Julio PDN Pics

Happy Holidays everyone! Hopefully everyone is having a great day and that everyone is staying warm. In the last post I did say that I liked to stay warm. I'm sure everyone likes to be warm to some extent, otherwise there wouldn't have been hot chocolate or Apple Cider made. With the holiday season here, I wanted to share some of the warmth in the form of an image, and I call it Spirit of the Season. This image has a nice warm feel to it to give that warm feeling of friends and family around. More or less the same effects as the last one and used the same technique for the middle rings. I did fade them out so that they aren't very noticeable or overpowering. I also had the goal of having red, green, and yellow, and that happened here. Fun fact, no yellow was used in the making of this image, it came out of blend modes. I hope you enjoy your holidays and stay warm!

In some parts of the world, winter has already taken it's grasp. I will say this much, I really don't like winter at all. I hope it doesn't last that long and that summer comes soon. I just love the warmth and can't get enough of it. When I think of winter, I think of a very cold, yet beautiful scenery. That is why I took the best of both worlds in this new image titled Winter's Approach. Dents, Crystalize, and Radial Extruder are a few of the effects I used in this one. I actually had to take the design on the lower right and make it in a larger canvas since it was too big to fit in the center. I then offset it to the lower right so that it looked a bit nicer. Plus, I'm not wanting to place things in the center very often. I then did a few blurs in the background for that smooth feel. Enjoy the winter everyone and I'll see you here soon.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I can say that even though winter is around the corner, and fall has nearly come and gone, it is one of those days that just feels warm. I love Thanksgiving, since it is a time to feel thankful for all that life has brought to our lives and it is a time for family and friends to gather and enjoy each other's company. For this reason, I made this image a warm and inviting one. I was trying to think of how to make another Thanksgiving image since it is hard to make an abstract image of a holiday. I went back to the image from last year and it helped me with the color pallet so that I had something to start with. I then went for the smooth background that has become my style since last year and I have developed it into what it is now. When I finished, I realized I had the center of the piece on the same side as last year's so I  flipped it to make it different. Not much else to say now except to remind everyone to be thankful for the things you ha...

I was thinking of what I could do for another image since I was running out of fresh ideas, and I thought, why not manipulate an image that I already created to create something new. This image is a manipulation of The Rush . It's a good image by itself, and the colors are nice and all, but I wanted to make it better. I believe I succeeded with the new image from an old one that I call Aurora. Mainly used Radial Blur to really get it smooth and then got Polar Inversion to get it to have that look of it coming at you from afar. I then did another polar inversion to get the different textures into the rest of the canvas and added some subtle dents. I then played with layer blend modes and when I got a color scheme that I liked, I thought it was good to go. Enjoy this art my friends. It is nearly the end of the year, and I have been working hard to bring you at least two images every month, and I can honestly say it has been awesome! It was hard since I hardly have time, but I...

This I made a while ago (like about a year ago), and I decided to post it on here just for kicks. I did another photo manipulation here, with Orange Energy as the base, and I wanted to share this with you close to Halloween. Also it has some fall colors in there, so I feel it is ideal for this time of year. Here's the old image called Orange Energy. This one I was experimenting with Kaleidoscope and a few other effects that I don't remember. Here is Candy Corn Dreams. Radial Blur Deluxe, Polar Inversion, and Splinter blur. I then added two little orange dents and filled in some dark areas. Hopefully you enjoy these images and enjoy your Halloween in a couple days. Get lots of candy, and then eat some Candy Corn.

This image is a bit different from what I usually do. I created the background first, which has autumn colors, but it took a slightly different turn than I had anticipated near the beginning. I made a few wisps coming out of the image, which then made it look like a fire image. Not what I was going for, but decided to play with that idea. It wasn't going too well after a bit so I decided to try with the autumn theme that I had originally planned for. I proceeded to make the kaleidoscope design in the middle of the main leaf, and thought about making the leaf outline itself. I did a quick Google search of leaves, and copied it the best that I could from the image I pulled up. I made half the leaf, made some changes, and then duplicated it and flipped the duplicate vertically. I then decided to create leaves in the background to give it a more fall sort of look. I duplicated the leaf, added veins, and then used the Shift/Rotate tool to create a lot of leaves in the background. Dupl...

