Good technique

The worst thing when you’re on your own, a self-taught person is that you have to improve your creativeness and technique simultaneously, and you need much time to make progress in your job.
When you’re going to an interview there is a question about your future, like "what you would like to be after 10 years". Recently I was thinking about the question, and I've got an answer. I’d like to have a great technique in representing my surrounding world.Because otherwise it's like you have an idea,but don't know how to say it.

There are 3 images that I've found at deviantart.com and understood that this is exactly what I need.

A photo

Vector image

3D image

Sony Bravia

With or without color

The people with Albinism have little or no pigment in their eyes, skin, or hair. They have inherited altered genes that do not make the usual amounts of a pigment called melanin, which is responsible for the color. The principal gene which results in Albinism prevents the body from making the usual amounts of this pigment.

It is not a disease, infection and cannot be transmitted through contact, the thing is more complicated.

“The genes for Albinism are located on “autosomal” chromosomes. Autosomes are the chromosomes that contain genes for our general body characteristics, contrasted to the sex chromosomes. We normally have two copies of these chromosomes and the genes on them – one inherited from our father, the other inherited from our mother. Neither of these gene copies is functional in people with Albinism. However, Albinism is a “recessive trait”, so even if only one of the two copies of the Albinism gene is functional, a person can make pigment, but will carry the albinism trait. Both parents must carry a defective albinism gene to have a child with Albinism. When both parents carry the defective gene (and neither parent has albinism) there is a one in four chance at each pregnancy that the baby will be born with Albinism. This type of inheritance is called “autosomal recessive” inheritance.”

There are a lot of attitudes towards albino people in different cultures of the world. On Fiji Islands they are usually very respectful and high-ranking people, on the contrary in Africa their life is very complicated.
There is a belief in South Africa, that after death albinos are disappearing, like dissolving in the air.

All my life this phenomenon was associated with purity, transparency and tenderness. When I was a child I thought that these people were angels. Now, when I see their photos I think that maybe there is something there, and only the nature knows the answer.

Seam carving

Seam carving is an image resizing algorithm developed by Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir. This algorithm alters the size of an image by intelligently removing pixels from (or adding pixels to) the image that carry little importance.
The algorithm determines the least noticeable paths from one side of an image to another, called seams, and cuts the image along those seams. These paths are not straight, but follow the contours of the content in the image. This is why the technique is also called Content Aware Image Resizing.
The importance of a pixel is generally measured by its contrast compared with its neighbor pixels. Additionally, it's possible to define areas of high importance in which pixels may not be deleted, and conversely, areas of zero importance which should be removed first.
With this technique, it's now possible to reduce or enlarge pictures and still retain the details.
Adobe has integrated this technology as an image transformation option in Adobe Photoshop CS4.

Beauty around us

There is a building out of my office window. It has ugly façade, but has nice red roof. Usually it becomes pink in the sunlight and wine red after 7 p.m. There is a high tree behind the building as well. The top branches are bold and resemble human hands that want to reach the sky. The bottom branches are covered with small green leaves. The sky is very blue (R: 183 G: 216 B: 249) today with only one small ship-shaped cloud.

Most of the people can notice only the ugly building and usually keep the windows closed. I’m wondering, why don’t they notice the beauty around them?

Perfect

Yesterday I passed the color test on www.xrite.com
And it said: “You have perfect color vision!”
It took 14 minutes and I didn’t make any mistakes. .it was nice... maybe I was underestimating myself too much.


I don’t want to write about personal things… but…it’s so related to the topic…on September 21 I became an aunt of little Ruben. Yesterday I saw his photos and he was definitely perfect!

Children of Picasso

My mood controllers of the day are Claude and Paloma Picasso. More exactly, it is their photo by Richard Avedon (1966).
She has calm and innocent face, he has strong hand of his father. They both have wonderful lips and a profound wisdom in their eyes.

She has become a famous fashion designer, started her own company and brand, produced her own perfume and a line of evening wear, designed jewelry for Tiffany & Co.
He has become a great photographer, worked for "Conde Nast", the publisher of "Vogue", and other magazines.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Claude et Paloma dessinant.
Pablo Picasso (1950) Paloma and Claude, Children of Picasso.

Every day there is an exhibition of Picasso somewhere in the world.

Banksy

Today I’ve discovered Banksy, well-known pseudo-anonymous British graffiti artist. I like the way he represents his point of view on different topics like politics, culture,society and others.





http://www.banksy.co.uk/

Static vs Dinamic

"A new, modern approach to visual brand identification. This is the world's first dynamic logo!"




See the details about new brand of Troika Dialog(largest private investment bank in the CIS):

http://troika.ru/eng/Our_New_Brand/index.wbp

My first icons

These are my first icons that I made in Adobe Photoshop. Before that I was using Illustrator for that purposes…but then I decided to try Photoshop as well.

Confession

I’m in web design about a year, but as I haven’t any art background, it’s very hard for me to make an icon or to draw something. I can imagine it in my mind...Just close my eyes and see the way it should be, but when I started to make it my imagination doesn’t work. So I have to open different icon stocks to see how other people did it. I have to confess that before starting to work I’m still searching for images and trying to find different techniques and sometimes even copy them. It’s very ashamed for me to confess such things, but I think this is the only way to learn.
Recently I was making icons for a bank which they didn’t approve. The waves on each icon represent part of their logo.

LHC

Today everyone is talking about LHC. And I’m excited about that as well.
Large Hadron Collider is the largest particle accelerator in the world. Today it’s going to be switched on and it‘ll be the first attempt to circulate a beam in it.
The main purpose of the experiment is to explore the theory of Big Bang(the standard model of particle physics) by colliding two beams of protons, which will generate temperatures more than 100 000 times hotter than the heat of sun and the detectors will observe the collision. This 27km-long scientific instrument will definitely change our conception of the Universe and its origin.
It’s said that there is a chance that this collider could produce “mini” black holes that could damage the Earth. There are a lot of "anti-LHC" materials in the internet(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXzugu39pKM&feature=related), even a movie was shoot(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1vKisefsuI), and I think nobody has a 100% assurance of success, but there is a big percent that after a while new theories will appear in physics text-books.

See live webcast: http://webcast.cern.ch/

abeautifulrevolution.com

http://www.abeautifulrevolution.com/blog/

Making autumn illustration

What do we imagine when we think about autumn?
I've decided to write down all my feelings, emotions and associations…and here is my list:

1. Leaves of green, yellow, red colors
2. Flocks of birds fling to the southern parts
3. Wind
4. Rain
5. Umbrellas
6. Acorns and strobiles
7. Rustling leaves
8. Empty benches
9. Running people

16x16

After spending three days making icons of 16x16 sizes, I began to rasterize what I see. I can’t resist myself not thinking about Eyedropper, Eraser and Color picker in real life. Maybe it’ll be great to have a Magic Eraser Tool to delete some black lines from the past day or to change my tired skin tone to shiny one with rosy cheeks :)

Message

Hello,

Actually I‘ve opened this blog to improve my English skills, so I’ll not be offended if you correct my mistakes:)

Sincerely yours,

Marina