Drawings from April - May

I just started working with Adobe Creative Suite 6, which is proving to be a challenge after 3 years of using only the GIMP and Inkscape. My reaction:

Mostly it amazes me how often people treat simple layer effects like "Bevel and Emboss" (the 3D brushmarks up there) as edgy and painterly gestures. Come on, that's like getting excited about "Sharpen." Here are two attempts where I was trying to use the filter "incorrectly":

taken from dump - photo credit Erik Stinson

One thing Photoshop does better than the GIMP is distortions. I will not miss "iWarp", the open source version of "Liquefy." Don't get me started on "Puppet Warp", though...

TMC:

Some IRL drawings and paintings:

 That last one is called "Uncle Jesse Majestic" - the gentleman holding up the painting is a friend of mine who approached me in January with the idea of collaborating on a painting. He had never painted before, so we worked together on the canvas from underpainting to the final glow-in-the-dark layer. Oh yeah.