 by Pixel77 and see how many involve liquid of some sort. My awesome resources though, came from the wonderful folks of Media Militia. They made a High Quality Paint Tossing Pack, FREE to download, and free for commercial and personal use. They even have their own tutorial showing you how to use them. Enjoy!

If you’re a Beatles fan you may like the movie Across the Universe, a story told through Beatles songs. Here are a few of my favorite songs from the Beatles:
I Saw Her Standing There (always perks me up!)
I Want You (She’s So Heavy)
Day Tripper
Come Together (I like Michael Jackson’s version)
Let It Be (from Across the Universe, this scene makes me cry)

What’s your favorite Beatles song? Do you have a piece using splash effects that you love?

 

 

 

 

New Page of Sizzlin’ Resources

Need some inspiration? What about advice for that problem in Illustrator you’ve been having? Maybe you just need a new photoshop brush to put the finishing touches on that project? Well, I just created a new resource page! It’s a list of sites that I feel could be useful to designers, photographers, architects, artists, or anyone in the creative/technical field. It includes blogs that offer tips and advice, tutorials, freebies and more. For about a year now, I’ve been collecting sites either by bookmarking or adding to my Google reader. So making this page has also helped me get a little more organization to the madness. Which reminds me of another resource Xmarks (syncs and backs up your bookmarks). My resource list is definitely not the end-all-be-all of resources, so I look forward to finding more. There’s so much great stuff out there on the world wide web. Do you have a site/resource that you’d like to share? Leave a comment on my Resource Page.

Crazy Cool Pumpkin Carvings

Mies van der Rohe

I know Halloween has come and gone and Thanksgiving is fast approaching, but I couldn’t pass up sharing these intricate pieces of almost edible art. For the very first time I carved a pumpkin this year, so I have a tiny idea of the work involved. Needless to say, my pumpkin wasn’t quite as detailed as those of Kyle May (Arahams-May) and Julia van den Hout (Steven Holl Architects). They paid homage to their favorite architects by hand carving their figures into “Arch-O-Lanterns”. Artistically, my favorite is Mies van der Rohe (not because I went to the school of Mies, IIT). Architecturally though, I will have to go with Herzog & de Meuron. Here’s the Arch-o-lantern slide-show.

If you’re looking for something even more extreme then feast your eyes on the carvings of Scott Cummins in Perryton, Texas. He’s a junior high art teacher that sculpts pumpkins in his free time for fun and for our viewing pleasure. Check out his gallery on Pumpkin Gutter. He has even provided a detailed tutorial explaining the process.

Can you guess which pumpkin below is the one I carved with my cousin? Hint: It’s the snaggle-toothed cat.

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When some Cosmic Space and a Galaxy got together

I subscribe to some really cool design blogs, two of which being BlogSpoon Graphics written by Chris Spooner, and Dzine Blog. Why do I like them? Well, they have really interesting and relevant content like tutorials, design principles, resources, and list of some of the best graphics/sites/designers on the web. Not to mention, they don’t flood my inbox. I’ve subscribed to some sites where the share volume of emails can become overwhelming, particularly if you miss a day or two. BlogSpoon Graphics and Dzine Blog sends just the right amount and are a constant source of inspiration.

Great! (but what does this have to do with space?) A couple weeks ago Chris Spooner wrote a tutorial on how to Design a Beautiful Cosmic Space Scene in Photoshop. Intrigued, I marked the email and set it aside to complete later. A few days later Dzine Blog released their own tutorial on how to Create Your Own Galaxy. So I’m thinking it’s in the stars (pun intended) to combine the two. Of course that meant I had to complete each one first.

First up was Create Your Own Galaxy. I must say I followed this one very loosely, so my result lacks in intensity compared to theirs. Towards the end I simply read what they did. The tricks I learned however, are priceless.

Next, was Design a Beautiful Cosmic Space Scene. The comparative result is below. With this tutorial the images you choose to work with will greatly effect the outcome and may require extra tweaking to get it to look right.

I must say I was quite excited to combine techniques from both tutorials. Below is “their child.” Feel free to save as a wallpaper if you would like and do please check out the above mentioned blogs.

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