Soon to be Jet Lagged.

Well, its been a while since I've posted and ALOT has happened.

I've spend the last few weeks in PA being the best man at Shelby's wedding, and spending an awesome 7 days with Amber!! But, now it's the 14th of August, and that means my flight to China is tomorrow!!!!

I must say im getting rather excited, it still seems a little surreal to me that I'll be leaving the country for a whole year tomorrow... Of course I won't be in China until Thursday... Lousy 13 Hour 45 Minute flights.

My itenerary is as follows... I board Delta airlines flight 5160 at Cleveland airport at 1:10 and land at JFK airport at 2:57. I then have about an Hour and a Half to find my terminal and take some photos before boarding air china flight 982 at 4:30pm. I will land in Beijing around 6pm Thursday. (that's about 5am Thursday for you Texas folks) so, I loose a whole day in the process. At least it will be that much closer to my birthday when I land eh?

After I land and get my luggage Shelby, Amanda, and I are to be picked up by a van sent from the Hostel we are going to be staying at. You can check it out here www.leohostel.com looks like a pretty nice place. I'll probably try and write a quick e-mail or blog sometime after we get there so everyone knows we are all ok.

We will then go to the train station and buy our tickets to Zibo, which is where we will be living. Chances are we will end up staying in Beijing for a few days (including my birthday which is the 17th of August for those not in the know!) which is rather exciting because Shelby and Amanda have nothing but good things to say about Beijing! I'll of course be taking a million pictures at all three of the airports ill be in (esspecially Beijing), and around Beijing. I will eventually be posting them on Flickr and here(if I can access it). But, dont expect to see them for a few weeks depending on how quickly we get settled and over Jet lag.

I'm not nervous like I thought I would be, just excited, the only thing im worried about is flights and connections and such, but so far the weather looks good and there are no delays so I'm not too too worried about it. I am going to miss my family and friends and esspecially Amber (I love you baby!) a hell of alot, but ill be talking with them on Skype so it won't be total isolation. Anyways I gotta run and get things together so I'll post soon from China soon!!

-Johnny

Dragonflies, Target, and Horses

So, its been a while. I have been working too much, but I have been keeping my flickr up to date (kinda) so check it out. Ill put a few highlight photos up here though, starting with my most recent photo.

A dragonfly...


Lance from work...


Barbed Wire and prison horses!

Final Student Teaching.

Ok so I posted the rest of what I will be editing and uploading of the student teaching batch. I really like the one I linked above for somereason. It will probably be everyone elses least favorite. Oh lack of self confidence, how I love thee. Anyways, you can see the rest of em on Flickr as per usual. I think from now on I will be limiting my blogger post to only a few pictures at a time and links to their respective Flickr sets for those that wish to see the rest of them the reason fo this is that ive noticed the post that have a million pictures in them tend to really bog down the load time on this blog. So, thats how it will go from now on. I have a Million and 1 pictures to edit and upload, some on my computer and some on my camera still. As I mentioned before I have over 400 quilt photos... I think ive finished about 11. heh. On top of that I have about 100 photos I took of my dad golfing yesterday. and also about 40 other miscellanious shots including shots from Target ( I sense a series coming on there...) and also animals (prison horses, my dog, and deer). And random shots of Huntsville at sunrise. Look for some of those to come soon. I am going to continue to plug away at the quilts, where I do intened to edit more of the 400 of those... but I will save my mind by randomly editing some of the ones from the above mentioned sets that I am doing for fun (the quilt shots im hoping to acctually turn some what of a profit on.

In other wierd news, yesterday I got a call on my cell phone, the number was private. I answer it and some guy tells me I won 2 tickets to the MOMA in New York. I tell the guy I live in Texas and I dont see how I could possibly get to New York to make use of such a prize, but thanks anyways, and he says "Ohh thats too bad, sorry to bother you." so before he hangs up I ask him how I was entered into a such a contest in the first place, and he says they find artist on the internet and offer them this prize... he then appologized again and we hung up shortly after. Seemed very wierd to me. But oh well. If more comes of this ill probably write about it.

Look for a few quilts and maybe some other fun stuff in the not too distant future!
-Johnny

Been a while...

So, It's been a while since I posted here. There are several reasons for this, the main one being work. I was working at both the Theater and at Target for a bit, so I was pretty tired and such, so when I was at home and I didnt want to do anything but either play WoW or sleep. But, I am done at the theater now, so hopefully I will get back in the swing of updates. My sleep schedule is still a little out of whack though.

