The fall colors are extraordinary around here this year. I can’t get enough of them. I wanted to do a piece using some of BSilvia’s brushes and fortunately I already had her collection of trees to work with. In the creating texture is her Hearts-Circles-Swirls collection. I got the brushes by joining the Green Bulb Gang on her website, Graphics Illustrationsand/or her Facebook page.

Adventures in learning Adobe Illustrator continue. I’m sure this will look really rudimentary to me as I learn more but for right now it’s beautiful! Had to learn some things and cross some hurdles just to get this much accomplished. Illustrator can be very different from Photoshop at times.

My first adventure with Adobe Illustrator. I have to admit, the drawing is much better quality. Added the color in Photoshop because I know what I’m doing there.

I’ve been reminded lately of how much I like scratchboard art. I tried it digitally using Photoshop.

Created in Photoshop.

Made in Photoshop.

Originally I wrote a long piece about what inspired this, but the person I was giving credit to took offense that I listed the cost of her upcoming workshop as too high.  So now I am forced to rant.

The workshop actually costs something like $2499 (sorry, I’m not going back to look at it).  I ballparked the figure of her workshop to $4000 the first time I mentioned it, $3000 the second  because you know what?  It costs money to travel and eat and stay in a hotel, especially at a “bargain” rate of $99 a night.

I am sick to death of all these workshops that are ONLY a few thousand dollars and they go on and on about what a deal that is, when the traveling costs another thousand for somebody like me in the Midwest.  Honestly, most people in my small town wouldn’t see any value in any of these types of workshops, much less pay thousands for them.

She mentioned how it’s a “deal” for people in the US because the workshop is in Victoria, Canada.   You know what?  The exchange rate ain’t that great anymore.  Not enough of a “deal” to make any difference to me.

She says she makes $3000 a day in her line of work (graphic facilitating).  I make $300 a month.  Why does my comment on my little blog make any difference to her?  If somebody made $3000 a day in my neck of the woods, they’d be very wealthy.  And if she doesn’t REALLY make all that much overall (say those $3000 jobs only come every couple of months), then she needs to be up front about it.

Also, she wanted me to mention that there is a payment plan of something like $149 a month (what is that?  $125 US?).  When you only make $300 a month and you can’t spent the thousand for travel, it’s STILL too much.  Helloooo…this is the real world.

She is also a personal coach who uses Abraham Hicks Law of Attraction principles (do you have to have a license to use their exact phrases in your templates?  It isn’t intellectual property infringement if you don’t?).   The idea is that you attract to you what you’re putting out.  So, Ms. M——-, what are you putting out there that some little nobody like me “misrepresented” the price of your workshop?  Where in your life are you misrepresenting finances?

And how did I bring this to myself (via the Law of Attraction)?  I’m an angry, bitter, extremely frustrated person a lot of the time.  I can’t just THINK it all away with positive thoughts.  God knows I’ve tried.  I was really uplifted by the webinar I took with this person.  That lasted a whole 12 hours.  I just keep getting slapped down.  So I’m slapping back.  At least I can stand up for myself.

I was very impressed by her work.  I’m not anymore.  And since this is my blog, I am free to express that.  I’m also sick of this whole trend of not letting people have freedom of speech on their blogs, Twitter, whatever.  I asked a legitimate question on Twitter about how much money people make on Zazzle and Zazzle was on me almost before I could hit the enter button.  I can’t believe how threatened these supposedly successful companies/people are when somebody dares to bring up reality.

This one looks like a wedding invitation to me. Or is it just that I was tuning into someone who stopped by with a wedding announcement just as I was finishing up with it? I swear I was thinking wedding for at least 20 minutes before the knock on the door.

I seem to be stuck on this color palette. I did the background in Corel Painter Essentials 2, then did the rest in Photoshop CS2. I used some splatter and frames Photoshop brushes by BSilvia at graphics-illustrations. The fuzzy white brush and the sort of sequins/beads brush on the heart are my very own creations.

This can be purchased as a greeting card through my Zazzle shop (minus the “heArt-a-day”).

Drawn from a photo I took of a rose at Weed Park in Muscatine, Iowa. After cutting out the rose image from the rest of the photo in Photoshop, I put the “cut paper” filter on it. Then I outlined it with a “pen” and added the background doodles.

And now for something completely different. I was messing around with some oil pastels recently. There has been a lot of buzz about them lately and when I first started drawing I didn’t get it. In fact, I thought the drawing was too awful to continue with.

But then I used a white pastel on top of some of the color I’d already laid down and things started to merge and blend. That’s pretty cool. Cool enough that I went out and bought 3 more white oil pastels for future blending.

I started out drawing a little cobalt blue cup I’d gotten at Things, Things and Things in Iowa City in the late 1970’s. It had a gold half moon for a handle. That “gold” is now silver. I took some artistic license and added the heart.

Meanwhile, Miss Mews decided to help me take the photo of the drawing.

Made with lots of Photoshop brushes from Graphics Illustrations.