The Blog of Eternal Boredom: A Picture

While I was staying with my Grandma up in Canada this last Christmas vacation, she asked to see some things I had been working on (I believe she was hoping I had made some movies and/or drawn some drawings). I did have one new movie to show, but no drawings (I know, I'm kinda ashamed of myself). However, I showed her some of the pictures I had created digitally. She was rather impressed with them. Actually, I don't think impressed is quite the word. She couldn't quite wrap her head around the idea of making pictures like that. She kept asking me questions of how I did this and that, and how I got it to look like that, and STILL she couldn't fathom it. I wonder what she thought all the movie covers and stuff came from. Someone had to make them.
Anyway, it got me thinking, since I had some time up there, I made another picture and took screen-shots of it after I completed each step. I've decided to post them here with a brief explanation of what's happening, just because.
Now I don't have a fancy photoshop program or anything. I do all this on Pages on a Mac computer.

First I need to pick a subject. I was on a BBC Merlin spree at the time, so that's what I chose.

Then I have to picture about what I want in my head before I start. (Some artists sketch it out. If this were a serious project, I might, but this is just for my own amusement.)

Now to the actual project...

First I start out with a blank background. (My default color is black. Sometimes I change it.)

Then I pick out the picture(s) I want and put them in place.

Then I blend the edges. (There's a setting on Pages to do this. It's a picture frame)

I decided one of the pictures didn't quite fit what I had pictured in my head, so I changed it. Also I added some other pictures to fill in the space. (Both pictures of both characters are similar)

I blend the edges on the new pictures as well.

I want a quote on it so I add a text box and type it in there. Then I reposition the text box to where I want it on the picture.

I decided that I wanted the golden eyes to stand out more. So I changed the opacity (transparency) of the original pictures to much less, then I took a copy of the same photo and cropped it just around the eyes and blended the edges. Then I put those eyes over the original photo so it looked like the eyes were brighter than the rest of the photo.

I make a few last minute tweaks such as changing the shade of the text, adding shadows here and there, revealing or cropping more of a certain photo, changing the opacity of a photo or text, etc. And voila! The final product:

This was a fairly simple and quick project. Some of the pictures I've done were much harder and much more time consuming. One in particular is one I've titled "I Don't Want to Go- Ten". It literally took probably around two or three hours to complete. Finding the pictures, putting them in place, cropping them properly. I can't really describe the true extent of it. But it turned out to be one of my all-time favorites that I've created.
You can see most of my creations on my Facebook page (My Creations album), but I'll put just a couple of my favorites here.