lindsay takes a coffee break

Photoshop can be addictive. I was supposed to be working on my two years worth of photos, but I've been inspired to play. I joined DeviantART not too long ago, and not only does it seem to be a great learning tool for me, but it's a great artistic kick in the pants. It's so full of quality art, in many different styles, not to mention handy tutorials. So I started trying to be more creative with my stuff - you know, so I can maybe feel like a real artist instead of just some girl with a camera who happens to walk by something cool. This is why I've been getting better with photo editing in photoshop, but also why I decided to try my hand at learning things like vector and flash! And of course, being the perfectionist I occasionally am, I think I've done fairly well in my first go-rounds, so I wanted to share. Particularly the vector drawing I finished last night.

Okay, so my flash isn't so great. But I did it a mere 2 1/2 hours after opening the program for virtually the first time and going through the basic lessons in the welcome screen! And this was the first thing I'd ever drawn with just a pen tool and simple brushes.

**I don't seem to be able to embed it here (or anyway, it's only showing the preview image and the apparent links aren't linking, so I guess you'll have to go here to see it.)

And now for the guy I'm growing really proud of. While I've been playing a lot with the pen tool (and think I'm really getting the hang of it) this is my first completed digital drawing. Sadly, it's not my concept, though. I must confess this is inspired by a picture I've had hanging over my kitchen sink in every apartment I've lived in since high school.

miracle fish grow

I'm sure I've missed some details, so I may do more to it later, but I'm still pretty darn happy with it. And yes, this was done in just photoshop, not Illustrator or some fancy-schmancy drawing program like that. Cause I don't have that.

Now what I really need to do is get my butt moving on my new website design, which I've been planning to do for months!

love-love. Lindsay

As I mentioned before, I'm in this little film called The Wizards of Daggordale. While the wizards themselves still have a lot of footage to shoot, we in the supporting cast had our turn last month, and they've put together a little behind the scenes peek. Check it out!

i am the Harpy Queen

love-love. Lindsay

With all my photo organising and playing around in photoshop, I plan to eventually make a post comparing versions of my edits so you can see what I've been up to, and the changes that are coming through in my style. But for now I wanted to share a fun thing I made tonight. I had a bunch of half-decent pictures from a self shoot I did a month or so ago (trying to get a new headshot, but it just won't happen without decent lighting, which I can't afford). I ended up playing and making faces. Tonight I decided to use some to make a mock photo booth strip. And since photo booths aren't very common anymore, I had to make the pics look like I had them a while, complete with dirt and tears.  Whaddaya think?

mock photo booth

love-love. Lindsay

I have had my camera for a little over two years now. In that time, despite going through periods of neglecting it, I have still managed to amass over 7,000 photos. This does not include pictures of family or anything. These are just my photographic dabblings. Many are attributable to my trial and error style of shooting (Take a picture, see that it didn't come out just right, adjust something, take another). And if I don't delete something right away, I don't delete it. Needless to say that my hard drive is already pretty full. So I have been working on the task of sorting, tagging and deleting (or rather setting aside to be deleted after I burn them to disk - just in case I change my mind) all 7,000 said photos. ...I'll be at this a while.

What is intriguing me while I go through this process is that it is very easy for me to see how my skills have improved. Especially when going through the photos from the first month or so after getting the camera. Of course the images were bound to improve as I got better at handling the camera's controls, but I also found that the pictures I liked and was proud of at the time, I now think are quite dull. I can't figure out why I liked some of them so much. Then there are others I didn't care about, but now, due to the fact that I am also getting better at photoshop, I can see potential in them that I didn't catch before. So I guess my biggest improvement is not so much technically (or not at all technically, truth be told) but rather in my artistic vision. And that makes me happy, because the primary reason I always liked photography was that I wanted to create art, but can't draw. It's nice to find that there is way, albeit entirely subjective, to measure my progress to this end. ...Now which of my current photos will I think are dull two years from now?... ~__^

I've had a production meeting, I've got my script in hand. I guess that means it's time to make the announcement. In February I will be filming my first fantasy adventure!

The Wizards of Daggordale is a very special film, and a pilot for a future web series. A pair of adventurous, singing, wizards seek the ancient Book of Runes, full of spells and enchantments. Unfortunately they seek it from me: the Harpy Queen. Let the magical battle ensue!

Sadly I cannot tell you the most special part of this film, as I am sworn to secrecy. And as a fantasy film shooting much of the time on green screen, there will indeed be months of post production before you can see it, and before I have much more to say about it. But hopefully we will have photos! (...I will be purple, I hear.)

See more about these wizards at their website: http://daggordale.sonnetfilms.com

While I have not really named an inanimate object since my car in high school (Winston, in honour of that fabulous high school), I have come to the realisation that, though unintentional, my computer's name is Shwartz McFly. This is because practically every time I try to use it it gets really slow or worse, completely unresponsive. Web pages load like dial up, text will sometimes take 30 seconds or more to appear (making it ever more difficult to catch typos, about which I am really anal), and quite often I click a button, or go to move the cursor in a text box, and nothing happens, leaving me to wonder if the click registered, so I click again, and... well it's a mess. And that's just the average. There are times when it is much worse!

