Some of you may have heard of Project 365 before. It seems to most frequently apply to photography, but I’d guess it could really apply to just about anything. Essentially, you set a goal for the year to – in the case of photography – take a photograph every day. You can blog about it, post it on flickr or facebook, or just keep it to yourself…just as long as you get in one photo per day for the year (hence the 365).

What better time to start on such a project than the beginning of a brand new year? Well, I already know this is going to be a big year for our family what with so many changes on the way, so I decided to start small. I’m going to do a Project 52. I’ll still likely take several pictures throughout the week. On Sundays I’ll post my favorite(s) from the preceding week on this blog. Not all the photos will be stellar, but that’s part of my reason for doing this. I want to become a better photographer. I’m starting this project with the intention that it will force me to get more practice and learn some new techniques.

So, look forward to some weekly photos starting this Sunday!

I was playing around with Scribbles some more.  This time I worked from a photo of Al.  I spent a little more time on the shading with this one.  It’s hard to see some of the detail in the image below, so you can click on it to see a somewhat larger version.

Okay, I’m having a little too much fun with this program.  I’ll try to talk about something a little more exciting in my next post…like what Al has in store for me.  Tomorrow is my birthday.  Check that…I just noticed it’s after midnight.  Today is my birthday then.  Al’s taking me somewhere to celebrate, but he’s given me no clue other than that it will involve an overnight stay.

I recently acquired a bunch of Mac software from MacHeist 3.  For those of you know don’t know, every year MacHeist lets you earn a bunch of free software by completing “missions” – fun, online quests they set up.  At the end of the Heist, they release of bundle of spectacular software which can be purchased at a ridiculously low price.  The mission part is over, but the bundle is still available if you’re interested.

One of the free apps was called Scribbles.  I’m no great artist or anything, but I do enjoy doodling on my white board from time to time.  So I was pretty excited to get an application like Scribbles.  One of the things you can do while drawing with it is set the window to be transparent.  It allowed me to open up a photo on my computer, open Scribbles over the photo, and trace the outline of the photo.  Then I played with the different brushes to try to make the hair look like hair and the skin look like skin.

Should I quit my day job?  No, absolutely not.  But I think it doesn’t look too bad.  Here’s the original picture and the one I did using Scribbles.