I’VE BEEN IN A FANTASY ART MOOD as you can see in the above image. Originally, I was planning to create something different – something more modern. Going through my photo collection, I saw this photo I took last year of JuLeZz’s sister during a Hari Raya photoshoot session. Tweak here, tweak there – and what did I end up with? Another fantasy art.

A lot of brushes and brush techniques went into the above piece – mostly dodging, burning and erasing certain parts to create the desired effect, something different than my usual style. I ended up loving the result and so I shared it (see facebook fan page).

One thing that annoys me at the moment though, my images seems to look a bit dark and sharp when I upload it on Picasa. Best that you go ahead to facebook to see how I intended the image to look like.

I’VE BEEN TRYING HARD to keep practising my photoshop skills and get back to where I was before – back when I used to just design something from scratch – everything 100% photoshop. These days, I even need to go online and get some inspiration before I could even begin a piece. The results? I always end up with not 100% happy with the product but not entirely despised at the results as well. The most important part though is that I do see that I have been improving.

The above photomanipulation is my latest work on a photo I took of my fellow SEEDS members. The photo was originally taken on a flyover (after I parked safely on the side of course) and is a combination of a few stock photos I’ve collected the past few years. I apologize though that I can’t remember who the photos were from (I really should keep a record of it).

The tiny planet was created by myself with a meadow stock photo after which I also added that single tree on it, also a stock photo. The little rainbow however was made by myself on photoshop itself. Easy job. This piece took me about an hour and a half to create – adjusting the lighting took most of my time.

PS: I miss working with the Oliver! casts and crew. Even though I’ve got a lot of work, it feels like I’ve got a lot of free time compared to the amount of time I dedicated on directing Oliver!.

Facebook post here

THIS DECEMBER HOLIDAY IS GOING BY SO QUICKLY. I can’t believe there’s only a week left of it. That said, there’s only a few days of 2009 left! Are you guys ready for 2010?

With the coming new year, I thought I’d design some kind of glamourous wallpaper for my computer and the result is as seen above. The colours and effects (smokey and noise) are designed around the original photo (see ‘Playing With Silhouette‘). There were a lot of noise in the photo, due to the lens I was using then, and I thought it would be nice to have the rest of the wallpaper flow. This one’s called “The Glamourous Exclusives”.

FINALLY FINISHED THIS PIECE. This has been a long time in the making – on and off – not happy with how it started. In the end, I decided to create a paint effect background to give it that stormy aura look. Now, I’m very happy with how it looks like.

Also, I was determined to finish this piece by today. Why? Because today is that model’s birthday. Happy birthday Zyrn!

Y’know, sometimes I wish I was in the creative business so I can just sit all day cranking up my brain to create something. But then, I went back to what I do and I realize I love doing that too. So really, photography and designing will forever stay as my hobby.