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New Year, New Skills, New Profile Pic

My husband showed me a tutorial on coloring images, and I decided to try it out since I’m trying to transition from traditional media to digital media.

ImageI sketched out a random picture of myself on a crummy piece of notebook paper (see edges). Then I used a sepia-colored School-G Tachikawa pen to outline it.

profile2 Cleaned up the pencil marks with a plastic eraser.

profile3Went over the outline with the same pen and darkened some areas.

profile4Put the file into Adobe Illustrator, traced it, and colored it with base colors.

profile6Took the image to Adobe Photoshop, made a transparent layer, used the “Lasso” to pick the highlights, and brushed and smudged the colors for the face.

profile7Finished my first Photoshop mini-project (and my new profile pic)!

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Most Famous Baseball Coach in Okinawa

At 4 PM, all of the office workers watched the tiny box-of-a-TV. “The baseball game is playing. Okinawa is in the championship,” my co-worker told me as our supervisor adjusted the antennas. The team was Konan High School, the last standing Okinawan team in the 2010 National High School Baseball Summer Tournament. They beat out 46 teams, making Coach Masaru Gakiya the most famous baseball coach in Okinawa.

I met him at a private event by the U.S. Consulate, and from all of the Americans present, I think I visibly showed my excitement to be in the same room.