I really enjoyed working on this particular image. Look at me was a chance to try out some new techniques. I did extensive retouch work to this image including, completely recreating the eyes and lips, whitening the teeth, and smoothing the skin.

I used different adjustment layers to really get the image to pop. The butterfly wings I did myself using a reference. The model in this image was great and had very unique and expressive features that allowed this image to work the way I imagined it.

The recession is still a probably for many, not just in the United States but abroad as well. The economy has hurt people from many different fields, and the Graphic and Web Design fields are no exception. The job crisis is very scary, but embracing fear isn’t the answer, finding solutions is, and as a Graphic Designer living in the recension I have some interesting advice that will help you through it.

It’s been a while since I had a featured artist on the blog but I’m really excited about this one. Zach Bush is one of my favorite digital artist on deviantart and his work happened to be featured on the cover of the same issue of Advanced Photoshop Magazine that I happened to appear in this month.

I woke up this Monday to find an email in my inbox telling me “you have won”. Now immediately I was set to delete this thinking it was spam until I realized that it had come from ILoveDesign.com needless to say that I was pleasantly surprised!

Celestial Being was one of my personal favorite images, it was featured in Advanced Photoshop Magazine issue 67.

Touched is one my favorite new pieces that will be featured in my upcoming book, this image was also featured in Advanced Photoshop Magazine issue 67 (march/april 2010).

In this video I cover a lot of questions that new/young Designers and Digital Artist have asked me, but also address things that are relevant to any designer or artist looking to get more work or recognition.

Today I feature the work of a very talented freelanced designer based out of Indonesia, Whytmonkz of Deviant Art. When I first saw his work I was completely blown away by it. What he is capable of doing with photo manipulation in top notch!

I’ve seen some amazing photo-manipulations and dark artwork in the online community lately and felt inspired to create a new piece for Photoshop Creative’s Web Challenge this month.

Many designers, have and will continue to underestimate the amazing power and range of typography.
There are several reasons for this, but the reality is that typography is essential to a design skill set.
When stacked against photo-manipulation, digital painting, vexel artwork, and animation, the prospect of working with type, doesn’t sound all that exciting to most people.
Truthful, its because they don’t know any better.

Magic Melody
This image was something that came to me while watching the Brothers Grimm movie. I decided on the concept for a girl walking through the dark forest spreading enchantment with an instrument, then remembered the perfect stock image by Marcus J Ranum

Raven Dawn
Model Katanaz-stock at deviantart.
Raven Dawn was chance to use a combination of different effects, that I hadn’t combined in my previous images. The stock for this model comes from the amazing stock gallery of Katanaz. The background texture was done by myself using a Wacom Tablet.

Buttercup
While in Barnes & Noble I decided to pickup the book the Princess Bride on a whim last week only to find that it was going to be playing on telvision soon! This being one of my favorite movies growing up, and one of my favorite novels as a teenager, I decided to do a series of images as a tribute. “Buttercup” is the first image in the series. I found a stock photo that I felt favorite the lead heroine and decided to work some photoshop magic.

Star Girl
Star Girl was interesting to work on, I used several effects here including one the required me to make a custom flare-brush set. This has since become one of my most popular images on both Photoshop Creative and Advanced Photoshop.

Poker Face
More often than not I get the creative inspiration for my artwork from music, movies, or books. In this case I was inspired by watching the music video “Poker Face” by Lady Gaga. I found the colors, objects and symbols that repeated throughout the video (mostly associated with cards and gambling), to be a great source of design inspiration. Feeling the need to work more with closeups I decided that the stock image on the cover of Issue 55 of Advanced Photoshop Magazine, would be perfect for this project.

The photography in this image is completely original. This is from last year’s photo shoot at Mertile Beach, that myself and John Covington shot together. I’m really happy with most of the shots we got that day, but this one in particular had a lot of potential and I decided to revisit it for some photoshop work rather than using a stock image.