School Logo

 This text is making me crazy. It's all perfectly aligned when I type it, but it spreads out when I post it. This is my last try. I had to abandon the eagle I was working with. I got to the place where the more I worked with it, the more I disliked what I was doing. So I decided to redesign my high school logo. Harrisonburg High is the home of the Blue Streaks. The school colors are blue and white. The old logo has the v-shaped lightening bolts. I wanted the blue streak in my design to make the horizontal on the h's. I would like to play around more with this same idea, but using different fonts, different streaks, too.

Lena

I worked with a photo of Amy during class, but I somehow lost it in the great expanse of the computer universe. That happens sometimes. So I reworked this photo I took of Lena. I cropped it, zombied her up a little and added a ghostly figure in the window.

I thought that learning about how to use 3D text might be helpful.
There were some small areas that I just could not get color into, even when I ungrouped the text more. I don't find that the tools work exactly the way they are presented in tutorials. Could just be me, though.

Magic of Machu Picchu

Playing with Illustrator

This wasn't hard, but I never could get the blend tool to work.
Ah, well, tomorrow's another day!

The Magic of Machu Picchu

It's really hard to magic-up Macchu Picchu. It is naturally magically beautiful. So that part proved to be a challenge. In the first picture I played with colors in areas that I selected by color. It was interesting, but the original photo seemed more truly mystical. So I decided to give myself magical modes of travel in Machu Picchu. I thought arriving in a Glinda, witch of the North, bubble ball would be fun. I put a shiny reflection on the bubble, but somehow saved the one I made before adding that. Oh well. The moth wing came from a photo of a moth taken in the botanical gardens below M.P. The last picture was taken in the Temple of the Moon at the base of Huanapicchu, the tall mountain behind downtown. I painted myself to look like a storybook princess there, because I felt like one (even if I was probably sitting on an alter where human sacrifices were performed). The guides there will tell you that the Inca only sacrificed llamas, but I don't think that's exactly the whole truth.

To save layers, I had to save my work as an xcf file in the GIMP program. I did that, but for some reason they did not save properly. I was unable to separate the layers. The changes I made are pretty subtle. I toned down Lena, so she does not come forward from the background quite so much. I also toned down the leaves around Tristan and added some shadows. I think it helped a little.