This montage was filed in a folder of cruise videos which was in a folder of Evedom® line art. In my consulting practice, I warn clients to keep their files straight.

Customer hasn’t settled on the persona. It’s gone from lounge lizard to elegant 1940′s gentleman to Fonzy.

He may want a caricature of himself  represent his brand, but he’s coy about agreeing to it.

Not bad photos! Taken with my phone cam on a very cold day at Irondequoit Bay boat launch. I was surprised to see so many swans.

There was a wonderful shot of four of them flying in, but they had landed by the time I got the phone out of my purse.

For Christmas card design warm-up, I made an angel and two infographics, both about privacy and coal.

Poster size renderings are on my mkcolling.com website. Ideally, a infographic displays true and researched information (for people who can’t understand bar graphs?) – as if that extra effort matters in a time when superstition and rumor become true when repeated often enough.

I wondered what the limits were on eight gigs of RAM. These monsters (originals at 12×42, 300 dpi) came close to finding out. It’s still not certain how much of the noticeable slowdown (time out while PS renders type?) was was intensity of the work flow and how much was the result of a deep virus that was “treated” but still residing on the hard drive.

At this point, the nuisance of getting everything up and running on a new computer – new system, too – is unattractive.

There are two infographics because one is initial plot development and one is initial character development. I started working with every intention of figuring out what to talk about in a 100 page book, after attending a seminar on how to get a best seller written in a weekend. If only I had the words . . . there are new (to me) software and systems involved.

But, what happened over the weekend instead is what happened twenty-some years ago when I had nothing to say, but a rigid assignment to say something in a thesis paper. Doodling (to focus my mind) became doodling for its own sake at the expense of the purpose. That time, I started an art gallery. Some of what I sold was doodles glorified beyond recognition. Then, as now, the main event for me was not the product. It was the process of using a computer and software.

The “plot” is the intersection of privacy, penalty and world politics. Strange connections that intrigued me after I read a few news articles about the Chinese government’s hoarding their surplus coal, depriving their markets of heat, their coal miners of jobs and holding a gun to the head of mass financial market.

Meanwhile, there is Santa Claus, always watching, helped in the past by the angels, and in the recent era by technology and overreaching government, who must know more than ever before about every single individual and how naughty or nice the year has been for each.

How does he transport all that coal for stockings of deserving recipients? Then, again, how does he get enough coal when all available coal is so badly needed for survival. Should he just steal it from the Chinese stockpile, tit for tat, because the Chinese officials are being naughty, but they have coal. Take it away from them? Suppose he did that? How could he use it for its intended purpose, knowing that the lump of coal in the stocking this morning is in the garbage tonight. How could he rationalize such waste? If he turned it around and gave lumps of coal as reward, wouldn’t that confuse the little kids who got coal and were told it’s now a good thing to get in your stocking?

With such heavy thoughts still thudding around in my brain, I found a very nice hi-res photo of lumps of coal. That cemented my downfall from my goal to do writing and lapse into Photoshop and Illustrator one more time. I’m in the zone then, oblivious to everything but the monitor. Resolving Santa’s dilema wasn’t even a blip on my conscience by then.

I’ve had problems trying to upload comments on art I like because of the rigorous  comment procedures. You never want to make it difficult for admirers or potential clients to  interact with you. As long as nothing gets published on your blog unless you publish it, the rest serves no purpose.

Her objective is jazz up already perfect photos. Mine is always to make lousy or damaged photos look good.
I perked up when she started using liquify to make quick, precise adjustments.

She uses it to reshape teeth, slim noses, enlarge eyes, enhance hair, lower shoulders, and hollow cheeks.

I did eye and nose adjustments, and have to admit there is more control in CS6. Instead of getting a marbling sample, I came out with an image that can still be identified as a human face. Yay.

Maybe Mac is the secret to perfection with liquify.

Regarding the liquify filter in CS6, if you use it on Windows7 with an ATI Radeon graphics processor, and it opens to a teal screen with no photo showing, your 8G memory is insuffucient. Lower or disable the processor preferences, and you’ll get a nice slow redraw.

Whenever I catch a mapping demo, I work along with it and hope the technique stays with me. There isn’t enough reason in my business to remember how to do it.

I’m still reusing my early Evedom® line art and it’s still as good as new in CS6, nearly twenty years later. After all this time, the efficiency of drawing it once with digital tools and having it available to reconfigure and reuse forever still amazes and delights me.

This version was printed on heavy handmade watercolor paper, 8×10,” and painted with acrylics. It was the reference sample for the Evedom® downloads collection that I published for the paper craft market about five years ago. This is probably its first appearance online.

This is Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash making an attempt at a duet of the same song. It reminded me of my daughter’s cuteness that day. Even at two, she knew the tune and how to carry it.