Tiger

Ha ha! It IS sooner! This is Sarah and what I mean is, the time between posts for me is sufficiently shortened! Woo-hoo! I also get two posts in a row! Though if you would have liked one sooner, I'm sorry, we've had a lot going on in the past month, house cleaning, decorations, friends and family coming over and lots of entertaining. We had 32 or so people at our house for Thanksgiving. So, although I've had enough free time for one I have excuses if you are unsatisfied. I've made three pieces of photoshop art in the past week but I will release them one at a time starting with...( pause for dramatic effect)... this one!

Now this was pretty simple to do. It's pretty similar to the Snow Leopard I did two posts back. I guess I like doing night sky background because it's dramatic, beautiful and easy. But, snow, especially at night, is harder, it's like a periwinkley-ish blue with white-blue outlines. I think I got this picture from Wikipedia, well, at least part of it, the tiger. The background came entirely from my own imagination, though I did listen to a lot of music while I did this, which is where I get much of my inspiration.  The original picture is this.

As I compare the two on this post, I realize with some horror, I forgot the whiskers! But it doesn't really take away from the picture so it's okay. I got a fair bit of reception from my family and a long-lost Bamboo brand drawing tablet to help with future drawings. 

On a side note, The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug, comes out tommorow and I think I'm equal parts excited and scared. Because...Spoiler Alert! I'm afraid about the part where Bilbo takes the Arkenstone and Thorin is furious with him and in the last movie at the end he finally accepted him and this action will shatter any belief Thorin had in him in the first place. Also, the battle. I don't know if it takes part in this movie, but I'd really like Fili, Kili and Thorin not to die as soon as possible because they happen to be my favorite characters.

So! I don't know if this will be the last post of the year, but I'd still like to say, Merry Christmas!

Not particularly long for a post, but if you would like more information on any of it, we'd love comments

.- Sarah

Snow Leopard

Here am I, Sarah! Moi first post! I did this picture solely on Photoshop Elements 7.0. And technically, weeelll, the second picture you see here was entirely my work, but I did happen to take...

               

...this snow leopard picture from Wikipedia.com and took a sample of the fur tones from this picture and "painted" over the first picture (on another layer), until it looked  more or less like this.

                           

 I had some difficulty making it look like fur instead of an oddly colored fur less cat. I added the spots on  his head and neck with I think a soft round brush and then used a chalk brush to make his spots look furrier and direction to his "fur".I also had to use a spatter brush on his nose because it used to be just a solid color, I used the spatter brush on other parts of his fur using alternately lighter or darker colors depending on which color patch I was working on, to give him ticked fur. I did " burn" some parts where there was shade to make his fur darker. By then I was pretty satisfied with how it turned out because I could hide background layer and it looked like a complete picture...except for the background which was non-existent. So I gave him a dramatic night sky background and changed the lighting to a more suited night time lighting and came up with this! 

                                                                               Voila!

And I'm extremely pleased with the results. The entire process took three days I think, though I didn't spend the whole day on the computer for three days in a row. Maybe, three hours a day. Today's included post writing, profile writing, background creating and signature editing.

Thanks to younger brothers who are constantly encouraging and God for allowing me so much free time.

-Sarah
P.S I changed the eye color because I think that this blue is prettier. :)