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Description
"Sakura" series

On Thanksgiving, My 82 year young mother asked me to please find her a small picture of her favorite bird - a red Cardinal. I decided to create one for her instead and give it to her as a gift

For the picture's central theme, I wanted to depict a small bird surviving life to live another day

In Japan, "Sakura" means "Cherry Blossom" and is culturally symbolic of the yearly arrival of Spring and the physical rebirth/spiritual renewel of life

So here is a small red bird who is all alone in a frozen world, awaiting.....

Sakura

base image photography credit: JapanTravel.com "Snow at Daigo Temple" by Cathy Cawood

Things grow - I am now developing the Sakura stills into an animation series

For Photoshop actions - I personally use and highly recommend actions created by

GraphicAssets on DA (sreda on Graphic River) &

Walllow (on Graphic River and yes that is THREE l's in the name)

I could not create my art without having access to and using a wide variety of "stock" resources such as textures, images, vectors, clip art, etc etc. I am constantly looking for new resources and getting rid of inferior ones from my utility collections. Like programmers say "GIGO"

To create the art you are looking at, I used the following:

1. my favorite graphics program "paintdotnet" which cost me the staggering amount of ......nothing. It is a free program.

2. For .eps files and vectors I use Inkscape - which rivals Illustrator and costs.............nothing.

3. materials and images which I either hand-create or they come from one of my "toolboxes" which are collections of the best stock resources that I can get my grimy little paws on

In my most treasured time tested "go to" toolboxes there are materials that I have obtained from some of the finest and most outstanding Stock Resource creators/suppliers in the world - I mean that literally. Over time, I have finally tracked down the best creators and suppliers and found out where they were located, which is why I joined Deviantart in the first place.

I have obtained some of my best resources from, and whole heartedly recommend, the following deviants among many many more (who I will add to this list over time)

Sirius-sdz galaxiesanddust gatetodreams
Tigers-Stock glassthroughskin Prince-of-airbrush
Lune-blanche allison731 TinaLouiseUk
mercurycode inadesign-Stock AledJonesStockNArt
infrablack_stock lilith-trash btchdirectioner
webtreats FantasyStock All Things Precious
ERA-7 Roy3D ElenaDudina
tralfaz Jean52 GraphicAssets
beckas wolverine041269
Javajunkie247 Bnspyrd
Carlton Elevit-Stock
TheSyanArt Sonarpos
Hehayo DiZa-74
WebTreatsETC darkadathea
jojo-ojoj Bellacrix
Foxy159200 FrostBo
rockgem redwolf518stock
BirdseyeStock aio350

Description
"Sakura" series

On Thanksgiving, My 82 year young mother asked me to please find her a small picture of her favorite bird - a red Cardinal. I decided to create one for her instead and give it to her as a gift

For the picture's central theme, I wanted to depict a small bird surviving life to live another day

In Japan, "Sakura" means "Cherry Blossom" and is culturally symbolic of the yearly arrival of Spring and the physical rebirth/spiritual renewel of life

So here is a small red bird who is all alone in a frozen world, awaiting.....

Sakura

base image photography credit: JapanTravel.com "Snow at Daigo Temple" by Cathy Cawood

Things grow - I am now developing the Sakura stills into an animation series

For Photoshop actions - I personally use and highly recommend actions created by

GraphicAssets on DA (sreda on Graphic River) &

Walllow (on Graphic River and yes that is THREE l's in the name)

I could not create my art without having access to and using a wide variety of "stock" resources such as textures, images, vectors, clip art, etc etc. I am constantly looking for new resources and getting rid of inferior ones from my utility collections. Like programmers say "GIGO"

To create the art you are looking at, I used the following:

1. my favorite graphics program "paintdotnet" which cost me the staggering amount of ......nothing. It is a free program.

2. For .eps files and vectors I use Inkscape - which rivals Illustrator and costs.............nothing.

3. materials and images which I either hand-create or they come from one of my "toolboxes" which are collections of the best stock resources that I can get my grimy little paws on

In my most treasured time tested "go to" toolboxes there are materials that I have obtained from some of the finest and most outstanding Stock Resource creators/suppliers in the world - I mean that literally. Over time, I have finally tracked down the best creators and suppliers and found out where they were located, which is why I joined Deviantart in the first place.

I have obtained some of my best resources from, and whole heartedly recommend, the following deviants among many many more (who I will add to this list over time)

Sirius-sdz galaxiesanddust gatetodreams
Tigers-Stock glassthroughskin Prince-of-airbrush
Lune-blanche allison731 TinaLouiseUk
mercurycode inadesign-Stock AledJonesStockNArt
infrablack_stock lilith-trash btchdirectioner
webtreats FantasyStock All Things Precious
ERA-7 Roy3D ElenaDudina
tralfaz Jean52 GraphicAssets
beckas wolverine041269
Javajunkie247 Bnspyrd
Carlton Elevit-Stock
TheSyanArt Sonarpos
Hehayo DiZa-74
WebTreatsETC darkadathea
jojo-ojoj Bellacrix
Foxy159200 FrostBo
rockgem redwolf518stock
BirdseyeStock aio350