So, whats new? Well I took over 400 some odd photos as the Airing of the Quilts here in Huntsville for my mom's quilt guild. I tried to get every stingle quilt there, but I know I missed at least a few. It took several hours to take the photos, the wind was crazy, and the sky overcast, so the lighting is not the best, so I imagine it will take several more hours to go through and edit the photos. I plan on making a CD to sell to the guild members and maybe make a little extra cash. Ill also post the best ones on Flickr and here.

I finished the Folk Fest Photos, and you can see one at the top of this post and the rest at Flickr. I'd have posted more here, but im feeling a little lazy and tired.

I have to go over to Target today, on my day off, to make sure I get next monday and thursday off... why? Because the city of huntsville felt the need to give me two different Jury Summons on those days, with only about a weeks notice, and since im technically not a student any more, I have no excuse. Bastards.

Anyways, thats all for now, I'll post more later!

Student Teaching 2

More photos from student teaching. There is going to be one more batch of these before I have em all posted... I also need to put up the rest of the Folk Festival photos at some point... heh I also took some photos at the culminating cerimonies for student teaching, which was a waist of time. I only took a few photos then I left early.

Student Teaching 1

Well today was my last day for student teaching, so brought in my camera to show it off to Jenny (my mentor teacher) and to take a few photos, so this is the first group ive uploaded. I have several more I will be making minor touches to and uploading that will in all likely hood appear in a later blog. As usual all of these can also be seen at my Flickr. There are also more folk festival photos I will eventually get around to uploading.

In other news I've offically brought my blog back online. I look it down for about a week or so because a few of the kids in my 3rd period were trying to use some of the things I was typing to (quote nate) "give me this buisness". BUT I am done student teaching now so I dont have to worry about that. Most of the kids in that class will have already forgotten about me and my ramblings by the begining of class tomorrow. And if they are persistant and start leaving inappropriate or annoying comments, ill simply delete them. Those of my students who are acctually here to look at new artwork, and want to comment with out being lame are welcome to do so.

So the photos I took today... I took photos during 2nd and 4th period, I was conveniently away during most of 3rd, but even if I was there, there is no way I would have taken out my 700 dollar camera during the class anyways. It probably would have been covered in clay or something.

The kids are begining to work with clay, doing figurative sculptures. Jenny waited until I was gone to start that seeing as my area of expertise lies mostly within the 2 dimensional realm. I had alot of fun with student teaching, and I'll miss both Jenny and the kids (most of em anyways). But, I am glad to have it done!!

Next stop, China, but first more photos:

Fruits

So, this is the newest "Photomation" I call it "Fruits" because it was a drawing that was based off of an image from a photo book called Fruits which features photos of Japanese teenagers dressed in thier wackey extreme out of control fashion. I maintain that this is because they watch too much anime. And everyone knows that anime rots your brain. And your teeth sometimes.

Anyways, Im going to post the non Photomation version as well below...

Folk Festival Part 2

Rangers

More Photos from the Folk Festival.

Commander

Steady Men

Cannon Fire

Folk Festival part 1

Bluebird

Ok so is the first set of photos I took at the Folk Festival, I managed to take like 80 before my battery died (I hadnt charged it since the day I got the camera so I probably should have charged it before I left that morning.) Im goign through them all and picking the ones I like and posting them on here and flickr. I comepletely forgot to adjust my ISO on these ones (im still learning the ins and outs of the camera) so my ISO was really high on all of em and it made thema little grainy. But, some of em I still really like. Here are the rest from the first batch.

Ducks

Cabin

Mohawk

Smithy

The Smith

New Camera!

So, I've been sick lately, and I acctually missed school today because of it. BUT, in other news, I got my new camera! The picture above, and the two ill be posting below are taken with my brand new Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT. This thing is rather amazing. so many setting and features and things to learn. I've been reading through the book while ive been stuck in bed coughing up a lung, and I think im starting to figure it out. These photos are a result of playing with it on the full manual setting (which ill probably use most of the time) with no flash, just adjustments of the apetrue and shutter speed to get the lighting right in my low lit living room... Anyways here is the other one I like...



It's my puppy doing what he does best... lounging. The shutter speed was pretty slow on this shot so I acctually set the camera on the ground to help keep it steady. And I also like that I can take photos in Black and White rather than taking color photos and switching them in photoshop. The next photo is a little different...



This one I took of an elvis toy thing... although its acctually part of a phone. It is suposed to dance and sing jailhouse rock when the phone rings, but it had long since broken. Anyways the photo was a little blurry, so I just started playin around with different filters and such in photoshop until I came up with something I like.

Anyways, these were just me learning to use the camera, so they really arent all that spectacular. There is a historic faire in huntsville this weekend, im hoping to get down to it and take some photos if my illness lets up. So, look for that this weekend.

-Johnny

Been a few days...

So, I've been busy and tired and other generic excuse #345 for not posting more regularly. In all seriousness though I have been tired and busy, I worked friday saturday and sunday 6-1 at the theater (well acctually they let me go around 11 on sunday), but that in conjunction with student teaching has left me pretty wrecked, hence the lack of updates on both here and my flickr. Although I get my camera thursday according to UPS so hopefully that will put me back on the once a day update track... I'm still pissed at bestpricecameras.com

Speaking of them, some guy named Bob left a comment on my post about the camera fiasco. He says they have been pulling this scam for 3 years now, and he got screwed over big time by them. Apparently he has the FBI inernet division seriously taking a look at them now. I tried to click his profile to see if I could get in touch with him and do anything to help out with this, but his profile is private and cant be seen, so Bob, if ya happen to read this post, leave me another comment and let me know if there is anything I can do to help.

In other news, Amber hit 70 in WoW yay! Now if only I could get her to do arena matches with me... Also, she got a new car, which she will be able to drive by herself in the not too distant future (I think she takes her driving test this wednesday acctually, I may be wrong though). Once again I still dont know how she went so long with out a lisence.

So, this is kinda interesting. Oneday ill come up with soem crazy idea, make it, put it on the internet and then make millions.

So yeah, the Vigina tech thing is worth mentioning, I have a friend that goes there, thank God he's ok, and so are all of his friends. He said he overselpt that day and missed classes that day and wasnt even on campus. I told my mom that and she said that everything happens for a reason. She may have something there. So, Mrs. Pascual is reading about the incident right now on Google news and telling me bits and pieces. I just wonder what could possibly drive someone to do something like this... and it's not like it was random either, apparently this kid chained and locked the doors from the inside of the building so no one could get out or in, so this took planning. Insane.

Well I gotta go get ready for class. We are in the computerlab this week, so its a little different. It gets really hot in there by the time 4th period rolls around. Hopefully ill post some new art sometime this week.

-Johnny

Kick!

and the yellow one...



See I told you they would get scanned one day. I will write more about em when I get home.

So yeah, this is not my week. On my way home my front passenger side tire blew out. So, I had to wait 45 mins for AAA to show up an change it for me... Yes I dont know how to change a tire, and no I wasnt about to learn how with 18 wheelers flying past me at 70+ mph. Thats what AAA is for. Anyways thats why this post is being updated so late.

Anyways, These are the other cut-outs I did that I talked about in my earlier blog called Fight! They are cut out construction paper... basically I took a sheet of red cut out the design and glued it over a sheed of black construction paper... I th en took my throwaway red and glued it over a sheet of yellow to make the reverse type image, I got two pieces for the price of one!

In other news I miss Amber, our work schedules have been clashing alot and we havent had too much time to talk an such.

Online vendors

Bestpricecamera.com sucks, dont trust em, they say your camera will cost 419 and come with all this crazy stuff, but then they have you call them and they tell you that your package doesnt include the battery pack or wires or programs... you know all the stuff that makes the camera work. Bastards. So, to get that stuff its about another 400 dollars. making the total 829 when they include the maditory insurance... So, with out thinking I say ok and call my mom with the updated price (my mom is helping pay for part of it for my birthday) and she tells me I should just cancel it and look else where, so I call them back, and im on hold for almost a 45 mins time. It's like the knew I wanted to change my order or something so they made me wait. When they finally pick up, I get some guy named dan, who I didnt talk to before, so he transfers me over to Ken the guy I had the first time, Im thinking, "great another 30 mins on hold probably" but luckily they picked it up right away and thus begins the negotiations.

Ken's good, he knows how to do his job. Well he was really nice the first time I called him and threw in a bunch of free stuff for very little additional cost, but this time he tells me right off that its gunna cost me 68 dollars to cancel my order.

So I said, "ok... so I dont want to buy the camera I havent paid for yet, and its goign to cost my 68 dollars?... How does that make any since?"

So, he goes into this nonsence rant about how the order was processed and they are gettinr eady to load the truck and ship it out right now.
Its like 4:02 PM if it was gunna be shipped it would have shipped this morning, not now...

I say no where did I ever read anything about a cancelation fee... well apparently its in the fine print and the FAQ on the website.

So finally I give up and ask him to make it into just the retail package and the lense, just what I need to make the camera work. Forget the bag, Forget the tripods, I can get those at walmart for like 10 bucks or borrow someones. So he knocks off all my deluxe stuff and I save 100 dollars... Wonderful.

