Not that they were lost, but I’ve been working on updating my Archive Tutorials so that their links all work. It’s a bigger job than it sounds like, because I have many, many tutorial pages and the ones of which I speak are all in HTML. Soooo bleah. HTML coding, copy-pasting, over and over.
I’m within spitting distance of finishing this project, though, so I can once again be proud of this amazing body of work — my Archive Tutorials! While these are not linked directly to this blog, you can get back here from the main header menu — any of those links — and then the menu at the upper right. I’m still working on navigation.
And, in other adulting news, Jack and I went to get our flu shots and shingles: part II shots today. Woo hoo! I was so happy to get that done that I came home and had two of Jack’s chocolate chip, coconut cookies with peanut butter spread on them, and a big glass of milk. So much for adulting, then, right?
It’s Sunday! Today I reworked my Celtic 3-heart knot and made it into white, yellow and rose gold! Click the image to the right to see this in its full-blown glory.
I counted up the archive tutorial pages that are still in need of updating. LOL I still, after all of the work I’ve done on this thankless task, have 58 more to update. Ugh. Naturally, I’m thinking of ways to speed this up, batch process, or whatever, but I’m coming up blank.
If I do 6 a day, I’ll be done in 10 days, anyway. And those 10 days will be over at the same time, no matter what I do!
I usually like to swallow the toad early in the day, but today, I began by doing the fun stuff. Then I swallowed some toads this afternoon.
What fun? I got into a few more Celtic knot adventures, and came up with an original! This one represents Janee, Jack, and Jodie, all of our hearts interwoven and bound together with a ring of love. Ok, all together now: AWWWW!
This afternoon, I did some work with updating my Archive tutorials. I know I was going to just leave the archived ones un-updated, but I just couldn’t stand having dead links in them.
I got as far as Pen 2, which means that I got into the HTML and edited EIGHT of these today.
The other toad I swallowed was this: I set up the recurring payments for the RV, so it won’t be repossessed before it gets out of the shop. :/ I know that someday I’ll look back on this and think, “Was there some reason that we didn’t just go off on a trip in 2020 — the hottest summer EVER in Phoenix? What stopped us?”
Yay! It’s about time I did something creative that I can actually post. Today I finished a piece of Celtic knot art. It’s in Photoshop, of course, and I did it all in vectors this time around. And I did it all mathematically, so that it’s pretty regular. This is on display in my Geometrics Gallery.
So what else is new? I just noticed that my blog entries are no longer showing a date! I will fix that.
I’m done grousing about how bad video tutorials are, and I’m welcoming the present into my life. To be more precise, while I’m not buying into the idea that print is dead, I’m going to make some video tutorials and get set to teach some video classes.
I need to get a camera, and I’m in negotiations with the man who shares my house as to which one to get. I’m usually one to spend nearly as much as I can, and I like to have the good one. Jack is ok with spending as little as possible and then buying another in 3 months, when it’s obvious that the cheap one isn’t good.
I’ve done some more research, jumping down interesting rabbit holes, and have added more links to my Photoshop Resource Links pages.
Still no word on whatever astronomical estimate we’re going to get for our new RV. I’m still hopeful for a November get-away, but as that month comes closer, I’m less sure that it can happen. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
I have just posted a much-improved redo of my “What’s the Vector, Victor?” Tutorial. This one goes into much more depth with file types and how to save each type of file. There have actually been new developments while I was away, so I got to learn new things. I went down many different rabbit holes! The tutorial is here!
Everything is coming along on my website. I continue to be amazed at how far I’ve come in such a short time. In recent days, I’ve done more work on my Photoshop Resource Links adding more links as I discover them. Today and yesterday, I found six new links to great sites which taught me about file types!
I have learned, at last, how to actually use a reusable block in WordPress! You convert it to a regular block. That’s done by clicking the thing next to the block at the top.
I learned about groups of blocks. And I now have a template of a group of blocks that I can summon up for new tutorials!
WordPress still remains a pretty complicated and fiddly thing. And the page size seems enormous. But it’s what all the cool people are doing now, so here we are!
I’m exploring the notion of teaching at one of the many online schools that have cropped up while I was sleeping. I surely wish that I could be part of a school that, if not accredited, was at least known to be good. I do know that there are many out there who are professing to be good teachers who just are not.
And I just found another rabbit hole — LinkedIn. This is all stuff that wasn’t even a thing when I went away.
Yes! I’ve written a new tutorial! This one is on head-swapping, but it really involves more than just a head. It’s quite a piece of work, if I do say so myself. In this tutorial, I take parts out of four photos, each of which has a problem, and I make one decent portrait of the whole family. This tutorial can be found at this link.
