Before I start, I would like to pay homage to Aisyah for giving her blog such a fantastic makeover! 
Aisyah’s new theme!
Aisyah, whose blog is one of my greatest source of inspiraiton for design and layout, has released her new theme, My Scrapbook, on Sunday! Her themes are always a refreshing and very, very artistic, looking as if they’re drawn in real life and later scanned into Photoshop 
Her previous theme (here’s a screenshot!) is already a big hit with me, and this time, her new theme packs a bigger punch! It comes with a cleaner sidebar and more cheerful colours at the header.
Aisyah also never forget to include those nifty CSS hover effects in her layout, such as the navigation links in the header and the sidebar, as well as in the footer section.
I couldn’t help but keep thinking of her next theme! Brilliant job, Aisyah! Keep it up, heheh.
Digital Art
Recently I’ve picked up a few cool digital art tutorials on various Photoshop magazines and I realised that there is so much more than just simple digital darkroom tweaking that Photoshop allows you to do! Here’s are two samples I’ve done so far - they’re equivalent to doodling, just more on the digital side. For this time, I’ve used the Calvin and Hobbes font for the photo captions 
Flower Against the Setting Sun - The discovery of buried photos in my photo archives got me exciting and so I started experimenting with various brushes. I’ve used two separate brushes to do the framing, but I found the edges rather jaggy and so I’ve applied Gaussian Blur to smooth out the edges. Now it looks better right? The key to an authentic looking frame is RANDOMNESS - don’t drag your cursor along the edges, but rather make short pauses in between and draw at different angles.
Mr Potato! - Creating the pseudo-painting effect was a big pain in the butt, but after an hour I’ve got it done! I’ve experimented with different blending options coupled with a photoshop filter called Glowing Edges (thus the high contrast of the edges in this photo). Finally I’ve used Diffused Glow to create a comfy and dreamy effect, and finished off with a little more tweaking with the saturation and contrast.
13 responses to Digital Art
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April 28th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
I love the frame. I even more so love love love the pseudo-painting effect. It was marvellous. Boo-tiful. It just looked like a very inviting cartoon-picture-painting thingy. And cute. Was that real in the first place?
Check out jason’s last blog post: Friday Post
April 28th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
I dig the Mr.Potato one!
p.s. I clicked that girl’s blog, i like her blogging style(as in the content). The way she writes is what I like in blogs. But as for the template..I don’t know why but I just dislike them to be like a narrow thing in the middle…
Check out LogicYuan’s last blog post: ADV: Meet Soh Hem Sem or Meet So Logic?
April 28th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
I know I’ve been saying this over and over again, and I’m sorry for repeating. THANK YOU! It’s such an honor.
and oh, I really like the effect you did on your cute lil Mr Potato’s picture. It’s a really great effect and I like it lots!
Check out Aisyah’s last blog post: Me and My Suspicion
April 29th, 2008 at 8:57 am
@jason: Thank you! Since my artistic sense suck in terms of drawing (well the best I could get is a miserable STICK figure), I’ve used a photo to start off and then applied certain filters plus brushes in photoshop to give it a pseudo-painting effect. The original photo is this - mrpotato01.jpg
@LogicYuan: Same here. I like her cheerful writing which helps to keep my happy! I think the narrow content container possibly used to make her blog 800*600 compatible. For a webdesinger, it’s something good rather than bad
and I’m glad that I’ve known your blog! And thanks for the pluggie!
@Aisyah: Seriously Aisyah, you’re wayyy toooo humble!!! It’s MY honour to know such a talented designer
April 29th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Awww! You’re the best at plugging people! Aisyah’s new layout is amazing! She’s so creative and I love her topics, they make me really sit and think about what’s going on around me. But best of all, I love the picture of Mr. Potato! If my favorite toy wasn’t missing an eye, he’d get his own smexah photoshoot. Wait, I could spice him up with a eye patch. Is that what’s hot right now? I hope so.
April 29th, 2008 at 9:24 am
@Melle:
I find reading her entries a joy, she seems to have a lot of fun things going on in her life and she’s enjoying every single bit of it! I’m kind of envious though, because I couldn’t kick the habit of being emotional (passively, meaning that I don’t explode, but just keep it inside me)… oh and Mr Potato’s legs were once tore off when my friend handled it very roughly and barbarically. Luckily mom engaged her friend to help me ‘recreate’ his pair of legs - the torn off part was so bad she couldn’t sew it back! So instead of reattaching the severed legs, she amputated my little potato and create a new pair of ‘prosthetics’ for it!
Thank you!!! I plug people when I think they deserve it, heheh
April 29th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
I visited aisyahrozi.com and really like her website design. I wish I can design such a nice blog too. Is there any good place to learn CSS language?
BTW, i like calvin and hobbes font. You inspire me to create a post on photoshop too. Stay tune..
Check out hp84’s last blog post: Pharmacist graduate
April 30th, 2008 at 1:08 am
awww.. thats very nice of you
April 30th, 2008 at 11:37 am
@hp84: There are actually a lot of CSS tutorials online! If you have a tiny bit of basic knowledge in CSS, I would recommended downloading those CSS effects demos and figure out the styling yourself. Although it will be time-consuming, you’ll pick up the skills very quickly!
For basic knowledge, you can check out this article at W3Cschools.com, it’s one of the simplest and most comprehensive guides around. In order to make full sense of CSS codes, it’s crucial to understand the syntax as well (the way your present the styles) - this article will help! After this, you can gradually start reading about the different properties and attributes for each HTML element.
@NoktahHitam: Thank you! Haha
I love her design, so it’s actually MY pleasure to link! 
April 30th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
The tutorials looked like they were the ones in Digital Camera Malaysia. LOL!
Anyway, I read this month’s issue and the Potato one was something like that.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
@Danny:
Yep both images are adaptations from photoshop tutorials on magazines. The second one was exceptionally tricky because I have to memorise most of the steps (the bookshop prohibits you from copying anything from magazines)…
Thanks for dropping by anyway!
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April 28th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
[...] I go, I want to thank Teddy for featuring my new theme on his blog! It’s very generous of him. and it’s such an [...]
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:24 am
[...] excellent tutorial by Tim Shelbourne. I experimented with his technique in one of my older posts, Digital Art, on the Mr Potato photo. Here are two more examples - just random photos I’ve dug out from my [...]