Julio PDN Pics

So I'm doing something completely different from what I usually do at this time of year. I just know that The Mandalorian usually comes out at this time of year, and so I decided to make this Mandalorian Helmet. I started out with looking up a picture on Google to see what I could try to base it off of, and I found this one. Once I got it down, I started making a super rough outline of the helmet. Once I got the rough outline done, I knew I could then do some minor adjustments, much like I did with Rocket and Big Jet. I flattened the rough outline, brought the opacity down a bit, and started pretty much from scratch to make the helmet again. Not long after, I got the outline you see below. Now we're getting somewhere! Now I just needed to color it, and shade it. I colored it by selecting the outside with the Magic Wand tool, and on a different layer, filling it with a light gray. I then proceeded to select different parts of the helmet with the Magic Wand, and applying gradien

 So my grandparents on my dad's side are now starting to leave this world. My grandma has been suffering with Alzheimer's disease for a long while now. We saw signs of it back in 2013, and it's just been slowly taking it's toll as time has gone by. We live pretty close to them, so we've gone to visit my grandparents many times while my grandma was suffering the disease. 2020 was rough since there was a period that we were not able to go visit them due to the pandemic, and when we felt it was safe to visit them, she was bedridden. Early in 2021 she was put on hospice, so that was hard, but what was sadder still is that I felt that my grandma has been gone for a while. It was especially hard since I was very close to my grandma. She'd come for me and my sibling's birthdays, important events such as graduations and church events, and even come for Christmas and some Thanksgivings. While she didn't stay for very long (average about 3 days), she was there, an

Yet another image of a character from the show Little Einsteins. Thought this Thanksgiving week, that I would show my thankfulness by making these for my boys, who LOVE this show. After making Rocket, I thought, why not make the enemy of the show, who's name is Big Jet. I also made a coloring page of this, which can be found a while back on my Instagram page. Here is the finished image. Like Rocket, I started with an outline of Big Jet based on this picture , but was also going for making it more high def. I then filled in the color, and applied some of the shading after. For some reason this one wasn't as hard as Rocket, either because there are more straight lines, or because I knew more of what I was doing. Hope you enjoy this shorter post, and I'll see you here again soon. Happy Thanksgiving!

With Thanksgiving being less than a week away, it is a good time to reflect and think about what you are thankful for. I'm thankful for my family most of all, and something that they love is watching TV. One show in particular they love is the Disney show Little Einsteins. I decided I'd make Rocket from Little Einsteins, based on this image , as well as a version that is a coloring page sort of thing. On here though, I'll just showcase the fully colored and shaded version (the coloring page version is on Instagram). So without further ado, here is Rocket! I started out with the outline, making different layers for different sections so that I can make a crude outline, and refine it section by section as I went. I then colored in each piece on different layers, so that I can do further adjustments. I then made the darker lines on the hull, and extended the windows down a bit. I then worked on shading, and it took a long time to shade since there are many shapes and areas I w

Here is attempt number 2 at making the wall art I was assigned. This time, I may have gotten it, but that remains to be seen with my wife. I wanted to keep the same color palette, but not make the same mistakes I did in the last image, and I feel like I may have done that this time. This image is titled Stone Swirls. I took a slightly different approach than I usually do with my images, where I took some of the nice colors of the color palette I had and put them on the left and right sides in order of darkest to lightest. I then distorted the crap out of them when I merged them down. Lots of Radial Blur, Gaussian Blur, and some Dents for texture. I then did some Glass Vignette, Polar Inversion, Frosted Glass, Crystalize, and Motion Blur. I also used layer blend modes Multiply, Additive, Lighten, Darken, Screen, and Negation. I hope you have enjoyed this so far, and I hope to have more ideas come by different means other than my brain. Have a good rest of your day everyone!

