My Newest Illustrative Challenge

I don't usually like to post twice in one day because it seems to sort of "knock" the other post down a bunch. But I wanted to share my newest challenge. I like to challenge myself. 

I have a habit of not finishing what I start and this sometime takes the form of the less obvious "I like to shortcut when I could do much better" problem. Which sort of happened with this one. I had grand hopes for it and could have done MUCH better getting this to really work right and be really in your face amazing. But instead I had work to do and the time it would have taken would have sucked away from time I needed to do my other things. So until I can sit down and work on this technique for a more significant amount of time, here is my latest attempt. :)

PS - I know the drop shadows on the splashes make them look flat, but I didn't have the time to work them up right. I'm sure I could have done more with the background and some more media, like vectors and swirls, but ... ok. I'm just going to shut up and post it :) lol

My Very First HTML Experience

So... many people ask me where I first learned graphic design or how to make websites, etc.. I tell them that I learned straight HTML before anything else and to this day I think it gave me a foundation for web that is impossible without studying code. 

 I always distinctly remember the feeling I had the first time I wrote out HTML code, opened the page and found a whole website had been created with only a few tags. I am always looking for a good website tutorial, but it seems everyone immediately thinks of Dreamweaver (or FrontPage, etc...) and once you get into software there are so many techniques and different "rules." With HTML, everyone uses the same language, it progresses and changes at times, but it's pretty much universal.

Today I stumbled across the same tutorial I used 6 years ago to make my first web page from straight HTML only. I loved it. I look at javascript and other codes and want to bang a hammer to my head there is just so much to force into my brain, but I love it. I love learning and HTML was one of my favorite challenges that first year of Graphic Design class.  So I'm sharing it with my readers :) 

Here is a link (You can also click the title of this blog)

http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tut/index.html

New inspirations...

Ok. So I've been going CRAZY over this style of digital art that I really want to master. Here is a link to the artist that like the most using this style so far: Pete Harrison
There are other styles similar that inspire me, so here is one in particular: JaxeNL

So I decided this will take a lot of work to perfect my style of these types of style, but here is my first work. Often I don't like to show my first work, b/c I know I'll get better. So this is by far NOT my best work, but I'm sharing it b/c I'm so excited to finally have made it (sort of) work after hours of tutorial perusing. I know the hair could use with some blending and be cut out better, but I wasn't as concerned with that as the technique. So here is a before and after shot of the effect. Made for a senior session at Captured Images, Inc.

Recent Illustrative Work

Here is some stuff I've been doing at work.

Some urban illustrative stuff:

Jacob Urban by ~silverdoves on deviantART

Some Pinup Stuff: