Barbie drawing

Boy! Do I need practice. Heres something I made while practising drawing. I usually draw from Barbie books and Archie comics. Archie is the best comics to learn figure drawing from. Am totally in awe of dem who can draw so fast and so well.

Photoshop Retouching : Josephine

Heres one more example of photoshop retouching. I would like to say to the lady in the pic that you look much nicer without the photoshop botox, blue eyes and blonde highlights. Natural beauty rules. But I just needed a pic to practice :) so. And I have named you Josephine. Heres the result:

Josephine before:

Josephine After! :

Photoshop retouching - Ann's portrait

Hey,
If anybodys been looking at my blog, they might have realized I am in photoshop-retouching mode right now. I been trying to achieve a way of making people look prettier without
making them look 'photoshoped'..u know. I think I have gotten better than what I posted last night :)
Well, I have followed step by step instructions from here, but did somethings my way:
http://www.tutiki.org/w/index.php/Beautiful_Skin_by_Czechman
A very nice tutorial for retouching. What I did differently was that, I've used a combination of healing brush, spot healing brush, patch tool and cloning stamp to remove blemishes and patches. To reduce the redness in the area near Ann's nose, I straight away used colour balance and levels...which nobody recommends...but its okay.
Well, she looks equally pretty before and after the retouching, but I am pleased with the results anyways. Maybe we can change her hair and eye colour, then it'll be a real makeover.
See the pics below.

Ann - BEFORE :




Ann - AFTER:

Photoshop facial :D ( Retouching )

Hi All,
Heres a sample of photo retouching with simple steps i.e healing brush, spot healing brush,
surface blur and colour balance. This is so simple that anybody can do it. I have posted
the photo in its four stages. I havent done any drastic smoothing...but with the help of
advanced tutorials and some patience, you can really make a normal girl look like a model.
Also, I have kept her colour as it is, except making it a shade redder.

The Original Pic:



After using healing brush:




After filter>surface blur:




Final result after image adjustments> colour balance:

Of black beauties and racism

I was looking over the net for some black women pics ( to put on my orkut profile) and I came across Abagond's blog . I am impressed by how some people can focus on one topic for so long.And I mean that in positive way.

What I like about the blog is that it celebrates black women's beauty,and breaks the ridiculous stereotype of beauty that american ( as well as indian) society has embraced. M jus glad to find someone who thinks like me.I think smooth chocolate-dark skin looks so lovely...some people mus be crazy to put it down. Anyways.
Most of the time Abagond seems to be talking about racism, inter-racial dating, and how the movie and fashion industry is dominated by whites. Yet his tone is decent and cool , not aggressive. These posts get many many comments,that I found very interesting to read. I had always found it weird that there are hardly any black characters in FRIENDS you know. Same goes for movies."If blacks ran Hollywood like whites do" and " Black women that white men like" are nice reads.

Visit Abagond's blog

Its a very well-written blog, but I am not going to follow it. Got no reason to.

Billie Jean - My favourite MJ track

With so much being written about him , I cant help being reminded about MJ, i loved him wen i was in school :)

Well, his bessssssstest song has to be Billie Jean. Atleast its MY favourite. Sigh..Theres something about those hiccups! Maybe I live in a cave, but I discovered only today that the moonwalk started with"Billie Jean". Can you believe this song was almost removed (OMG!) from the album cause producer Quincy Jones dint like it. And it was mixed 91 times before it was finalized! If Jones had his way, there wouldnt have been no Billie Jean or moonwalk.

Heres some trivia:
On March 25 1983, "Billie Jean" and Jackson reached an even larger audience when he debuted the song before a live audience during taping of the tribute special Motown 25 concert at Pasadena, California.It was during this electrifying performance that Jackson also debuted a dance move he had discovered from black inner-city youths and tweaked to distinction. Credited to former Solid Gold dancer Cooley Jackson, "The Back Slide" was given a new name by the media following Jackson's interpretation: The "Moonwalk". The step has since gone on to become Jackson's signature dance move, and is synonymous with the song.
You can watch that performance here:


MTV owes its success to Micheal!
Jackson and Epic had planned to present the music video for "Billie Jean" to the executives of newly-formed cable network MTV, which was at the time not playing videos by black performers or even dance artists. Since its inception, the network's playlist was predominantly white and mainly featured videos by the top rock artists of the day such as Duran Duran, Peter Gabriel, The Clash, Blondie, Journey, Pat Benatar, Genesis, and Billy Idol. In 1983 Jackson and CBS Records President Walter Yetnikoff informed MTV's president that if the cable channel didn't play Jackson's video, CBS would literally not allow them to play all of their white artists who were getting exposure on the network, most notably Billy Joel. With that ultimatum, MTV finally bowed to pressure and premiered Jackson's "Billie Jean" video on March 10 1983.
Soon enough, MTV was airing the video in heavy rotation, thus making Jackson the first black performer to find stardom on the network. Producer Jones has said of the early relationship between Jackson and MTV: "...[they] rode each other to glory". Other black artists to soon after have videos on MTV included Prince, The Pointer Sisters, Rick James, Lionel Richie and Eddy Grant.

Some like it weird.. :)

I am not a news person. I never bother to look at the headlines and cant stand news channels. I did rather read bizarre news. You know, u wont believe all the weird stuff that
keeps happening!... Sigh! I only wonder why it doesnt happen around me. I mean I wish my neighbour uncle becomes pregnant or my mom takes up dirt bike racing...loooolz...weird is fun :)

And ofcourse the best place to find these stories is on the net. From now on, I'll post such "fact is stranger than fiction" kinda stuff here whenever I find it. Btw, That lady in the pic is officially "The World's Most Tattooed Senior Woman".

Heres one:
My twins have different dads
A STUNNED mum has shown the world her twin sons - born to DIFFERENT fathers.
Babies Justin and Jordan Washington arrived just seven minutes apart.
But incredibly they were CONCEIVED separately because their mother Mia was cheating on partner James Harrison with another lover.
Astonished US medics say different eggs were fertilised by each man within a very short time of each other - a million-to-one condition.
That makes the boys, who are now 11 months old, half-brothers rather than real twins.

Ok, I mean these things must be tough for those who through it. But i wont
lie. They do crack me up. Like the following one:

Man Sues Priest for Stealing Wife
Stephen Crane of Joliet, Ill., says he and his wife went to Christopher Floss, a priest, in 3006 for marital counseling. In 2007, Floss left the priesthood and Ms. Crane moved in with him. Crane is now suing Floss and the Roman Catholic Diocese for professional negligence and infliction of emotional distress.

Heehee!looooooooolz! The next one is hilarious. I can jus imagine dat guy running like dat

with his hands busy :D

Multitasking Masturbator
Is it really possible to pleasure yourself on the run? Okaloosa County law enforcement authorities in Florida say a woman reported seeing a man from her back door in nothing but a T-shirt masturbating. When she screamed, he ran into the woods, while still stimulating himself. The woman says this is the fourth time in the last week she's seen him exposing himself.

Find more such stories here.

My experience with Graphotherapy

Thursdays 4-5 pm is when you go to show your homework. After missing every Thursday since January, I finally made it today. Ofcourse she whacked me
Cause I was writing it too big and writing three times where I could squeeze in six,
So like back in the school days, she made me sit in a corner and
write it her way. (She does treat me like a kid. A lot of people do) And by golly, I really could fit 4 if not 6. She was happy with my work and let me go. I celebrated by
having cheese masala dosa alone in a restaurant deserted by everybody except a cook, a waiter and a manager. I had the whole place to myself, and theres nothing dat I like better.

Anyways, back to our story. Well, one good thing always leads to another. I was introduced to graphotherapy when I was learning illustration. A lady student was always singing praises of this particular
Graphotherapist cum astrologer in Mumbai. Well, I decided to take a session and liked
the results. In my first session , the therapist who is a cheerful middle-aged lady, asked
me to write and sign on a blank paper. I just wrote
random stuff about myself, and handed her the paper.

It was kinda fun, cause for a second I felt like Drew Barrymore in
Wishful thinking. I fancy myself as drew at every chance I get, coz shes my favourite. Was. It would have been more fun if the therapist had been wearing gypsy clothes with a beautiful crystal ball on the table. But then who takes that kinda stuff seriously.

This lady was nice, normal, and quite genuine. I dint need any
convincing because I had always believed that our handwriting is a reflection of our
thinking habits. I know I write differently when I am tensed or angry. She analyzed my handwriting and told me that my profession dint match my education and my life
lacked stability – financial and otherwise. What I got out of the session was a new signature. She advised me to buy a blank long book and practice my new signature everday. The new signature
was gonna help me cultivate habits of consistency and an attitude of success.

I just did what she told me to do, and I quite enjoyed it. I love to change things about myself. Makes me feel like I am reinventing shreela. Its been a year now since I started
this therapy, and there have been very cool changes in me and my life. I dont believe in co-incidences, so a lot of credit for whatever success I earned in the last year goes to graphotherapy. I am gonna
get my new signature on my PAN and other places too, and throw the old one into de bin.

This is just my story.