One thing that’s different about this one is that it’s more of a show-off tutorial, because the student’s photos will almost certainly have issues that are different from those in my photo.
Yeah, I have no pictures of this. We were trying to get the rig turned around to get to our RV spot for our *first night* in it. Instead of simply driving to the end of the lane and looping around, we opted to turn around the shorter, easier way — make a U-turn at the park entrance.
I was driving and was well into the maneuver when I thought that the stop sign seemed very close to the right side. “You’re going to miss it by a mile,” Jack assured me.
We did not miss it by anything at all. As the rear of the RV swung to the right, the sign scraped half the way down the side and ripped up the fiberglass cap on the back of the formerly beautiful RV.
It’s on me, I know. But it’s also a bit on Jack. But, yeah, I know. It’s me, and I’ll be paying handily for it, unless we decide to let insurance have its way with us.
Picacho Peak
We did enjoy a few days at Picacho Peak RV resort anyway. We drove down to Tucson one day, up to Casa Grande one day, ate some Eegee’s, had some ice cream, and mourned that we we really had to get the thing fixed before we could actually go on a trip. It’s in for its first estimate right now. ugh.
In brighter news, we did enjoy the RV. Aside from a couple of glitches, like we can’t figure out how to get any TV to work, it drives easily, lives comfortably, seats nicely, and sleeps well.
Jack has come up with some ideas of cabinetry additions — drawers, essentially, that he’s going to add. And he wants to make little drink tables for the couch arms.
Jodie did well. She threw up on the way down, but did not on the way back home. We had her tethered to the couch seatbelt and she slept comfortably most of the trip.
We tried a couple of different crating options. We made the dinette into a bed and put her crate in the center part. The worked nicely except.. no dinette for us!
So then we tried just using the crate sides as baby gates to close off the bathroom/shower area. That worked very well. At night, we just left the bath door open so that she (and we) remained closed into the back part of the RV. We all slept well that way.
I got creative this morning, and made you an all new Photoshop tutorial! This one is Breaking out of a Frame, and features this beautiful dog, Rhett, who belongs to a friend from one of my FB groups.
Click my picture at the right to see Rhett in all his beautiful glory, as he jumps right out of the picture in this gallery.
In other news, our beautiful saguaro cactus which adorned our yard for probably 37 years before we even got here, fell down in a stiff wind on Saturday night. I cried. Our landscaper Jose took it the rest of the way out yesterday. $400.
Other than that, and the fact that it’s hellishly hot, things are fine here. Well, there is the mysterious water in the garage, but it has stopped for the time being, so we’re hopeful that it… healed itself?
I’m using WordPress’ new Headline Analyzer. It scores a blog post’s headline based on how exciting it sounds, word count, and other nebulous factors. Today’s headline scores an impressive 74!
I did a lot of work yesterday on my Photoshop Resource Links. I’m updating and surfing about, looking for more relevant and fun links. I added a whole new page yesterday — Art Links. I’ve also put in an all-new Photo Sharing Communities page.
I also have posted my all-new Art Shots page in my Gallery. While I don’t think of myself as a photographer, I do like taking fun shots just for the art of it. Have a look!
I also found out how to better work my Wacom tablet. It was in a a weird situation where I could draw fine and I could click things, but I couldn’t drag. It just didn’t work.
So what I did was to go to the Wacom Tablet Properties under Mapping, and uncheck “Use Windows Ink.” Now it works perfectly! Thank you Dave Cross for that little tidbit!
I was busy yesterday! I did some new art and I posted a new Geometrics Gallery! This piece is reminiscent of one I did for the cover of Photoshop Elements Most Wanted in 2002.
I’m eager to be useful. I want people to discover my work and to see that I offer good instruction that will make them into real Photoshop artists.
Mostly I want people to be able to learn Photoshop, instead of just watching other people do it. Sure, many people enjoy those cooking shows, where you watch other people cook. But, if you really want to make something, you’re searching online for a written recipe, or you’re going to your cookbook collection.
Which brings me to another complaint I have about the ubiquitous youtube tutorials: Many are just a recipe for some effect. The goal is the effect and not in teaching anything outside of that particular effect. Whine. LOL.
Today I did some more site tidying. I have been working on my Photoshop Resource Links, getting rid of dead stuff and adding new good links. I’m also working toward getting all of this stuff onto the WordPress arm of my site.
