Personal
Practice Makes Perfect
Anyone who really knows me can attest that music is, and always has been, a considerable part of my life. As a child, I learned how to play piano and frequently “rewrote the masters,” much to the chagrin of my traditionalist piano teacher. As a teen, I played clarinet in both my school band and a jazz quartet. After high school, I learned several other traditional band instruments and spent some time as a percussionist in a long-forgotten local band. I even briefly found a niche working in pro audio at a recording studio. However, with all the years I’ve invested in music, the one thing I never learned was guitar.
Kitten Therapy
I don’t care what anyone says, kitten therapy is a thing. Had the worst migraine for two days. Took every pain killer I had, nothing helped. Two minutes with the cat, and I felt 100% better.
Just What Are We Celebrating, Anyway?
Believe it or not, this is a question that more and more Americans have difficulty answering. The sad truth is that with each passing generation our history is being forgotten, and fewer people even know what it means to be an American.
1800’s Portrait
I did this colorization just a few days after my Jean Harlow colorization. I’m not sure where the original photo came from, but the project was requested by a user on Reddit.
Jean Harlow
This colorization was built using a series of layer masks. Some parts of the image, such as the skin tones, are comprised of numerous masks. In this case, the skin was colored using a half dozen layers of differing colors, shadows, and highlights. One thing that I didn’t do is fine tune the contrast before I began. If I had, certain areas such as the fence posts on the right-hand side of the photo would have shown better texturing. Additionally, I might not have failed miserably on the ivy in the background (and by “failed miserably” I mean “I gave up”).
Marie – Grey Doors 2
This colorization was done almost a month after the 54 Cutlass Concept colorization I discussed previously. In that month I did a fair amount of studying in regards to the techniques that go into recoloring an image. I still hadn’t mastered skin tones (to be honest, I’d say I still haven’t mastered it), but my overall technique had changed.
54 Cutlass Concept
My second colorization attempt! Previously, I told you about the incredibly inefficient process I used in my first colorization, but I didn’t learn anything from it. Well, maybe I learned a little, but I used the same process to color this image of a 1954 Cutlass concept car. I’m not 100% sure where I found this image, but I liked the car, so I thought I’d give it a shot!
Minnie Mouse
A while back, I started experimenting with recoloring black and white photos. I didn’t have a real reason for it, it just seemed like a fun hobby that would force me to learn something new and make me more proficient with Photoshop. Before I started experimenting I didn’t really do any research. I’m honestly not even sure where I originally got the idea to try recoloring something. In hindsight, I probably should have done at least a little research…
What’s This?
My more observant followers are likely asking this very question. Two things currently jump out as odd immediately to anyone who’s even a passing reader of my little corner of the Internet. First, this site is suddenly lacking in virtually all content (in fact, it’s a complete reboot). Second, this post (and in particular the above video) is far from the kind of thing I usually post. Well, there’s a reason for that.
Divide By Zero
Today hasn’t been what I’d call an over-all winning day, and I’m too fried to come up with an original, coherent post… but that doesn’t mean I can’t write! So today will effectively be a brain dump of things I’ve worked on, realized or discovered today. Consider this fair warning that while you will likely learn something from this post, some of it is likely to be nonsensical at best.