It's been about a month since school started, and I'm sure that lot's of people are wanting to stay home and relax after a nice summer vacation. That of course, is not the case for many since school is an important thing since it will help you out later in life. I made this image a while ago, right after Dragon's Breath actually, and wanted to share it with you since I think this is a lovely image depicting my home town. I used Dents and Gravity for the texture of the red and blue mountains, as well as Gaussian blur and gradients for the 3D and shading of the mountains. I then used a lot of layer blend modes to get the texture and colors that I was looking for. I then added the sunset in the sky and darkened the image to show that sunset sort of feel. I hope you enjoy this image, not like most things I do since I make abstracts, but this still life was a cool experience that I may do again. Take care and I'll see you here soon.

This is one image that I wanted to do one thing, but then it came out much different from what I was going for. This tends to happen a lot honestly, but I kind of enjoy it when this happens since it creates something very unique that I didn't think about. I was in the process of seeing if I could create an image depicting my desert home, but I was a few effects in and it seemed that the feat for making an image like that was gone so I went with the flow. I now present to you the image called Dragon's Breath. Lot's of classic effects that I have used, and a few layer blend modes that I thought made the fire come out with brightness. I also used the Gravity Effect that I haven't really used very often, but made that rough look come out so it made it look like fire a bit, but no renderings for fire were used like my past fire images. As always, enjoy and stay tuned for another image coming to you soon.

School has started for most, and I'm trying to think of a good looking image to create for that. I looked up a Back to School color pallet, and found one that was a vintage color pallet, so I thought, I'll make a vintage image. As I started to mess around with it, it started to look not so vintage anymore, and more like an evening sky. My wife is great at coming up with names for my works, so I took her suggestion and call this one Evening Embers. Much of the same effects, but I did use Splintter as well as Crystalize in there. Although this is a simple image, I like the simplicity since the evening sun is a simple thing, but a very lovely thing as well. Hope you have a good day everyone, and I'll see you here in the next installment.

So about a month ago, I posted an image called Smelling Roses. When I was making it, I ran into a whole different color scheme when I adjusted a layer's blend mode. Since then, I wanted to revisit it and make something with that different color scheme, and so here it is, after about a month I would like to show you the different colors that came out of changing one layer. This image is called Marbled Aurora. Same effects as Smelling Roses, but a few extra bits were added to fill in some dark spots using Dents, Frosted Glass, and Gaussian Blur. Hope you enjoy this image, and I'll see you here again soon.

Most people by now have had enough of summer, except for me. I really like the hot summer sun, as well as the hot dry climates that my desert home holds. Since summer is winding down, and fall is nearly upon us, I decided to make an image depicting the strong summer sun, high in the sky. I've made an image that depicts the noon day sun, but I thought I'd go a really hot route with this one, and here it is, Summer Sun Same style as before, except I brought back the Kaleidoscope effect here. Radial Extruder is here as well as some of the other classics such as Dents, Radial Blur, and Splinter. I did do something different with the background, and added a gradient with some yellow in there. I think it adds a much better touch than just a plain black background and I may experiment with that in the future. Enjoy, and I'll be back with more.

When thinking of what to do next for an artwork, I thought long and hard and decided to give the color pink a try. I decided to pair it with white since the Energizer Bunny is pink and white. I started with two sections of pink and white, and got to work creating the image, not knowing what the outcome will be, but when the outcome was manifested to me, I felt satisfied. When I looked at it more, it reminded me of smelling roses when I was a kid at my home, hence the name Smelling Roses. I did the classic Radial Blur smoothness you see, but started with some frosted glass effects to smooth out the Dents before applying the Radial Blur effect. Not many more effects were used, I did a lot of layer work here more than anything, but I think the outcome was good. What do you think of when you see this image? Do you think of roses too, especially when you look at the swirls in the image? Let me know if you'd like, but I'll have something else up for you here regardless. Enjoy!

I don't know where the title of this came from, but when I was creating this, I thought it looked a lot like blue and green flames there in the background. I did a lot of manipulating of the layer blend properties to get the colors just right. I wanted the image to be dark, but to have the green and blue "flames" to come forward in brightness. I believe I have succeeded in that feat and present to you the image Flames of Truth. Classic favorites of mine used here, namely Dents, Polar Inversion, Radial Blur, Gaussian Blur, and a bonus Glass Blocks. I took two sections of color for the start, which you can see there in the middle as the blocks of color that represent the flames as the start, manipulated it to look like flames, duplicated, merged, and distorted some more. At one point, I duplicated the original layer, flipped it, and then manipulated a bit more. Hopefully you enjoy this image. Hopefully you enjoy the content and I'll have something new for you her...