Today I did some touchups of my site, fixing some dead links and nosing around some old dead parts of my site. It seems that my site has so many rabbit holes into which I am prone to fall!
Today I read all of my class descriptions and procedures. I will do things a little bit differently next time, but it’s mostly good. I reread the comments that I’d posted from my students about the classes and it made me eager to get in and teach again.
I did some art! This was for my YouTube banner. They say how large to make the art and in what aspect ratio, so it sounds easy. I made my file, created my art, and uploaded it.
Too big. Nothing showed except the very center. So I found another dimension in another place. Too small. So I moved things around so that I thought it might work, and it seems to work. Above is the way I wanted the image to be.
Below is how it is, except that they chop off most of it, so all you get is just barely above the text and not down to the purple line. Oh well.
I just finished and uploaded another video tutorial: Creating a Pearly Button in Photoshop. I’m still working on fine-tuning, and there’s still much to be learned about the inner workings of Camtasia, but I’ll get there.
I also figured out how to upload to YouTube. Most people are searching YouTube for tutorials, so it’s where all the cool people are these days.
I did a bit of art!
It remains idiotically hot here. If I ever say anything like “I’d like to stay in Sun Lakes this summer,” I want you to just shoot me.
Today we went up to Anthem RV to take some measurements and see what we could DO to the new RV. You didn’t think that we’d take it just “as is,” did you? We are just going to do some little things for now, like adding soap dispensers and changing out the faucets. Janee always has to change out the faucets.
We also drove it! I started by nearly landing us in the drainage ditch on the way out of the parking lot! Sheesh. I don’t believe that this one will be as terrifying as the last pusher I had was — the ’06 Holiday Rambler Ambassador. This one actually has a turning radius. We turned it around in 4 lanes.
Sigh. I feel like I want to do some work, but I’m just tired today. Wanna see my videos I made yesterday?
Placing Anchor points around to create a path
Editing the path to better fit the logo
Ok so now I’m on fire! I just uploaded a whole tutorial: Basic Shapes 1. It’s now online for your viewing pleasure. Click the beautiful graphic to the right to see my new video!
Can Janee-video-tutorials be far behind? The very cool thing is that TechSmith actually remembered me from 14 years ago! If you search YouTube for myjanee, you can still see the 4 short tutorial clips I made back in ’06. I just have to get over this sort of shyness that I seem to have now.
I have Camtasia installed, my headset installed, my Photoshop open, and I’m ready to do a test video. And I’m nervous….
And, it turns out, with good reason! You know how sometimes you have a day when nothing works on the first try? Well, I’m having one of those. And Camtasia is not working for me yet. I am thinking that it’s my version that’s very old and I have to buy the upgrade. Trying to get answers on the forums…. ugh.
This comes after I spent an hour on the phone trying to get hold of the AZ DMV about a registration refund. Finally a most helpful woman got me taken care of, so that worked. Well, maybe I’ll try that upgrade and see if I can make it work.
Grrrr…. and, in yet another chapter of “Golly, nothing is working today,” I updated Camtasia, made what seems like an ok video, and… can’t get it to upload to YouTube.
Ok, I finally made it work! Woo hoo! Time to quit! But here’s the link with the two videos embedded! Copying a Logo in Photoshop
I’ve been busy, busy! Today I finally finished my all-new Pen Tools in Photoshop Tutorial! In this one, I go through some detail with how to use the Pen tools and why anyone would want to do that in the first place.
I take you through such riveting projects as creating my feather to the right and making this flourish as you see below.
I just love doing vector graphics, and should probably take another dive into Illustrator, but not today.
And Jack and I bought an RV yesterday. We had sold our 2019 View the day before. It was just too small for us. We did like the beds in back, but, once we got out of bed, it was a fail. We decided that we just need more space for all 3 of us.
We found a 2019 slightly used Pace Arrow 33D in Anthem, went to see it, and loved it. They’re doing some little projects for us: adding solar panels, installing window awnings, putting in a washer/dryer. We will be picking it up in 2 weeks. Here are some teaser pics of it:
Jodie became instantly well when we went and got her a new bag of food. We’re still feeding Pro Plan Savor, which she LOVES, but that was just a bad bag. I emailed Purina, but got no answer. We had been feeding her puppy food, and it was suggested in my Standard Poodle FB group that she should be on adult, so we switched.
We also had her groomed yesterday and, so far, knock wood, she’s doing fine. Recall that she had gotten sick the day after her grooming every time we have taken her to her first groomer. We took her to a different groomer this time. If you have a reason to want to know what groomer we are now patronizing, email me.
