Alex and I visited the Richard Driehaus Stained Glass Museum at Navy Pier. At first, this wasn’t our intention, for we were going to Navy Pier for some enjoyment. The weather started out good, but within an hour’s time, the sunshine gave way to heavy rain and thunderstorms; we had to stay inside and walk around the indoor mall and conference area. Thankfully, the rain led us to a diamond in the conference center: the Stained Glass Museum.

Alex and I posing in front of a funhouse mirror.

Upon the first impression, the Richard Driehaus museum was just a small dark room, but the entire conference hall was filled with the stained glass pieces. For those who don’t know, Richard Driehaus is a philanthropist from Chicago. His museum features Tiffany glass wall art, chandeliers, and windows. Most, if not all, of these pieces are from Driehaus’ personal collection (thank you for sharing!). Most of the pieces Alex and I saw were breathtakingly beautiful. Here are some of the images from our trip. Click to read more …

Tags: Angels, Chicago, Museum, Navy Pier, Navy Pier Attractions, RIchard Driehaus, RIchard Driehaus Glass Museum, Richard Driehaus Stained Glass Museum, Stained Glass

Good evening everyone! I’m back after a long absence. I’ve been busy lately, so I guess I should update you guys.

For one, I’m trying to post on here as often as possible, but I got bogged down with a lot of papers for class, but all is well with that spectrum of the universe now. I can finally catch up with all my articles for Demand Studios and for here. Another reason why I haven’t been posting so much is because I got a new job teaching a few Korean computer graphics professors English. They already know English, of course, but they want to learn it better so they can get teaching jobs in the States. I’m excited about this opportunity and it will help me get a job once I graduate with my Master’s degree. Today, I got to help one of my students practice for an interview she has with the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. I’m excited that I got to help with the interview and I wish her luck. To me, working with students is like raising children. You give them wings to fly and once they leave the nest… it’s so sad. One of my coworkers said I should be happy when the students leave because it means they gained confidence in their writing and speaking abilities, but for some reason, I don’t feel that way. A deep sense of sadness overcomes me. I don’t know if I’m suppose to feel that way, but I always do. Maybe someday, I will understand that feeling. Click to read more …

Tags: All My Children, Art Tutorial, Camera Angles, Chaucer, Comics, Crafts, Creative Writing, Geoffrey Chaucer, JoAnn Fabrics, Kodak Camera Tutorial, manga, Photography, Pilfering, Portraits, Professional Photography, Purdue University, Stark Tinkham, Stolen Goods, Tutorial, Writing

Creating hair digitally has proven to be a headache to many people, but trust me, it’s not as hard as some folks think. I had to learn through trial and error—I had more errors than triumphs, but I finally learned. I think I draw pretty well, not to pat myself on the back or anything, but when I first started draw digitally, I had stick hair! Straight lines, no depth, no definition: That was the type of hair I drew. I still have trouble drawing hair digitally, but I am improving every day, well every day that is not filled with writing English and psychology papers and reading dull material (Percy Byssthe Shelley, anyone?). However, I do have a fairly simple tutorial on digital hair techniques. I’ve created this tutorial in five steps, and it uses Photoshop Elements 5.0. If you have an image that needs hair, follow along with this simple tutorial. Hopefully, your character’s hair will look better than mine. Today, I’m going to use Tala’s character, Kotou, for my hair tutorial. Click to read more …

Tags: brush, Color, digital, digitally, draw, drawing, drew, gimp, hair, midtones, opacity, paint, paintbrush, Photoshop, photoshop elements, tone, Tutorial

So you want to create an unique character, but you have a few people in mind that you want to combine; what do you do? Photomash! This requires digital media, so have your photo-editing software open and tablet or mice ready!

What is Photomashing? Well, it’s simple. Photomashing is where you take several pictures and take bits and pieces from each photo to create another photo. So let’s say you want to create an unique Asian character/face, but you want to make a character using existing images, Photomashing will be helpful to you. I’m going to show you how to Photomash a face using parts from some of my favorite singers—Ayumi Hamasaki, Như Quỳnh, Trish Thuy Trang, and although not a singer, Guo Jingjing who was one of my favorite Olympians during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Here is an image of all four girls together: Click to read more …

Tags: edit, edited photo, manipulation, photomanipulation, photomash, Photoshop, photoshopped, picture