Overhaul! New Blog Theme

I spent ALL DAY yesterday coding my blog.
The thing's a nightmare to sit down and rearrange.

The Blogger code uses XHTML, JS, and other crap all inside CSS.
It's insane. No, it's a NIGHTMARE.

I spent forever trying to get my menu bar to work I'd previously given up on... Turns out, it was all Photobucket's fault.
With my luck, I'm not surprised.

I got it almost finished, and it's a lot nicer than before. What I decided was relatively simple: Use Moonlight Bestowal as a background. I made all of the other colors match, and I enjoy it. I wanted something watery and rainy for April, so I got it.

It's all blue! Blue is my favorite color... I could look at it all day...

The results are pleasing.
I wish the title area looked better, and I'll fix it, but not now. It's ok for this minute. When I find what I want I'll figure out how to put it there. I still am not sure...

I'm gradually changing the code, and it's becoming less and less restrictive. I remember back when I added my third column... that was a lot of fun. NOT.

Coding other people's code is annoying, no matter how carefully it's documented...
The Blogger theme I started with? Minima Black.
If you look at Marianne's Blog, Green Blue Purple, You'd see mine in it's early days, minus her ocean pic. I love her ocean pics, though...

Moonlight Bestowal

That's the name of my most recent piece.
It's a beauty, but it needs something... I don't know what...
Anyway, here it is.
I think it's one of the better ones I've done in some time. The name was spontaneous after I added the last touch - the moon. It is a wave of the sea tossing in the pouring rain on a stormy night. The foam glows in a surreal manner in the narrow stream of moonlight. It's very... poetic?

It's a theme that has always followed much of my music and poetry composition. It's rather strange to me to find that this is the best rain result so far. There's almost a little bit of irony to it - I was looking for something unique, and the uniqueness came out of a cliché of mine. Huh.

The rain was done by brushes of my own design. My ideas were heavily taken from this tutorial.
Aside that rain work, it was all purely mine. My personal brushes made the bubbles and the streamlines are standard-brush pen tool work. The bubble silhouettes on the right are my own gradient+circular selection idea. I used cloud/difference cloud filters, and I set lots of layers' blending to "soft light".

Water Drop Attempt

I haven't had time to figure out what I wanted...
It seems like the only good ways to do water are with a camera.

This is a piece of practice... I almost didn't show it. I am trying to learn to do cool water... this is comparatively lame.

It's not too bad, though. I'm learning, at least. The basics are layer styles. They are the easiest way to imitate water.

There are a large number of tutorials I've collected that I haven't had time to to that are worth a look.
Two significant ones are:
Water from a tap
Dark Rain - my favorite

These are out of 40 Tutorials I found a list of.

I hope to do SOMETHING april-themed... just dunno what.
NO EASTER EGGS. Sorry. I'm putting my foot down.

What do you think I should do? I'm saving flowers for spring.

Struggling with Raindrops

Today I worked to come up with some kind of neat water/rain effect art in Photoshop.

That's what I wanted to discuss today...
Unfortunately, I failed miserably.

I did a few, but it's not what I want.

So I've decided there'll be a take-two on this. I'll show you some once i've had success.

Making a cheap water drop style in photoshop is easy, though.
If you draw something on a layer, and turn the fill to 0% instead of the opacity, only the layer style will show through. Do that, and use inner shadow, outer shadow, and bevel&emboss correctly, and water is actually very straightforward.

I will be more particular on the particulars, so to speak, once I get something productive finished.

Until then, I'll have to drown in clover... I really want to do a "rain" art piece, for April, though.