Read the following excerpt from an article on ezinearticles.com:

But how, you may ask, can the alteration of one's handwriting affect his character? To understand the whole complex process, it is necessary first to be aware of what takes place when you write. The act of writing is movement - a series of gestured involving rhythm, speed, pressure, direction, etc.
Handwriting itself captures and holds on paper the slightest motor impulse of the writer with the many contributing factors which enter into it. We do not write with the hand alone, but with brain, muscles and nerves which in turn react to conscious, subconscious and emotional stimuli. Handwriting is referred to by many as "brain-writing".
Thus it follows reason that how we move(and write) must reflect our physical, mental and emotional states. Handwriting explains why, although as children we are taught to form letters according to established pattern, each of us develops his own peculiarly individual script. It also explains the incredible diversity of handwriting. No two people's script are exactly the same.

Click here to read full article

Click here for more articles on graphology and graphotherapy.

Transformers : Revenge of the fallen

Genre: Sci-Fi Action - Directed by: Michael Bay (Transformers)
Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox - India release date : July 2009

I was a little excited about watching Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen although I havent seen the first part. All I had seen was a 30 second preview in a Megan fox interview, which I was watching with the volume on mute :). She is THAT beautiful.lol. Anyways, I was expecting a lot of breathtaking effects and action...kinda like Spiderman 3. But it turned out, the movie is only fit for 9 yr old kids in awe of robots.

The movie started pretty well, with African tribesmen getting mashed up by the gigantic robots. Also, I loved the way the first robots are introduced - stylishly mantling themselves out of a box or watever, and then turning into cars and then back into robots. That was cool, supercool. But thats just the first 10 minutes or so :(

What follows after that for a looooooooong time ( was it two hours? ) is repetitive juiceless bang-bang between the robots, lots of confusing talk between the military ppl, and unintentional comedy. I kept losing the thread of the 'story'. But here is what I gathered : the hero has a stone which is coveted by the baddie robots, and somehow by mistake he drops the thing, and it affects his brain and he starts seeing symbols. hehe. These symbols would lead him to the only thing - a stony thing called matrix - that can destroy the baddie. So the baddie wants the hero, so dat he can get to the matrix and smash it like he smashes everything else. Phew!

Apparently, director Micheal Bay, doesnt like viewers to follow the storyline, so he complicated it ridiculously with an aged robot who walks with a stick ( haha!) , a high-strung butcher with a military past, a clingy blonde robot , an underwater robot who suddenly wakes up and flies straight to another planet (!??) , and military people shouting orders gravely ( rolling my eyes ) as if it were really important to the plot. Its simply mind-numbing. Phew again!

All I wanted was just some good action!I hardly got any, plus I got mindfucked.

I would have written a lot more, but I cant criticise anything to that extent. But gotta add this - I did'nt like the fact that the silliest robots were dubbed by blacks. Why o Why?

There a few good things though - Megan, the hot military officers and Egypt are all nice to look at. The guy who plays Shia's roommate was funny at times. But dats not enuf right? I mean I paid 125 bucks. Not worth it.

SKIP IT.

Related links:
You can find some music from the movie here:
www.myspace.com/linkinpark
Reviews:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/transformers_revenge_of_the_fallen/
http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/transformers_revenge_of_the_fallen
Videos:
Movie clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4rNDo7HV8E
Official trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhtGnCa8x2k

I can draw too :)

Well before joining MySpace I was learning art from a freelance artist. I am amazed at what I learnt to do. Here are my achievements:

This I made probly last november, for an ambitious project which never happened.
It was something about a star-struck common man meeting a celebrity. I really liked
this one. I had studied tonnes of caricatures before making it. This was my first attempt at caricature-type cartoons.


I had started adding colour and then another project came up and we decided to keep
this one on a hold. funny. I think I'll finish it anyways, even if its all over.


This was a model in an oriflame booklet.


This was my first attempt at making a portrait. I wish I had the original photo
of the guy now. wud have posted it here. I was thrilled when I finished this.
What wonders practise can do. Made me feel skilled.

Designs in my life

Did i tell you that I am a graphic designer by profession? K, people say they like my designs.,
but for me its really only a hobby, something I have never tried to excel in. I am inspired
by the cool stuff on smashingmag all the time, but never acted on it. No apologies :)
My favourite form of art has always been illustrations of people, rather than abstract, or birds
or nature or something like that. My favourite topics have always been people and sex, you
see I was studying to be a psychotherapist until some funny things ( they dint seem funny at that time for sure ) happened and I decided to use my photoshop skills to make a life ( i will not use the term "earn a living" coz it sounds so cheap, and smacks of a feeling of lack...yea i have been reading louise hay ).
So the point is that I wanna show you some of my favourite works of art, done by other talented artists. Kudos to them. The last one, the girl in water is made
by Jimmy Beaulieu.

Back again.

hey
i jus realized dat i wanna keep my blog alive. so i'll make this a place for my favourite things on the web plus anything else i please. hehe.