JFlah's Blunders

Finished up a fun photo collage poster in photoshop this week. Last week I started the design but even though I liked the copy for it, the overall design I'd started with wasn't working. I ran what I had by our Communication Director. He suggested a kinda rustic background that had some tech gadgets so I went looking. I found many wonderful options on unsplash, but settled on this one by Rawpixel : Then I had to figure out how to make it work in the 4'x3' format I needed for our frame and how to make it more "us" - here's a screenshot of the changes I made. Can't wait to see this one printed. Removed "dream," extended the wood at the top and added some vignetting, added title to the book from another image, and a screen shot to the computer and the phone... And the final image with text

God's kindness to us is unfathomable. Praise/Honor/Glory to Him for who He is, for what He's done and going to do. This life He's given me, these talents, these people who surround me - I am so grateful for all of it. He's been so good to me. May I honor Him in all I think, say, and do.

Last week I spent an afternoon working on some upcoming designs. The image Pastor sent to me is from here . Someone used it for a nice looking book cover for a family worship topic. After doing the small format designs, I realized that there was no way that tiny image was going to work for the 20x30 poster we need in the ministry center, so I started pulling pieces to put together something that would work in the larger print format. Here's the original that Pastor sent to me - nice huh? It looked blown out but after some quick level adjustments I had a base to work with. This is the final edited version for the HD Slides and another for the 20x30 poster:   Probably could use some more shadow for the hymnal that goes onto the Bible, but I think it's effective enough to pass muster. Wood grain texture that I tiled and color corrected for the replaced table top is here and then the great scratches for the overlay for a more realistic table is here . Here '...

Alistair Begg of Truth for Life has a sermon series that inspired this one. I highly recommend listening to those - many of his messages have meat in them you may not always get enough of on Sundays. Another plus is that all of his sermon audio files are free for download.

I'm so terrible at this! Not sure I'm getting any better - actually, I think the attempts are getting worse, but I sure am enjoying myself so I'll probably continue creating these wonderful/terrible little scraps. Didn't plan them out, and used an ink pen, so... yeah, no do-overs here. Might start using pencil to plan the page out a bit better. It's hard to determine where the curly bits go - that and I obviously need to take a look at some reference material. I mean, do I even know what a capital "S" looks like? Attempt number one... was looking at something from here earlier in the day that obviously inspired this. Attempt number 2 Last attempt... looked ok till "stands"... lots of room for improvement here, huh?

You know that story about Jacob moving the stone from the mouth of the well when he caught a glimpse of Rachel? I keep thinking he was like a super hero.

A former co-worker called earlier this month wanting to know if I'd do a logo for them. They home school their kids and having a "school name" helps them in the state they've moved to. I'm such a slow designer. I didn't sketch anything for this one - mostly because I thought I could work faster if I just edited some open source stock art I had. But the process was still slower than I'd have liked. I spent a good long while on research and looking for inspiration, more time gathering useful bits and pieces, and then at several hours fiddling with things to see what direction I should go in before I had anything worth looking at. So yeah, this project has a lot of time invested in it - which for a simple design like what they wanted, is pretty normal. I'm glad I didn't need to sketch and then digitize because I'm even slower when it comes to that now that I don't have access to a graphics tablet (boo-hoo - I really miss that tool - ma...

I'm going to deviate from the usual artwork stuff and share an apologetics video that came across my desk. This guy clearly expressed an even handed, calm view of atheism and various other things. It's worth watching for any thinking person. Everybody knows there are moral absolutes...