Four Days Unplugged

Though I've only added one blog in November, prior to this one I am sneaking in on the last day of the month, I've been extremely jam packed with some interesting creative challenges in November such as learning Flash and Javascript, creating birthday drawings, wedding presents, Advent covers, adding new features to my website, adding new mediums to my illustration offerings, planning out my 2009 Charity Auction schedule, revamping my auction display, and helping a few friends with their creative projects. 

So, not much time to keep the ol' blog chalk full of new material.

The last four days I have been out of town, away from the studio–away from drawings and computing. What a recharge! Love what I do, but a break in the action was great. Went to my parents for Thanksgiving which my wife, Kathy, did the cooking for and it was fantastic. Then, Kathy and I and two of our children helped serve food at my nephew's wedding reception. A fun time was had by all. Hated to see it end. But, life goes on.

Look for a lot of changes in December and January. There's going to be some interesting developments at my website: KurtHoldorf.com.

--KH

p.s. Here's a cartoon I did in response to all the media reporters making race an issue--wish they would just quit asking about it and making comments about it so the issue of race will go away much faster!!!

Photo Retouching Hint

When retouching a brick building in Photoshop, it is very easy [read: possible] to remove something in front of the building (like a big ugly power pole) by following this simple trick.

Copy a whole "sheet" of bricks--being very careful to match patterns in the brick--then use the distort feature to change the distortion of all the bricks at once rather than clone bricks one at a time. First of all, cloning one at a time will be impossible to match perspectives. NOT ONE BRICK is the same due to perspective. It is much easier to plug in a patch of bricks where you can change the perspective on all at the same time.

Be sure to complete the illusion by matching sharpness and lightness.

--KH