Yeah! I’ve completed and published an all-new Photoshop tutorial to create Opal Text. I’m kinda loving it! I include some exciting tips for techniques that I’ll bet you have not seen.
So what’s next? Thinking. I’m still working on my Gallery pages, of course. And I can always create new art for that.
Jodie’s still not quite herself. Pepto seems to have cured her tummy issue, but she still isn’t interested in her food. I hope she didn’t read that posting in the Poodle group about how the people feed their poodle turkey with broth and Green Giant vegetables. A picky dog is not what I signed up for, and I’m not going to cave to that. She won’t starve.
Today I worked very hard! I had a listing of galleries from long ago, and, while some of these artists are still doing their thing, many have moved on to other pursuits, or moved their website someplace else! So I went to all of those old links and looked around.
Many were still stuck in 2005 and had not been updated since. Yawn. So I found some more good galleries and I put together a lovely new Gallery of Galleries page. This one is far better than my generic listing and commentary. This is a listing with images! Have a look at my new Gallery of Galleries.
If you have a gallery that you feel is worthy of my consideration for inclusion here, please shoot me an email at the address at the bottom of this page (on the Sticky Note!)
I did no art today at all; just spent the day doing that Gallery of Galleries page. I do hope you’ll have a look!
In other news, Jodie is seeming to do a little better. I gave her Pepto Bismol after her breakfast remained uneaten. If there’s anything more pathetic than a sick dog, maybe it’s a sick man.
Today I worked hard to bring some of my art pieces into my galleries. Some of these I made for books or magazines, and I had them stored on CD’s. I’ll post a few here. Please click to see these at full-size.
The first is one I did in honor of my Dad. I was sad to think that this was gone forever.
This is a logo I did for a USDA-funded project. I did this in Illustrator.
This one was on the cover of a book about Celtic golfing fairies or some such thing. I do love the artwork.
I still have lots of work that I’ve done that I can’t find. I would love to find the cover of the book that I designed for a professor in Florida. It was a best-seller on Florida’s state soil. I did typography for that book, as well. Logos and banners… tons of them.
Do go have a look at all of my Galleries, as I’ve done a ton of updating.
Jodie’s not quite herself today. I don’t know if she got into something, but she’s not eating and is sleeping far more than normal. And we have not even had her groomed yet.
I’ve always pretty much marched to the beat of my own drum. I’ve gone my own way. Sometimes I think that I’m far ahead of the curve, and, often, that has turned out to be the case.
Back in the early aughts, I compiled an amazing listing of Photoshop Resources. And, as part of this, I maintained a listing of Photoshop Resource Links. I’ve kept these online, though, in the ensuing years, many of the outside sources to which I’d linked had fallen by the wayside. Very few, actually have survived all of the years. I’m sure that the website proprietors have pursued other interests.
And now that we are into the 20’s, I find that I need to add to my sources! I am going to begin that in earnest soon.
In looking through my site, I have sometimes run down a rabbit hole that has taken me somewhere fascinating. Much of the work I did in the aughts I’d forgotten all about. One of these is my Photoshop Tips from the Newsgroups.
This is an enormous indexed list of questions about many Photoshop topics, as answered by the experts who haunted the newsgroups of which I was a part. These newsgroups were my teachers. And, as I learned, I became a teacher there too.
It was in a newsgroup where I was “discovered” by the people at Friends of Ed, who published the books I helped to author, leading to the magazine columns. The newsgroups were where I found the people who worked alongside me in my Art Challenge.
But Newsgroups are not even a thing now. I have yet to discover where my Photoshop people are hanging out these days. If it’s Facebook, it’s in a group that I have yet to discover. I will find them. I will assemble them. And we will set forth on new Photoshop missions!
I posted a new tutorial yesterday! This is a bigger piece of work than many of my tutorials. This one took the better part of two days to put together. And I learned new things about Photoshop along the way. The new tutorial is called “Text in Photoshop.”
In this tutorial, I cover all the basics of text in Photoshop: sizing, color, font, subscript, special characters. I also go into text on a path and images in text — Postcard Text. Good stuff!
At this point I have 29 all-new-for-2020 tutorials. As far as I know, nobody has found them yet. The index of all of these tutorials can be found at THIS LINK.
Thinking about other things to teach. It seems, from looking at the work put out on the PS groups on Facebook, that many people don’t get the whole look-at-it notion when it comes to creating art. If you want the hat on her head to look real, it must cast shadows. A card propped up on a desk will not have a shadow that looks like a drop shadow. Maybe I’ll look at a way to teach this.
