SLOTH ART

I am so very not a detail person, as is clear by the often-sloppy and frustratingly-varied nature of this blog. It is one of my many failings, which I generally ignore by putting in a file drawer called "MY MANY FAILINGS" and only bring out maybe a couple times a year to stare at and never do anything about. It is something like an obligatory visit to a relative's unattractive infant -- you take a look, try not to cringe openly, then try not to think about it or worry that it will only get uglier/worse. My lack of discipline and attention to the minute has surely cost me in many ways. I can go into that mode if I must. But then I seem to get grumpy and have to fight the strong urge to fling myself away from the source of intense focus and perfection to go giggle at someone's mullet or something. I like to do a lot of different things, all not that well, like a mediocre Renaissance woman whose Wiki entry would deem "competent but flaky." However, sometimes in a small or big way, my failings sort of work for me, which is really kind of a plus and therefore not a "FULL FAIL," those of which are kept in an underground early-60s Cold War bomb shelter in Lodi, Wisconsin.

I got to thinking about this topic today in the most random way, which is always how I approach this blog. MissSeven makes a ton of art, and lately she has been making her own paper dolls with paper doll outfits, which I find incredibly cute and normal. I wondered then if I could somehow make a digital paper doll for her to color/dress via Photoshop. Here's where I start to get into trouble. I have Photoshop, but I use it somewhat like a chimp in a lab. Too impatient to read and follow online tutorials or look at the books I bought about it, I just stab at projects until something happens that I like or something terrible happens and I close the program in banana-crushing anger. This is really silly. I should be expert at this. I am not a slow adult and it would be a really useful thing if I could use Photoshop fluidly. But nooooooo. Anyway, I started looking around for how to do this paper doll thing, after selecting a charming photo self-taken by Tavi from her remarkable blog Style Rookie. Tavi is 13 years old and is way more interesting than you or me or certainly a Photoshopping chimp. She is also way more fashionable, which is why I thought she would make a perfect paper doll for MissSeven. Here is her photo from an October 2009 entry from Style Rookie:



I imported it into Photoshop, did a terribly sloppy job of removing the background, and then removed the color and messed around with the contrast and lightness:



I messed around some more and figured out pretty quickly that I didn't have the patience nor skill to make a proper paper coloring doll as I had envisioned. I could have spent a few hours learning to do that, but decided that I would rather take a shower and eat a poached egg and a turkey sausage instead. The curious chimp in me did decide to keep poking around with the image because I liked it. From there we went into the Filter bank, finally settling on Neon Glow:



OOH. Her vest looks like it sparkles, and I love the color. So now what? Hmmm. I went back into my iPhoto, looking for a background to place the newly cropped, removed, desaturated, and neoned Tavi. Ah ha! I found a photograph from the Puyallap Fair with me standing next to some wonderful and garish carnival ride mural. Crop me out, saturate the color, add one Tavi:



Hey now! That looks COOL! I like it! So, because I am a sloth, I have no paper doll to give MissSeven but I have a pretty picture to give you that I didn't have yesterday, and I don't have to go to Lodi. All is well.