This image was an attempt at making something else, but it went down the drain quick. My wife wanted to create something with a desert sort of theme to it with some of the nice swirls I have on my works to put over our bed. As I was working on this, I tried to get that incorporated into the piece, but obviously that didn't seem to happen this time. When I saw the end result, I was a bit upset that it didn't turn out, but at least my creative juices are flowing more than before. Here is my first attempt to make this piece titled Wild Fire. Lots of Gaussian Blur, Dents, and Radial Blur in this image. I had a color palette with a lot of desert themed colors, namely some browns, oranges, reds, and some cream colors that made it into the image, but they got overpowered by the orange and red that came from the layer blend modes I used. I also have the Radial Extruder bit added on the left for some additional texture. Layer blend modes I used are Additive, Multiply, Color Dodge and Li

Ever since getting the iOS app called Frax, things have been getting interesting for me on my end. I looked at a few fractals and thought of how I'd like to manipulate them. I usually try to keep some aspects of the fractal in the image, but this one kind of deviated far from the original fractal created. Part of the background on the right has some aspect of the original, but not much. Here I give you the image I call Ocean's Eye. I created this on a 4K canvas again, due to the strange dimensions I got this created with. I then started with the initial fractal, and distorted it with Dents and Gaussian Blur. I decided at that point to do a Polar Inversion on the far left, so that I can get some closer texture on the far right. At that point I thought it might be easier to do things without the black background on the fractal, so using Magic Select, I selected the black of the initial fractal, adjusted the tolerance of the selection, and then redid the Gaussian Blur and Dents. W

This image was slightly unexpected, possibly due to some of the steps taken to get to the end, and also the different colors that came out. I had a harder time with this fractal manipulation since it was not a transparent PNG like the others I’ve done here. The initial fractal was created using an iOS app called Frax, then I manipulated it in Paint.NET to give you Layers of the Cosmos. Like all of the others, I started with the fractal, but on a 4K canvas since it was a weird set of dimensions. I then made a background using Gaussian Blur and Radial Blur. I then added a splash of blue and purple using the same effects as well as Dents to get some texture in. I then blended them in with Color Burn and Glow, while also leaving some of the layers as Normal. After that, I wasn't satisfied, so I did some overlaying of the initial fractal on top and adding other effects such as Polar Inversion to get some good different textures in there. I then selected some part of the fractal on the r

It has been a ride to say the least. The last year and a half has definitely been some difficult years, but hopefully things go better. Sometimes we may feel that we need to just fast forward to get through life, but things may just need to slow down for us in life so that we can enjoy the here and now. I'm hoping that this image can kind of capture the need to just pause and reflect on the world, even if we need to get into a slipstream to speed us on by. The middle area kind of reminded me of a slipstream, hence this is called Slipstream. The center was created with a teal color, adjusted with Radial Blur, Dents, and Zoom Blur, and blended with Additive. I then did dark teal, light blue, and light dark blue for the outside using Dents, Gaussian Blur, and Radial Blur, blending them with Additive, Negation, Darken, Glow, and Reflect. I also used Polar Inversion on the middle part, used the Zoom, Tilt, and Pan tool to zoom it out, and again used a mix of effects to blur it out. Hope

This image is made from a fractal that I made a while ago, but I never got around to doing much with it until now. I think I was thinking of using it as a Christmas image, but since I got around to it now, I hope I was able to get rid of most of the Christmas colors from it. I did use some effects that I haven't used in a long time, and others that I have rarely used at all, except maybe my first images since I was experimenting. Anyway, here is Fractured Portal. Some of the first effects I used was Twist, which I haven't used since I started using PDN since it looked tacky. I used it in a good sort of way this time to make it kind of look like a tunnel, then duplicated it and rotated it a bit. I then used Polar Inversion, Tile Reflection, and Radial Blur to add some color and texture to the outside of the "portal" and just to help the image out a bit. I finished with another inverse Polar Inversion to make a sort of circle around the middle, and then used Reflect to

Creativity kind of left me for this title, but hopefully you think it looks cool. As I was making this image, it kind of looked like the old Windows logo, but a bit longer. I didn't do it on purpose, it just came up when I was doing some Radial Blurs in certain areas, and BAM, there it was. So here I give you Yellow Flag. I didn't know what else to put in the image since it looked good, so I tried to put some stuff in the background such as dents and such, but it just overpowered it. Overall, this didn't take too long to make, but the rest of the background did. For the main flag, I used Radial Blur, Motion Blur, and Polar Inversion. I then used Overlay for one layer, also flipped a layer so the flag looked a bit more uniform. The background I did Dents, and Radial Blur, as well as Polar Inversion and Radial Extruder. I then used Difference and Overlay for the layer blend modes. Hope you enjoyed this and I hope to see you soon with more art.