I think im going to pay 419 and get myself a new camera and tripod and all that good stuff... but no.

So, to recap, what did I get and how much?

I got a canon Rebel XT with a 18-55 lense (the standard) for 729 dollars.

My mom is paying for 200 of it, so I am paying 529. I need more hours at work.

Needless to say, I'm not in the best of moods.

Amanda

I've decided to blog this, cuz it is new... not brand new, but like a few weeks ago new. This is a print I did as an example of Reduction Block Printing for my 9th graders. It is Amanda, I KINDA drew it from this photo:



I obviously modified the pose and such,and opened the eyes, but its the same person... see any resemblance? The point was to make a Roy Lichtensein style print to demonstrate pop art to the kids, Some of the prints the kids did came out really awesome, they are hanging up in the display case now, so maybe ill bust out the school's digital camera and take a pic of the case so you can see some of the things they did. It was a lot of fun to teach and watch them create the prints. I have yet to grade them though.... bah I hate grading! Art shouldn't be about grades, it should be about freedom of expression. Unfortunately, most of my students need to be motivated to express themselves or they would do nothing but attempt to drive me insane, so knowing a major grade rides on the project gets em to actually produce quality work (well most of them anyways).

I'm happy with how this print turned out, this is 3/4, by far the best one. You can see all the prints at my Flickr

-Johnny

p.s. I swear something brand new will be coming soon.....

*yawn*

So, I was a total bum this weekend, and I did no artwork. Well not entirely true, I sketched some on the back of the movie time sheet and then on the back of a free movie poster while I was stuck on podium at the theater Saturday night from 6-12:40. But, The only decent one was of Jack Sparrow (I was looking at the pirates 3 banner while I drew it), and I didn't remember to take the sheet with me so its probably somewhere in the Grand's dumpster by now. Other than that I did no art work.

I saw TMNT again,and I've decided that despite what everyone else says, I liked that movie. It was a throw back to my childhood.. Also, even though its computer animation, I really like the look and style of it. Plus the fight between Leo and Raph is bad ass, and proves once and for all the given the opportunity, Raph would indeed kick the ass of Leo. Leo's line of "I'm better than you." really gets thrown back in his face. Never tell a 6 foot turtle who charges into battle (by himself half the time) against countless hordes of ninjas, while armed with little more than pair of oversized forks that you are better than him. He tends to take it personally.

After I watched TMNT I promptly went home and watched the old school Turtles movie, the first one, where every other line Raph says (includeing his very first line) is "Damn." I had the intention of drawing ninja turtles while watching this, but ya know I ended up just watching it and remembering why Raphael was always my favorite.

Anyways, I want to see 300 again sometime this week... and Grind House... and Blades of Glory... and The Reaping. I'm sure if I put my mind to it I can see at least one of those movies.

Well, I need to go get ready for my first class which should be entering within the next 10 minutes or so. They are presenting their storyboard projects today, so I wont really get to work on any new art stuff today. Same goes for tomorrow, maybe ill try an do something when I get home, but chances are ill be playing World of Warcraft with Amber. maybe tomorrow I will get something new up. I MIGHT be able to put some old stuff up on Flickr, so check that out if you are interested.

-Johnny

Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT

I am very excited because I just ordered my Rebel XT! This means I can start taking pictures and building a portfolio once it gets here... the next few days are gunna suck waiting for the thing. I'm going to have to start going out and shooting photos again... I need some cool places, maybe ill go to downtown Houston some afternoon. Oh and the zoo, course I'd have to bring my sketch book if I went to the zoo. But yeah exciting! Now all I need is that job with National Geographic then I can get paid to go on safari and take photos.

In other art news, I might do another ninja piece this weekend, but I might wait until shelby sends me the bigger versions of his photos like he said he would to do more of them. Once I get my camera I plan on doing some non-ninja photomations with pictures I take... I have a few different series in mind... here are the titles to give you some clues. "Aliens among us." "Girls" "I see dead people (Ghost, Zombies and the such)" "Robots" and finally "My God, look at all the monkeys!"

How to...

go from this:



to this:



The first thing I do is choose a picture...

Next I print the picture out and use the print out to plan my layout of the piece, I use a colored pencil or pen to roughly sketch in the drawing or whatever is going to be on the "Photomation".











The next step is to draw the characters... I almost always draw in colored pencil. My reasons are three fold. 1. it eliminates the temptation to erase, drawing is a building process, you dont pour the foundation of a skyscraper and then dig it up before erecting the towers do you? 2. Colored Pencil does no smear. I tend to rub my hand all over my paper while drawing as I turn my sketch book every which way, and when I use graphite it just smears. and 3. when you scan it and start coloring in photoshop the colored pencil is easier to see and distinguish. When you scan your drawings makesure you scan them BIG this is important for the next step.


