Creativity and Expression

Drawing calms me. I could lose myself for hours in drawing. It helped me quit smoking because it busied my hands and took my mind off cigarettes. That doesn't mean I'm very good at it. If I had to give myself an honest judgement, I'd say I'm fair at it. Average. That doesn't matter. Being creative helps me relieve stress, and I love learning new things. That's what matters.

As I get older, I find that I'm more content when I'm creating something. I love projects. Though, if you ask my kids, they'll tell you how much they hated the ugly, half-finished projects I tried around the house. I swear that shelf seemed easier to construct when I watched HGTV. Thankfully, they don't remember the white and green polka-dotted kitchen when they were little.  I do often feel like one of those bored housewives that takes up painting in her spare time then hangs her "masterpieces" in every single room of the house. Everyone exclaims over how amazing she is because she's looking right at them, but behind her back they talk about how hideous or boring they are.

A few years ago, I started teaching myself how to use Gimp. It's a free photo manipulation software. It's difficult to learn, though. At the time, it seemed to be my failing. I defended Gimp whenever someone talked about how bad it was compared to Photoshop. I'm sad to report; it's true. I've started to learn Photoshop. It is light years past Gimp. I'm happy to have had the experience of learning photo manipulation the hard way because that makes Photoshop that much easier!

Some tasks like cutting backgrounds from strands of hair can make you want to pull out your own. There's no real simple way to remove background around strands of hair in Gimp. You have to struggle with masks, inverting colors, cutting and pasting all while keeping the layers correct. If all that sounded like another language, it feels like that while you're trying to keep the steps straight. In Photoshop, it's two to three steps. Everything is easier in Photoshop. It's way more advanced yet so much easier.

While watching a tutorial on something I performed in Gimp frequently, and usually took me a half hour, I was stunned to see it done with one easy click of a button. Stunned doesn't begin to cover it. I couldn't wait to try it myself.

I don't know that I'll ever be good enough to post my work someplace like Deviant Art, but I love being creative. And I can't wait to torture everyone with my photo
manipulations. I'm going to frame them on my blog and make everyone look at them.

Here's the first:

Before

This is the after photo:

Nothing earth shattering, but her eyes are in the right place. They didn't pop off or shoot in opposite directions. I'm inappropriately proud of that little fact.