my feather header

I got to talking with Pat about the header of my blog earlier today. I had been slightly annoyed that the first time I had showed it to him, he had been fairly dismissive about it. But it turns out he went back to it and thought it was pretty cool.

So I showed him the original I had drawn, then scanned and Photoshopped into the result you see above. He was actually quite enthusiastic about my drawing, not even really believing I had drawn it. So, let the record show here, the original scanned version of my feather:

It was just a rapid sketch, really, just black Sharpie on the bottom of an already used page in a full sketchbook. I wasn't entirely thrilled with it, especially the text, so I figured I'd clean it up with Photoshop a little. Now, those skills being what they are, I fiddled around with the filters until I found something I thought was pretty neat, the "angled strokes" version:

It was only once I uploaded it that I realized a black feather on a white background on a black blog background was just, well, iffy; it didn't flow with the rest. So that's when I further investigated the funkier aspects of Photoshop filters to come up with the more or less final version you see above.

I'm not saying it's a final final; I may have more ideas down the line.

I've looked at a lot of templates and backgrounds, only to always come back to the concept that I want my blog to be totally unique; this is not the greatest art out there, by any stretch of the imagination, but it is mine.

BTW, every time I open Photoshop CS2 (at home) or CS3 (at work), there's always a list of credits on the opening screen, which alternate from one time to the next. I can't help but smile every time I find the name of MeMe Rasmussen pop up; I can't help it, it's a great name! I'm not even sure if it's mister or missus! So, wherever you are, MeMe, hats off to you for making my day...

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