After I found the photo to use, I took a look at the shape of her face.  I decided to mirror one side of her face instead of using the original photo.  The left image below is the left side of the photo mirrored; the right side is the right side mirrored.

There wasn’t a whole lot of difference between the two, but I liked the way her chin looked in the right side mirror image.  It had more of a long, slender shape, better suited for the picture I had in my head.  Next came the shadowing and slight redefining of her facial features, especially the eyes.  I added some lighting and shadow around the eye sockets and blackened the eyeballs/pupils.

Next came the textures and more shadows.  The texture was actually a combination of two images…one of blue and green snakeskin I created in Photoshop.  The other was a dirt pattern to give the face a bit more of a rough and textured look.  I also added some red highlighting on the forehead to give the face a little more interest and depth.  Initially, the alien was female, so I added a shade of red to the lips to give it a more feminine appearance.

After watching a webisode by Bert Monroy, it gave me the idea to add some hair. There are about five layers of hair.  There’s a layer behind the blue lighting to give it a highlighted effect.  And several layers on top for the different hair colors along with more highlights and shadows.  I also added more shading in the face and gave the lips a green tint…a typical male in this alien civilization.  Click the image for a larger view.

In light of my recent interest with infographics, I decided to create one based on a census that Crayola conducted in 2000 to find America’s favorite Crayola color.  Over 25,000 people participated and below are the results broken down by kids, adults, women, and men.  Who knew blue was such a popular color across the board?

See the results for yourself here.

Then I took it a step further and created a simple magazine advertisement…

If it doesn’t look familiar, this was created from the butterfly shape in Photoshop, pictured below.

I used a stock photo of a butterfly to add veins to the wings.  Each wing is three layers deep with the vein texture on the bottom.

The rest of the effects in the image were basically trial-and-error experimenation with different blending modes and layer effects.  I was trying to make the wings look a bit more textured and shadowed to give them a more realistic appearance.

I tried out several different methods to create a glowing effect.  I did the antennae using one method, the abdomen (green rings) using another method, and the wings were done with a third method. The spots on the wings also have a bit of illumination to them.

I also added some highlights around the butterfly’s body, the inner part of the wings, and wingtips to give it some depth.

You can see the original shapes in the upper-left corner along with the revised shapes after I added some color and texture.  Click on the image to get a better view.

I came across a pretty good site that has some good beginner and intermediate stuff.  The site is vectordiary.com.   The stamp tutorial in particular was the inspiration for this design.  After going through the tutorial (10-15 mins), I decided to make my own stamp and put a little twist on it.  Since I like to cook and I love BBQ, I thought I’d use a photo of Jenni out in the backyard grillin’ up some ribs.

Here’s the finished design.  It’s hard to see, but I added some artistic filters to the image on the stamp so it looked a bit more drawn.  I also gave it some depth by tweaking the final image in Photoshop using the Warp tool and adding some shadow.  It could probably use a bit more work, but I think it turned out pretty good.

I don’t think I’d be able to pull off daily results, but I might be able to do the weekly thing.  Whether it’s something small and simple or a bit more complicated, I think it’ll be fun.  And since Valentine’s Day is approaching, I thought I’d use it in my first design.   Happy Valentine’s Day!