Cheating at Practice / GreenSmoke

Practicing in Photoshop is hard, when you take it seriously.

I need to start being a little more hones with my photoshop posts... Sometimes I do a review piece, instead of going out and doing a project.
Sometimes I just don't have the time... and today is one of those times.

I did this piece before my blog even existed. It's the prototype for the one called Crimson Chaos, which is the basis of my blog background. That makes this GreenSmoke ancient. I don't remember all that went in to it... Let's just say that you can do an almost unlimited number of things with filter> render> clouds. It's not incredible, but it was the most effort I had put into a piece yet at the time... like I said, it's pre-TLC.

In other news, I didn't know TLC was my blog's name abbreviated. How cliché.

New Year's Surprise

I was pleasantly surprised to be introduced to this awesome "translator bot" tonight by Marianne. I dunno how she found it, but I'm grateful... It's kinda freaky how smart it is.
It's not perfect, but I thought it might be a person for a sec...

It's a google bot you can put on your google chat list. It will parrot anything you say to it back to you in the language you've chosen! It's awesome. She was kinda confusing me for a sec when she spoke in Japanese - correctly... I was like... well... fast learner? cheater helping?

I didn't know what to think. Usually the grammar of translators is very poor. This one's not perfect by any standard, but it's better than I am. Faster, if nothing else.

The link she gave me is here:
http://www.google.com/support/talkgadget/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=89921
It's not only in Japanese... you could use a Russian/Spanish/French/German/whatever-you-want one!

Looking for Lyrics

I'm taking the songwriting more seriously now. I'm going to go write a song. It will be a while until it's finished.

I will post it when I'm satisfied with it, though. I'm excited... I haven't written a song in ages.

In other news, I've got four songs finished perfect lately, and am left with an almost-clean slate.
I've been working on Lee's what it does to us and Secondhand Serenade's Fall For You. Along with Jack Johnson's Banana Pancakes and Sitting, Waiting, Wishing that's quite a lot in just a month or two.

I do need to get better with lyrics... I find myself making up songs as I go about my day every now and then... I just can't make up stuff that would go with guitar, stupid as it sounds. Perhaps I need to write more down, or keep scratch paper with me.

Photoshop Links

My laptop is FIXED!!! kinda... anyway, it's functional again.
so I'll be able to start posting all the posts up to today. (whatever that day is for you when you read this, lol...)

Anyways, I have links from the more pick-what-you-want-to learn field to the very beginner stuff.
Even if you have some experience in Photoshop, the beginner stuff works as a good set of reminders, and can speed up your work, if not give you inspiration.

This one's group of things called How to Master Photoshop in a week... I'm still reading it.
http://elitebydesign.com/how-to-master-photoshop-in-just-one-week/

Here's a good misc group at PaintBits - I've done a few.
http://www.paintbits.com/2008/06/27/photoshop-tutorials-you-should-see/

This one tries to explain pen-tool paths. I'm going to look at it - it's probably valuable.
http://www.elated.com/articles/photoshop-paths-explained/

Here at Tutorial9 they have a lot of useful stuff well-sorted. They attempt to cover everything, and at least cover all the bases
http://www.tutorial9.net/category/photoshop/

This is a list of drawing tutorials I found just today. I intend to spend a while here.
Drawing is where I have trouble - I'm not naturally artistic... these should help, though!
http://psdfan.com/inspiration/25-amazing-photoshop-drawing-tutorials/