A Fun Trick for Turning Pictures into Paintings

Robert Cornelius May 15, 2015

I recently had the absolute pleasure of meeting and shooting with Mackenzie Johnson! If you haven't heard of this lovely young lady, kindly press play on the video below .... I'll wait. So as I'm hoping you've gathered, she is an INCREDIBLY talented singer songwriter/sensational Youtube STAR! You can expect me to gush all about her and how phenomenal she is in future posts, but for today let's get down to business and learn how I made her portrait into a painting!! Not everyone is a painter, but with a little time and patience I believe anyone can achieve this effect.

Today I present to you,"The Pyromancer" featuring Lopti of Some Like it Blue. In the wise words of Alicia Keys, "This girl is on FIIIIIIRRRRRREEEEEEEE! She's just a girl, and she's on fire."

5 Tips For Adding Fire With Photoshop

Robert Cornelius May 1, 2015

I didn't actually set a girl's hand on fire, although I'm told it's a thing that can be done without hurting someone - I'm just not ready to mess around with that quite yet. I mean, why temp fate (aka a giant expensive softbox up in flames) when you can digitally add the hot stuff to your composited masterpiece from the safety of your desk? Please enjoy these five tips to consider when adding fire to one of your images...

"Keeper of The Crystals" features the extremely wonderful Lopti of "Some Like it Blue." She is a cosplay superstar/ rather splendid person to know and work with! Expect to see and hear more about this lovely girl in future posts!! :D — "Keeper of The Crystals" features the extremely wonderful Lopti of "Some Like it Blue." She is a cosplay superstar/ rather splendid person to know and work with! Expect to see and hear more about this lovely girl in future posts!! :D

10 Tips On How To Borrow Ideas Politely

Robert Cornelius March 30, 2015

Sometimes as an artist I'll see an idea and go "CRAP! WHY DIDN'T I MAKE THIS!?!?!" There are so many brilliant images popping up on the internet everyday and there's no way I'm going to come up with all of them myself, no matter how much I want to. Oftentimes though, I'll see an image that I just can't get out of my head and I'll simply have to make it on my own. Now, I don't want you to think this is me saying, "It's fine to copy other artists." In fact, it drives me crazy when I see an image that someone has clearly copied from another artist and is passing it off as their own sheer brilliance.

Using Brushes to Make Crazy Smoke Effects

Robert Cornelius August 1, 2014

WHY HELLOOO, and welcome back to my crazy corner of the internet. Today I'm going to talk about my "Dust to Dust" series. The original picture lands the most questions in my lap, like, "how the heck did you achieve that effect?" Well, my fine feathered friends (I imagine you don't actually have feathers, but if you did...they'd be fine), the time has finally come to release unto the vastness of the interwebs all that is the majesty of my process for creating an image in this series. Really it's not all that difficult, but it does take a lot of time and a keen (obsessive) eye for detail. Here are some tricks I used to make this image happen.

5 Compositing Tips & Tricks

Robert Cornelius July 13, 2014

Take a good look at this picture. (Cool thanks!) Believe it or not, this image began as a picture of a girl (my delightful friend Molly), sitting in the studio against a black background. No lake, no sky, no seaweed, no need for an underwater camera housing and certainly no fish. To some people, including my past self (let's call him Past-Bert just for fun), would look at this picture and think, "How the heck did they do that!? I could never take a picture like this!" Past-Bert saw all kinds of crazy composited images back in the day (somewhere around 2008-ish) that just blew his poor little mind to pieces (small ones). He was thoroughly enjoying photography, but Past-Bert hadn't even dipped his toe into the compositing pool yet. Now I like to think I often scuba dive in the deep end. Allow me to let you in on a few of my dirty little tricks that help bring my composites to life!