I tried keeping it simple, but I just can’t. I keep picking at it and picking at it.

Almost done. Gotta work alot more shadows & definition into it, work the hair, fix the mouth, and add the ring. =)

Oh my…
Didn’t think I would start another vector since I got a Wacom tab, but I could resist. I did use the pen/tablet with the pen tool. Lol. Don’t think I’ll ever use a mouse for anything anymore.

Anyways, I did my usual stalking on Facebook. When I see a picture I like of a friend, I save it in my “Potentials” folder. Saw this one the other day:

Melissa T.
Hope she doesn’t mind.

This vector is a little different from the previous ones I’ve done.

First, I usually do vexels, hardly anymore vectors because they’re easier. Again, if you don’t know the difference: with vectors, you can create a shape that can be resized whatever size without messing up the picture/keeping the image looking how you’ve created it. Vexels…when resized, the image looks pixelized/blurred/yucky. Get it?
Click here if not: vexel vs. vector image

Second, I usually work with Adobe Photoshop. I’m doing this vector in Adobe Illustrator, which I should have done with my past work. Ai is meant for vector work. So if you ever want to start making vectors, use Ai. Much much better. It’s not easy for me, only because I’m soo used to Ps.
I really just started using Ai a few months now.

Here’s what I have so far. I’m not going to get too detailed with this one, like I did with my Kandee Johnson one. I want to make a simplier one this time. But knowing me, I probably won’t.
I know, I know…I have alot to fix. Just getting the bulk of it done.

__________

Random No.03

*sigh…I woke up at 2:30pm yesterday. =X Still up. Don’t know if I should just stay up.
Ha ha…right.

I hate Kesha. Not her personally, ’cause I don’t know her. I just don’t like her music and stage image. I checked out her live performances on youtube (I’m always looking up live performances, to see if they really have talent). She doesn’t really sing, its more like talking with rhythm. And when she does sing, there’s so much auto tone/voice tweaking on it. Dancing is horrible on the live stuff. Her image just seems like she’s careless/drunk/trying-to-hard-to-be-careless. She makeup is crazy cool, but her MUA gets the credit for that. I do get her credit for doing what she does, but I know alot of people who feel the same way as I do. ^^

I want to go to culinary school. I am a way better cook than baker. If I do, I’d be the go to person for skin, nails, hair, makeup, graphic work, cupcakes, and a five course meal. Lol. Such talent.
Kidding. “A person good at everything is great at nothing.” I heard that quote from somewhere. Still working on what I’m great at…aka, still figuring out what I’m truly passionate about.

I guess it’s pretty normal to feel lost in the world around my age. Couple people have been feeling the same way as I do. Don’t know what we want to do with our lives. Don’t know what careers we want. Starting to doubt our own beliefs on becoming more…becoming more than just another Vietnamese girl doing nails. Become typical or different?

I want to be different. ^^

I’m addicted to playing Scrabble on my iTouch before I go to bed. I actually play it until I’m on the verge of falling asleep. Lol. I’ve been playing is a lot. Pretty much every night for three weeks. The CPU and I are pretty tie. :P

I mad at xbox live. Can’t play most of my downloaded songs on Rockband 2. So I stopped playing that. Started playing GH World Tour. Never finished it because I was addicted to RB. My GH guitar decided to die on me, but to my surprise, I could use my RB guitar for World Tour. I couldn’t for GH3. I like RB’s guitar way better; it’s quieter…the strum bar doesn’t have that stupid click to it like GH does. So I’m halfway done with it..playing it on Hard.
I’m a dork…

Can’t wait for God of War 3 and Fable 3! ^^

My right eye itches. Can’t stop rubbing my finger across my lid cause it feels so good to. lol.

I want to throw my Yorkie out the window sometimes ’cause she’s just a trouble maker. I haven’t posted any pictures of her on here yet. She’s so fricken cute though. Her name is Kiwi. She’s called Killer Ki too.

I want to do a makeup tutorial and I don’t. I hate editing. And I’m not sure what look to do. Spring?

I miss singing. I usually sang while driving, but I don’t have a car anymore. I miss singing really loud. I don’t her because the apt walls are thin, which makes me shy.

Okay..I’m going to go play Scrabble now.

As you can see, I gave my blog a makeover. It really needed it. I finally put my own design up. I jacked the code from another WordPress theme, but replaced all the graphics with my own. ^^ I still have some tweaking to do. I’m need to step away from the editor before I mess things up. Lol.
If you know me well enough or looked through my pictures, I have a tattoo on my right shoulder blade. I got it about 6 months ago? In Venice, Cali at Ink Monkey. I love tokidoki styles, so I decided to draw something up. I gave the tattoo artist my drawing and told him to do whatever he wanted with it. The tattoo turned out great…I love it. But the design wasn’t exactly what I wanted. So I decided to vector it and put it on here. :]

Click to enlarge.
Man, I hate adjusting colors from Photoshop to the web. What a bitch!

I love cherry blossoms and skulls. I wish the tattoo artist made my skulls more edgier/beat-up. Like my design. I wanted two skulls, too. Eventually I’ll add more to this tat.