Spring is near, and that means green will be coming back, as well as the warm sun, and wonderful sun rises. These past few months are usually cloudy and full of snow, so that is why I made this image a bit darker with a bright center. When I was finished with it, I looked at it, and it almost reminded me of Christmas, so I may do a manipulation using this image in the future. Here I bring you Spring's Awakening. I started with filling the screen with orange and yellow, then manipulating it like crazy with Gaussian Blur, Dents, and Radial Blur. I then blended those layers with Screen to allow both colors to come through a bit easier. When I got it looking good, I put some green in the center and used Gaussian Blur, Dents, and Radial Extruder to get a nice design. I then duplicated it several times and blended it with Glow, Multiply, and Difference. I then flattened the green sections, copied it, and pasted it in a new layer. I duplicated it and used either Multiply or Darken to make

 Hey all, just some news for you! I’m excited to announce that I have my online store with custom pointers up and running. I also put up a new page here on this blog describing the store and the story of how they came to be. For the month of March, you can use coupon code JC50OFF to get 50% off of all purchases. Enjoy them, and remember, feedback is always welcome!

 A few months ago I went back to my hometown for a visit, and it was a fun time. I even got to take my family to a park full of sandstone and it was fun watching my kids explore a bit. The patterns and color of some of the stone down there is always mesmerizing, and it's just a lovely sight to see. I know I made an abstract in the past of sandstone and the patterns that it has, but I took a different approach to this one. Here I give you Sandstone Desert. I started with the Gran Canaria Gem as my stock image, and went to town with it. After coming round the mountain and getting back home, I got to work manipulating it with Radial Blur. On the duplicate of the gem, I blended it with Color Burn to give it a vibrant and darker color, and did a Radial blur from a different corner. I then merged them down and did another radial blur from a different angle to give it a smooth, yet interesting texture. I then did a Polar Inversion with Gaussian Blur to blur out the inversion part. I then

Yesterday at 7 PM Mountain Time, my grandma on my mom's side passed away. Shortly after my grandpa passed, she started going down hill fast. It almost seems like she couldn't live without him by her side. She died mostly due to dementia and extreme weight loss. I was a bit sad, but not as sad as my mom, who called me right when my grandma died. I decided to make a bit of a dedication to her much like I did for my grandpa, and here I give you my dedicatory piece to remember her by. I looked online what the colors of dementia were, and they were a purple ribbon. I don't really want to do ribbons unless it is a cancer, just to be consistent. I then saw that there was a pin with a forget me not flower, which is at the center of the piece. My grandma seemed like the kind of person that liked bright flowers and colors, so I made sure to incorporate that into this piece. The process I went through was I made a very crude flower, then a circle for the middle. I then looked at it, a

 Happy New Year everyone! I hope 2021 has been treating everyone better than 2020 ended up being. If not, I'm sure peace will come soon to everyone, at least we hope. I decided to start this new year with a throwback to 2013. I made this shortly after coming back from Spain, but I don't think I ever posted this one. While I was in Spain, I went to the Canary Islands for about 4 months. While I was there, there were stunning views of the ocean and the island from some local beaches. I was fortunate to capture some of that beauty on my camera, as you can see below. When I got back home, it took a while to get into the groove of things since it took some adjustment to regular life in the USA. I made a few different images, and I decided to then revisit a tutorial I had done with Heatstroke a while ago to make a gem. If you wanted to give it a try, you can find that tutorial on the Paint.NET Forums here . I chose the stock photo above and created the image you see below called Gran