Violet Moon

The electric guitar is a simple musical instrument but when placed in the hands of an accomplished musician it could reach out to you as if it has a magical hand that could go deep into the center of the labyrinth of your heart and touch your soul. At least that's the way I see it. Some people don't see it that way. I remember one very late night many years ago, I laid in bed listening to the strains of the sound of a distant neighbor's radio. I could barely hear the voice of the singer and the sound of other instruments but I could distinctly hear the sound of the guitar, a clean tone floating in the air, wafted into my open window and into my ears by a gentle breeze. The song was Dire Strait's Sultans of Swing. The guitar playing of Mark Knopfler was as powerful as the lyrics. It was only then that I understood fully the meaning of that song.

The above image is the result of a couple of hours of fiddling with Adobe Photoshop. Yes, it took me long two hours to finish it. This image comes from two photos I got from the net shown below.

I was quiet a sucker for surrealism when I was younger (that was ten or so years ago). In 1997 I painted a surrealist desert sunset complete with a violin-playing cactus under a violently swirling clouds. It took me a month to finish that painting.

Now, it only took me about 30 minutes to finish the image above with Adobe Photoshop. It is just random. I just downloaded some free stock images and just let my mood flow. After 30 or so minutes I came up with this one. The original images I used are shown below :


No special effects were used there, just the ever reliable Lasso tool, Move tool, and a simple Render effect to get the right lighting for the windows.

I discovered Anim8or in 2003. This little free 3D authoring software is small but it can do big things. Only 900 KB but it can do modeling, animating, and rendering. I created the image below the day I stumbled upon Anim8or, that was five years ago. If you are an experienced 3D artist you will see that it only takes a very basic knowledge of 3D modeling to create an image like this. All I used to model the lamp were lathing and this is the easiest method of creating objects. I also rendered this image with Anim8or. I am very thankful to Anim8or because it opened the door to 3D modeling to me. Had it been another 3D authoring software that I discovered I would have been intimidated with the difficulty of creating 3D models and would have dismissed 3D modeling.

I like fooling around with graphics software. Among my favorites are Adobe Photoshop, KoolMoves, Anim8or, 3D Studio Max, Cinema 4D, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign. I need a space where I could put my little digital creations so I started this blog. I am also encouraging my wife to fiddle away with graphics so you will also see some of her works here every now and then.

I am also into digital music creation so sometimes I may feel like putting some of my music here. I chose the name Violet Moon because it sounds good to me and suggests a journey to another time or another world. For me digital art creation is a journey to a different time and world, a world that can only live in the mind of the artist. I want to share this world with others.