(no subject)

[pensnest]

I just want you all to know, I'm feeling very loved. It's nice. *preens happily* Thank you.

My brats being more or less nocturnal these days, yesterday's traditional Easter Egg Hunt took place at about four in the afternoon, but was none the less enjoyed for all that. Why yes, Bun will be 21 this year, and Boy is coming up on 18. There was perfunctory talk of hiding eggs for Beast and me to hunt out, but it came to nothing, mostly because Beast was WoWing (as usual) and I was, for no discernable reason, compiling a tutorial on Gradient Maps. We ate chipolata-and-fried-egg ciabatta rolls, bizarre but tasty, for a not very festive lunch, and forgot about supper until it was far too late to make an effort, so the duck will have to be eaten today. I shall try to remember to cook it!





The rest are from this week's _nsyncchallenge, which required one of each, and optionally also a group shot.









Nearly a full house...

Comments

[runzu.livejournal.com]

You deserve every bit of praise you get. *wink*

And wow, those icons are beautiful. :D I just reinstalled Corel PSP and recently, Adobe Photoshop, do you have any tutorials, dear lady? :) I'm thinking of brushing up my skills iconing. :)

[pensnest]

Thanks! As it happens, I do have some tutorials... there are quite a few that I've found useful linked in my memories, also, I wrote this one as a kind of "Let's get started":
http://community.livejournal.com/icon_tutorial/3280178.html
(I really should update that, I've moved on from a lot of the things I used to do - but it's a place to start.)
this as a "how to deal with text":
http://community.livejournal.com/icon_tutorial/3777901.html
(some of the examples are missing now)
and this is the Gradient Map one:
http://community.livejournal.com/icon_tutorial/6160740.html

As you'll see, they are all posted to icon_tutorial, which is where I picked up a great deal of useful info on how to use Photoshop. The majority of the tutorials are not particularly good, but you can get ideas from anywhere. It's pretty heavy traffic, so you may want to pop in for a look around rather than having it show up on your friends list, though.

And I recommend you join some of the icon challenge communities - it's a great way to get started, as you have a specific goal every week, and you can tell when you start to improve, because you start to win stuff! I basically joined the Lance challenge first, and then started to learn how to make icons...

lance_challenge, chasezchallenge and _nsyncchallenge are my regulars, but I'm sure there are several other pop ones, and plenty of more wide-ranging ones as well.

[runzu.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the links, especially the Text one. I always have trouble picking out which ones fit, are easy to read, and go with the icon's color palette. :D

[clear-my-eyes.livejournal.com]

Congratulations!

[pensnest]

Thanks :-)

[rikes]

Those are a lot of fun, the Lance and Chris ones especially! :)

[pensnest]

Thank you. Chris has such a great face for iconing!

[originalrahrah.livejournal.com]

it's great when the kids are old enough to be independent but still dear enough to go along with tradition. we did our holiday thing at granny's this weekend. we sit around the table eating and laughing. mostly i just stare at them. at 31 and 21, they are nice people.

[pensnest]

Most gratifying to be able to think, I like these people, when they're people you brought up. :-) I'm quite pleased with the way mine are turning out.

[milosflaca.livejournal.com]

your icons rock! congrats!

[pensnest]

Yay me! Thanks :-)

[turloughishere.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! I really like the Chris and the Lance icons!

I thought the _nsyncchallenge this week were so much fun. Even though I kind of "cheated" and used the same effects for all the icons I entered it was still fun cropping them and tweaking to get them all to look their best :-)

[pensnest]

It's fun to have a go at all of them, I think, and it's quite a good challenge when there aren't many pictures to choose from!