Anyway, when it is slow, but working, I chant to it, "Come on Shwartz, come on Shwartz!" (Spaceballs) And when it is unresponsive I find myself saying, "Hello McFly!" (Back to the Future) So considering the frequency with which I utter these things to my VERY inanimate computer, I realise that, like it or not, this computer's name is Shwartz McFly.

And all I can say is Thank You Thank You Thank You Dad for helping me put Shwartz here into early retirement! After next week it will not need to do anything but hold the occasional online css or photoshop tutorial page for me while a shiny new desktop helps me do things this McFly could never dream of! And I'll probably be able to run a second program, like play music, while doing it! I can't even imagine what it will be like to use computer programs in real time.... It's like a dream!

love-love. Lindsay

Now available at an iTunes store near you: My first audio play! Woo-Hoo! Presented by The McCroskey Memorial Internet Playhouse, here's the blurb:

An anti-romantic comedy in two acts, Diary of A Superfluous Man concerns the misadventures of Chulkaturin, a tax official of late Imperial Russia, who, in chasing an improbable romance with a young lady of good family, battles against both a Russian prince and a fate that decreed him at birth to be “an extraneous bolt in the machinery of eternity.”

Sorry not to blab about it when I got cast or did the recording, but after my experience with Marry Me, in never knowing what's going on or when to expect anything (it may be another year now), I decided it would save on a lot of questions to just wait until it came out. So, really, I've saved you any suspense and given you instant gratification instead!

And is it weird that my first important role was in The Elephant Man, my first equity play was Man and Superman, and now my first radio play is Diary of a Superfluous Man? Does this mean I can expect my first feature length movie role to be a "man" of some kind? As in a superhero flick or something? Hm. That'd be cool.

Hope you enjoy the play. I've yet to hear it in its entirety, as it was only released today. For any of my low-tech relatives out there still living on dial-up, let me know if are unable to download it. I may not have been able to buy you copies of the calendar I made, but I'm sure I can scrounge up the postage to mail you a CD... eventually.

love-love. Lindsay

I had asked my sister for her opinion on the last shot for my calendar, mentioned in my previous post. I didn't go with her suggestion, but her insistence on a preference for a more whimsical fare inspired me to make a second calendar. I had been going back through all my photos (I've taken over 6,000 in the past two years) to find the right shot for the first calendar, and in doing so I found quite a few that I'd totally forgotten about. Some really cool ones. I don't know how they ever slipped my mind. Anyway, my second calendar is lindsay's whimsy and can be found here:
http://www.zazzle.com/lindsays_whimsy_2009_calendar-158099007970092448

And these are two of my favourite shots featured in it. I may upload a few others to my flickr later, but for now you can't go wrong with a couple strings of rubber chickens!

so hungry it's not even funny

one for jimi

Just arrived! Newly created! Buy my calendar!
Just follow this link:
http://www.zazzle.com/seattle_up_close_2009_calendar-1589638542059888

You know you have to keep track of the days somehow, why not do it with some of my best shots from around Seattle?

I've also got two new Christmas cards, featuring Pike Place Market.
So visit my zazzle store now!

These are just a few of the photos you'll find inside:

sunset squared

rainbow run

3 comments

Glow

1 comment

...Otherwise she'd just buy copies for her family for Christmas and surprise them. Sorry. The gift will have to be the work itself.

love-love. Lindsay

Dear Self (and any other actors who may also need this reminder),

     You've worked long and in depth on your monologue for that audition. You've studied it. You know it. You are even feeling quite good about it. And you make sure to arrive extra early at the audition site so that you have time to settle in, warm up, and fully prepare. So far, so good. Now, Lindsay, I know that it is an incredibly rare thing for any auditions to run ahead of schedule. Almost unheard of, in fact, which may be why this *very important thing* has slipped your mind tonight. Your audition slot is theirs, but any time before it belongs to you. You don't have to be your cooperative self and help them speed through auditions by going 10 minutes early. You are allowed to say, "No, sorry, I'd like to take these 10 minutes I planned out so that I may focus before going on." I know it's hard to say no. But you really must do it. For your sake and theirs. If it is indeed before your scheduled slot, going on before you're ready will not show them what you can really do. Sure, they may get to go home early, but they won't have all the cards. And you won't have any. Because if you're not focused on that wonderful piece you've been running all day, and all week, you're going to rush it, be shallow, and cheapen that beautiful thing. And all your hard work and time management will be for nothing.

     I'm sorry, dear self, to be so hard on you, but you know I'm not criticising your talent, just your in-the-moment decision-making. If I don't spell out this reminder for you you may do it again. So remember: Your time belongs to you. So take that time and FOCUS.

love-love. Lindsay