Well, I am really really tired. I only had two hours of sleep. Went to bed last night at like 6am [photoshoppin and  God of War], woke up at 8am, went to school, and I’m still up. Exhausted! I should have went to bed 4 hours ago, but I really wanted to finish most of this layout. Determination!

School was fun today. I don’t feel like typing out all details. Gave my model a makeover by adding some highlights in her hair.

My Macbook is stabbing me. The bottom right corner edge, where my wrist rest, is chipping. :/

Very cute pic right hurr:

Cooper likes being in the butt crack of the couch. If he had cheeks, I would be squeezing them right now.

I think I want to snap this piece off my Mac. Driving me nuts.

We rented the God of War collection from Blockbuster. I wanted to play both of them before the third GoW comes out in March ’10. I hate the game so much that I love it. The BF and I play it together. It can be such a frustrating game! Oh…only thing that really sucks about GoW1 is the camera angles. Errr. Haven’t got to GoW2 yet. Are the camera angles the same in that one?

Okay….

I need to sleep!!!!

I pulled another all nighter/all morning-er/all day-er. It’s 2:14pm right now. I’ve been up since 4:45ish pm of yesterday? Around there. I’m trying to stay up because once again, I failed at changing my sleeping schedule. Beauty school starts in less than two weeks, and they start at 9:30am. That’s early for me. *yawn…I am sooo tired. But I must stay up! I say at least until 9pm. Think I’ll make it?
I better brew some coffee………

So, to keep my eyes from going in a coma, I made some nail designs [seven to be exact, took like 5-7 pictures of each design so I can make tutorials out of them] and I’ve been working on another vexel. Yeah, I know. I have wayyy too much time on my hands! I might as well take advantage of it now.

This vexel is of a friend of mine, Jenny Vuong [she's very artistic herself...known for her cakes within friends and their friends...etc]. I’ve made a vector of her last time. This time, I did a vexel of her. I wanted to show and see for myself how much I’ve improved. [There is a difference if you didn't know...between vector and vexel. I might have mentioned it. Look it up on google or whatever. I'm lazy to explain.]
The vector of her I did was almost exactly three years ago; it was my second attempt of vectoring. At the time, I thought it was amazing. Lol. Still is…kindaish [my own word].

2006 Vector»

I don’t have the original for this anymore.

2009 Vexel»

Original»

She so purdy. :]

This one didn’t take me as long as my iKandee vexel. As you can see, the layers are ALOT simplier and the hair is kinda messy. Doing art on no sleep makes you just wanna finish it. So I kinda rushed. I liked how it turned out though. At first, I was going to make her look more realistic, but the lighting was making it hard for me, and I didn’t want to fuss with it. I’m glad I took a different approach.
Gosh, the hair is so messy. Lol. Ah wellz. I think the digi still looks like her. ???
Besides the skin and lighting, the sheer top she has on was the hardest to do for some reason. Lol. I decided to just layer in the shadows, outline and put a filter on it. Rendered fibers & Cross-Hatch Brush Strokes. Didn’t turn out too bad.
I love CS4. :]

My schedule is still wack. I woke up at 7pm last night. I was determined to break this schedule, so I stayed up all of last night, all of this morning, and now going into the evening..listening to music, watching the FoodNetwork Channel and working on a vexel of one of my favorite make-up artist, Kandee Johnson. I started reading her blogs and watching her YouTube videos in the last year. I love, love, LOVE her. Her makeup is great, and even more great is her personality. After watching so many of her videos, I would say that she’s a cute, bubbly, humble, sincere, fun, trendy, down-to-earth kind of girl. She’s an absolutely pleasure to watch. Check her out if you haven’t already!

So…my vexel of Kandee Johnson.

Here’s the original photo.

This would be the first person I did a vexel of in one sitting. Usually I take days, weeks, months to finish a vexel of a person. Why so long? I get distracted with other things and just get plain lazy to finish…or overwhelmed because I critique myself so harshly. I’m not the best at vexeling/vectoring, but I’m not bad either. I was looking at my old work on DeviartArt and said to myself, “and I thought doing THAT was hard?” Lol. It’s amazing how you see yourself improve over a few years. :]

So this vexel of Kandee took me about 8 hours to do! I know that’s pretty average. It took me longer because when I was drawing in the hair, I didn’t realize I was using a 1 pt brush until I was halfway through. Lol. Silly me. [Think the lack of sleep got to me]
I’m really proud of it. I’m starting to get the shading down a bit. I love vexeling, but I hate doing the skin. Tricky, tricky for me. I do love doing the eyes, lips, and hair [changed hers a bit]. I like how I made them turn out.
Don’t know what a vexel/vector is? Both are similar. You can google “vector vs. vexel”. In simple words, its like taking a picture of someone/something and turning it to a cartoon, almost. I’ve seen on DeviartArt where people are insanely good, that you couldn’t tell the different if it were a photograph of not. I almost feel like what’s the point if you make it so perfect? But it’s cool to see though.
Me…because I’m lazy and get frustrated with the shading of the skin, I keep a lot layers showing. :P You can’t really see here because the picture is on the small scale for a vexel. But I did it! ^_^

Here’s an animated gif of Kandee so you understand what I’m saying more.
Layers on top of layers. I grouped layers together so the gif wouldn’t take so long.

I believe this is my best work so far. :]