Horizon

So I finally got my copy of PhotoShop to work with this junky Vista computer. PhotoShop is a great program for me because it lets me explore a creative side that I never really had a lot of access to -- visual art.

It's not because I was ever denied the opportunity. High school had many art classes, and even while I lived and studied in Japan, I took a brush painting class offered by my university. The simple fact remains, though, that I'm not particularly talented.
For example, I remember once telling my high school art teacher that the pot I made was abstract art, just so I'd get a passing grade. Never mind that I argued with her the previous week about whether abstract was really an acceptable medium -- a piece of me still thinks it's lazy, and I still don't like looking at it.

I still didn't have a very strong grasp on PhotoShop when I took a class devoted to developing a tutorial for it, Advanced Technical Communication. Now that was a class I'd take again -- it's probably the hardest class I've ever taken, for one simple reason: what we were creating wouldn't just be used to get a grade for myself and my partners, ideally it would be used by every student in the beginner graphics and web design courses to help them earn better grades. That adds a new level of pressure, which I really enjoyed working under.
When I began playing with PhotoShop, to try to get a grasp on it, I found that I had a real affinity for it. I mean, I'll never be the best, or the greatest at it -- I don't have the time or the drive to bother, but it's fun to play with, to let my spontaneous style of creativity combine with the features of PhotoShop (not the least of which is the ability to undo mistakes), and see what I produce in the end.

I'm still a little rusty, it's been about six months since I have really been able to play with PhotoShop on my own time... but this is what I turned up today.