Hello everyone, today is the Fourth of July, and here in the United States, it is the day we celebrate our freedom. To portray this in an abstract way, I took some of the well known patriotic colors, and made an image with them. I don't think it's my best work, but it's my first time making something patriotic. Not saying I'm not patriotic, I just didn't know what to do with the colors here and how to blend them together in the best way, so here is what I've got. There's some Tile Reflection as you can see (which is something that I've steered away from for a long time), Radial Blur, Polar Inversion, and other effects that are hidden because of the Radial Blur. There are aspects of some of the style I had when I first started, and some of the smooth style I have here as well. Nothing too special, but I did want to show my patriotism by creating this image. I hope you enjoy. This has given me an idea for a future project I may do which is making im...

For this Throw Back Thursday, I decided I would go back to Noon Day Sun which was created on January 26th, 2011. I have a blog post about it here, but I will put the image below. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I made this image, especially since it looks like a nice warm image, and it was created in the dead of winter. I may have made it just to make it (which is what I said in the post) or because it made me feel warm. Anyway, here is the image to refresh your memory. I also decided to make a new image with this as the stock photo. I wanted to create an image depicting the sun as it was in the sky in June, but I also have an idea for that later on, so I made this into a sunrise kind of image. It reminds me of when I would wake up in 6th grade in my hometown for school. The sunrise that I saw outside is what I think of when I see this image called Morning Sunshine. Lots of Radial Blur, some dents, and polar inversion. I also used a white background instead of a bla...

The final version of this image is not what I was going for, just throwing that out there. What I was trying to go for, was an image that had some green, and then the yellow would make it bright and happy. Instead, it turned out dark and mysterious, with a bit of orange in there. I was distorting the yellow part first, making it bright and filling up the canvas, then I did the green. After I changed one layer's blend mode properties, the bright image I was hoping for was gone forever. I liked the darker look of it, so I went with it, and here I present the image I titled Murky Swamps Radial Blur, Kaleidoscope, Polar Inversion, Dents, Zoom Blur, and a few other effects were used here, but the biggest thing that gave the image the dark, almost "murky" feel, was the layer blend modes. One was set to Difference (making the image darker), while the other was set to Color Burn (giving the orange color on some of the dents). I may try to make another green image with yell...

Hopefully it's warming up everywhere now that Spring has taken it's toll on us, except for the southern hemisphere...sorry guys. Anyway, I thought it would be wonderful to make an image depicting the life force that seems to come every spring after winter's seemingly long cold days have left us for a while. Life that seemed to have left comes back, the grass turns green, flowers come up, and warmer days are ahead. Hence the title of this image and the colors of what I think life on this earth are, blue and green. An image that looks a lot like this has already been shown here, if you remember my 8 Elements series. I think that this almost looks like the Elemental Power of Air that I created, but it's a bit different in the sense that it has that ice-like outside, with the "life force" blue in the middle, pushing it away. I used a lot of Dents, Radial Blur, Polar Inversion, and my new favorite, Radial Extruder for this image. Blend modes for this were a bi...

Hey everyone and happy Throw Back Thursday! This is my 100th post on this blog, which is a huge milestone for me. I almost want to go out and celebrate this milestone and eat some ice cream or something, but we’ll see what happens. Anyway, I have decided that I would make this a special post and show you a bit of my accomplishments throughout the years. I have a compilation of a few of my favorite images (except the first one) I've made over the years to show how much I’ve grown and improved down below. Divided (Aug. '09) Cool Fire (Dec. '09) Underwater Fire (Mar. '10) Fire Jolt (Sept. '10) Jewel (Oct. '10) Ice Inversion (Nov. '10) Mystic Light (Feb. '11) Left Behind (Mar. '11) The Rush (Apr. '11) Mountain Horizon (Apr. '11) Blue Energy Stream (May '13) Portal Back Home (Jul. '14) Colors of Fall (Nov. '15) Elemental Power of Fire (Jan. '16...

This one is interesting. It was not what I was going for at all, but I got to a certain point where it looked like a gemstone, and I couldn't turn back from there. When I got done, I didn't know what to call it, so I looked on Google for stones that have blue and yellow in them. Labradorite is what came up, so I stuck with that. It has a nice glow to it, hence I decided to have this be the core of said labradorite. This one I combined a few elements of my old style, with some of the smooth style that I've gained. I think it turned out really nicely. Zoom Blur Deluxe is featured in this image, as well as Polar Inversion, and other favorites that I will let you figure out. Enjoy this precious gemstone's core, and I'll see you in a later installment, here on my blog.