And that next step is to color your drawing in Photoshop! This is a pretty simple process, especially with these ninjas because they lack so much detail.

Some people like to clean up thier drawing a little before they start coloring, but I ussally dont see a point to it because the drawing will be thrown away, but I guess it can be helpful for selecting your lines, especially if you want to be lazy and use the magic wand tool, but the wand tool has never really worked for me adn you almost always have to go back and edit your selection in the mask. So, what I use is the Polygon lasso tool. I simply click around my drawing and select the areas I want to be colored.
Each color should get its own layer. with the ninjas I do the main body shape in black first.

Then, I start doing the details like the belt, swords, and "eye" part of the mask. Lyers are your friend, as I said every color gets its own layer. Most of the detail object layers are ontop of the ninja body layer, but a few of em such as the eye part, and the sword are on layers below the body layer, this way I dont have to select around the aeras so exact, because whatever extra areas I select will be covered by the layer ontop of it.





Lastly, I do shading and highlights. Because the ninja is so undetailed, there isnt much I do with this part on these drawings, infact I dont have any highlights at all, but there is some shading on the belt and sword straps... bassically I make a layer above that detail layer and apply my shading colors overtop of the base color layer. Once this is done you can get rid of the original drawing, and vioala you have a photoshop colored drawing that looks like a cel-shaded animation drawing.



For this piece I also did two other ninja drawings, but I only remembered to acctually upload one to flickr, so here it is... notice I did even less detail on this one because he is going to be place dint he background.

One thing to note is that with these drawings I didnt have outlines with these drawings, but if you did want an outline all you would ahve to do is select the outline with your lasso tool and fill in the color just like you do with your bulk colors, the only difference is that the outline layer will be ontop of ALL the other layers.




Now the fun part, placement in the photo. First thing you need to do is merge all the color layers of your drawing together, but make sure your still have a "transparent" (the grey checkerboard) background. Then you will need to open up your photo in photoshop. You may want to resize your ninjas down if your photo is alot smaller than your drawings... What I do is drag the full sized image into the photo (you do this by making sure the layer is selected, picking the move tool, and then simply dragging it from one picture to the next), and then I will resize the ninjas in the photo by using edit>free transform. This way I can resize and or rotate the image int he photo to make it fit. Remember to hold down the shift key while resizing with free transform, this will constrain the proportions of your image so it doesnt get stretched out on one side or the other.

Ok, so you placed your drawings in the photo, and sized em and rotated em how you want... done right? WRONG! now comes the part where you make it look like your drawings acctually belong in the photo.

First you need to add shadows. There are several ways this could be done. The way I ussally do it is I make a new layer, above the photo, but below my characters, and I use the paintbrush tool and paint in black areas where the shadows are goin to be, I use a soft edge brush so that it will be darker where I directly click but nice and fuzzy around the areas.
Then I use the gaussian blur filter to blur out the shadow even more. Then I ussally change the opacity on the shadow layer to make it really seethrough and blend with the background below it. Finally I touch up the aeras using the eraser tool, again the eraser brush is very soft edged so that its not eraseing away everything.

Once the shadows are in, its just a matter of finishing touches. In some cases you may need to adjust the lighting on your drawings to match the lighting in the photo (especially with color photos) For instance if the photo is lit by blue lights you will need to make the drawings look as though they are lit buy blue lights as well, unless you really want them to stand out and not look like a part of the photo. Also applying blurs to your drawings can help alot too. If you have a figure in the background will will probably need to blur him out a little to give him some atmospheric prospective. The small leaping ninja in the background has 3 blurs on him in mine, a gaussian blur, and two different motion blurs, one that is applied directly to the character, and another that is applied to a duplicate layer (a copy) of the character that is behind him. The other two characters have no direct blurs on them except I think the throwing star ninja has a very minor Gaussian blur on him. What I did for those two ninjas is, instead of directly blurring them, I duplicated thier layers twice, I placed one duplicate behind them, and one infront of them. I applied a heavy motion blur to both duplicates, and then set the opacity on the layer behind the figures to about 40%, and the ones in front of the figures at about 13%. I then moved the duplicates back a little to make it look like they were moving in one direction. On the throwing star ninja I really only wanted it to look like his arms were moving, so I used the eraser tool to erase out part of the motion blur layers.

And there you have it.

Forest of Shadows

Newest ninja photomation, I like it... coming tomorrow a tutorial... on how to make these things...