Self-Portrait

I can't say I took a very organized approach to this project, it emerged. The brick wall background was an image off the internet. It already had the bike sculpted into it, and I had planned to use some kind of bike image anyway, so it seemed like an obvious choice. I looked it up again to find the original source of the image, but it's disappeared. I can't find it anywhere. I did discover in working with the layer blending panel that I can achieve the same effect by taking the opacity way down and applying the extrude and bevel feature. I used the mixer brush to paint the dog from an image I downloaded off the internet as well. Of course it occurred to me after the fact that I should have just used one of my own dogs, but I like the way this dog looks anyway. The fish are from otattoos.com, and are a tribal tattoo design. The shoes were painted using the mixer brush from a photo I took of my orange Chucks, then I applied the watercolor effect to them. The layer was blended using the multiply setting. I like Chuck Taylors, I have them in different colors, and I have a custom pair that I designed myself. They've become my signature footwear and generally personify any 'style' that I might have. The bubbles are from kaaz.eu, a site offering free underwater wallpaper. I used the pen tool on the wall to create a selection, then pasted the bubbles inside. I like all things water: the ocean, a river, a swimming pool. I just feel better when I'm in or near water. I was also trying to give the fish some kind of context. The welder chick was created with the mixer brush from a scan I did of a sticker that someone gave me back in my welding days. Her layer has an overlay blend and a drop shadow. For the text, or my 'tag' if you will, I used a font called graffonti.3d.drop that I downloaded from dafont.com. The word 'mutt' has two references which have meaning for me: one being to the mixed breed canine who I love to champion; and the other a tip of the hat to Marcel DuChamp, who used the signature R.Mutt on some of his work.