Remember Divided from two posts ago? Here is the manipulation of that image that you have been waiting for. I call it Horizon Lights, since it looks like some of the light in the horizon at sunrise/sunset. Lots of Radial Blur Deluxe, Dents, Splinter, and a lot of layer blend modes in effect. I even flattened the image, copied it, and manipulated it even more to give you the result below. The layer blend modes were hard to get right since I would look at one blend mode, and love it! Then I would look at another one, and love it too!! It was a tough choice to have it looking how it is, but I'm happy with it. I hope you all enjoyed this installment of My PDN Pictures and I hope to see you here again very soon.

Hoppy Easter everyone! I hope everyone enjoys their Easter Sunday and that the Easter Bunny visited them. I made an Easter image with help from Google and this Easter color palette, and came up with this image called Easter's Treat. Nothing really new here as far as effects used. Splinter, Dents, and Radial Blur. I had to add a bit of the Easter green since it looked like a blue and purple image, so I added a splash of that in the top middle area. I then blended it with blurs and Dents so that it wasn't an eye sore. Not much else to say today except for have a good Easter, and remember, it's not about the chocolate or bunnies, it's about Christ and what He did for all of us.

The title is something that I haven't really done here, which is a title that isn't the title of the image at all. Don't worry, I'll go on to my old ways here in the next post, unless you guys like the interesting titles. We shall see what happens. So I was thinking of what to do for a new image, and I thought, why not resurrect my very first image that I made on Paint.NET, which I called Divided. Now, this image is the worst image I have on here, at least one of my worst, since it was when I first started and didn't know what I was doing. I have since gotten better as you can see, and am wanting to show what I can do. Anyhow, I wanted to do something with this image so that I can compare them side by side, and show myself how far I've come in 9 years or so. To give you perspective, here is my first image called Divided. Not the best, lots of dark areas, and not many effects. I was a senior in High School since it was created back in September of 2009. So...

Spring is nearly here, which means warmer weather is on its way. I'm excited about that since I would really like to start riding my bike again and doing other outdoor activities. I looked on Google for spring color palettes to get some ideas on what colors to use, and I found this one that I'll be using (thanks Google). So without much else to say, here is Spring Flowers. I took some green and made a bit of the background using Radial Blur, and then I tried making a green flower-like design, but in the end I didn't keep it. I then used the pink from the color palette and made the outlines of it. I then made the flower design with pink. I then added a lighter green to brighten the image up. I hope everyone is excited about the warm weather coming, and especially spring. It is one of the most beautiful times of year with all sorts of flowers and colors. As always, take care and I'll see you here soon.

Here is yet another image for your enjoyment. February has come and gone, and with March rolling in, we have warmer weather to look forward to. I started with the desktop background of my computer, which is of Lake Powell pictured below. I then started manipulating the photo with the new style that I picked up a few months ago and came out with a nice rose looking image. I thought it would be fitting with spring coming around the corner, to have an image depicting a type of flower. So, although this wasn't the outcome I was thinking of getting with this image, I left it how it was. It took some effects like Radial Blur Deluxe, Splinter, and some of my classic favorites like Dents and Glass Blocks to come out with the image you see below. I hope everyone is as excited about spring as I am. I'm done with the cold weather and hope that it doesn't last too much longer. Summer will be even better for me since I love the heat. Anyway, have a wonderful day everyone and...

Happy Valentines Day everyone! I hope February has been good to you all. Since it is Valentines Day, I decided to make a Valentines colored image for you. I started with this new style that I've been playing around with and attempted to make an abstract heart. I then decided that it was a little too empty, so I added a bit more color, and the heart went away...so yeah. I tried to get it to come back, but to no avail. You can kind of see it in the center, but anyway, here's the image. I hope everyone has a good day, and that you get lots of valentines, lots of chocolate, and maybe a rose or two.

In light of the new year, there have been many people wanting to better themselves, make resolutions, and have a clean slate. Many people may think that when they miss one day, they have to wait until next year to start again. I'm here to tell you that you don't have to do that, but instead you can see each day as a new start. If life seems to get too hard and you fall, lift yourself back up. I made an image that I hope can portray that for you guys. It may not look like much, because it isn't really. I mostly used Radial Blur Deluxe (probably my favorite effect) and Splinter. This to me looks like two pieces of energy constantly renewing each other. When you get down, and don't want to get up (blue), either encourage yourself or have someone else encourage you and lift you back up (gold). I hope you get some motivation to continue with your new years resolutions. Keep going, you can do it!!