"Send me an Angel" Castiel Wallpaper & Avatars

[rkc_erika]

*Sigh* Yeah call me weird, Jensen and Jared are both uber hot but neither do anything for me which is why I don't usually spend a lot of time making Supernatural artwork. Mischa Collins however could be an older more brooding brother to Craig Horner which makes him seriously hot as hell in my book. And for some reason I seem to be on a Supernatural

Comments

[rkc_erika]

You're a great artist, don't knock yourself. I don't know how long it is that you've been making artwork but you're very skilled.

I learned Photoshop probably back in 2004 when I started learning Manips and such, but I didn't start to get prolifically skilled until 2006 when I was doing Smallville art all of the time and kept looking at other people's work and pestering them for advice.

I love your LOTS artwork, don't stop making it :) I'm just taking a brief hiatus from it because I need inspiration again.

There's a lot that I don't understand in PS, for the life of me I have no idea how to mask. I tried, but can't get it to work, so instead I just keep to using my trusty eraser tools. And there are lots of complex things that I just can't do - I really could use taking a couple of courses.

You only have PS7, right? You need to upgrade to at least CS2 (which is what I currently use - I'm planning on upgrading to Cs3 or 4 when I get my new computer.) CS2 is where I jumped from CS7, it has so many more features to it and is light-years better. Luckily since it's a couple generations back now you can probably pick it up relatively cheap :)

[gibbynka]

I´ve been making artwork since 2006 I guess, but I usually make only one/two wallpapers a month, maybe even less. I use Photoshop mostly for making banners/signatures for forums, but lately LotS has been a great source of inspiration, so I make much more walls than I´m used to :)

I´ve read a number of great tutorials, that´s how I know what to do (most of the time). I haven´t figured out masking either :( The truth is I keep using the same tools over and over again, because I don´t have time to really explore Photoshop - it´s shame, really, I know it has lots more to offer. I wish we had an option to take courses here, the only ones I found are in Prague, and that´s a 5 hour drive, 5 more hours back :-( I can´t take time off work for that. And it´s just too expensive for me.

I have plans to buy a new, more efficient computer early next year, maybe in a couple of weeks if my parents help me out a bit. After I get it, I want to try some new video editing software, and get a better Photoshop, definitely :)

[rkc_erika]

Tutorials are a great way to get advanced knowledge of the program. There are things that I do in Photoshop that come from some of the first tutorials that I ever used for the program that I still use today.

The very first one I learned was to make a planet like Mustafar in Photoshop: http://erikasartzone.com/artgallery/displayimage.php?album=7&pos=5

I learned about using levels and creating believable night skies with it.

My wallpapers didn't start out looking like this. I spent about a year struggling w/ figuring out image proportioning, manipping, and getting my illustrated style down. It took me 1 year to develop the way that I convert my images and I did it entirely on my own with trial and error of using photoshop. I did get some help from a tutorial though that I apply to every photo that I convert. It's a 10+ step process for each photo. Since I developed it and it's my thing that makes my artwork identifiable I don't put it out there. If you ever find any tutorials that give similar results - they studied what I do and made the tutorials on their own, I didn't authorize them.

Some of my early pieces are just ugly: http://erikasartzone.com/artgallery/displayimage.php?album=48&pos=17

http://erikasartzone.com/artgallery/displayimage.php?album=48&pos=13

I still keep those up in my art gallery to remind myself of how far that I've come. It just goes to show you that I've had to learn a lot over the years.

All of that being said, I spent 4 years in high school studying photography (was photo editor of my high school year book) and I took a couple of art classes in college. I would've double majored in Art and English had I had the sense to do so from the beginning. After I got out of school I've spent many, many hours of my free time studying art, so now that I've the mechanics of Photoshop down, I'm now able to apply all of my other knowledge to my pieces - like light direction, composition, depth of field, which is what has launched my pieces to a new level once I started working on my LEGEND Artwork.

I didn't do a lot of art this year due my all of the websites that I run. Luckily though my time has freed up some so that I'm able to work on stuff that I WANT to do not just what I NEED to do. My inner artist is very happy to not be repressed and ignored. My work is still far from perfect - I still learn from each piece and try to improve with the next one. Art is always evolving.

My best advice for you or anyone who's looking for inspiration, keep hunting down tutorials and trying them out, there are also books and magazines that are about using Photoshop that are great for helping with showing you how to do things.

I've been thinking about creating some tutorials on composition but in just looking at how I'd want to go about it they'd be long, I think I'd want to charge people for being able to view them(not a lot - like $10 maybe - where are you going to be able to take an art class that cheap?) I wonder if anyone would be interested? There just isn't a lot of info on the web for understanding composition, even in standard artwork. I think that ultimately plays a huge factor in whether a wallpaper succeeds or not. Many people just don't understand why their pieces don't work and composition is usually the key factor.