taking steps to your dream…

Illustration I made using Illustrator and PhotoshopMy philosophy is that a positive outlook will bring you great things in life. If you have a negative mind set, then your head will be down and you will miss out on the chances life brings you. As long as you have a positive attitude and keep your chin up and your eyes and ears open for opportunities, then you will end up on the right track. By taking those opportunities you will be taking steps towards your big dream. Nothing will get accomplished if you just sit back on your heels and wait for life to happen to you.

Get out there and get moving – start doing, and pretty soon you’ll be doing something you love. To the world around you, it will look like everything suddenly fell in your lap, but they won’t see all the hard work, determination, and little steps that brought you to where you are. Now that you have your dream in your lap, it may or may not suddenly dawn on you how all those opportunities you took were little important steps that helped shape you. But this is just the beginning… now you can set real goals and prepare for an even bigger and better dream for yourself than you could have imagined!

It all starts with one little step… Botanical illustration I made using Illustrator and Photoshop

PS
I actually made this background image twice. The first time it looked more realistic, and then I redid it from scratch to give the picture a more artistic style.

To see the “before” illustration click here. To make the flowers look so realistic I used the live trace tool in Adobe Illustrator which essentially creates a vector out of a photograph for you. Then I played with blending and shading it in Photoshop.

The “after” illustration was made from scratch (I traced the photo myself using the pen tool, not the live trace option). I created the flowers using Illustrator, and then I brought the image into Photoshop to do the shading and add highlights. See the full finished version here.

Filed under: Inspiration.

3 Responses to “taking steps to your dream…”

  1. Claire says:

    Hey Kendra,
    Did you create this painting in photoshop or is a digitally enhance water colour?

  2. Kendra Smith says:

    I created the flowers using Adobe Illustrator, a vector program, and then I brought the image into Photoshop to do the shading and add highlights. I actually did the whole picture twice. The first time it looked really realistic, and then I redid it to give the flowers more of a watercolour quality. … I added a PS to my blog post so you can see the before and after.

  3. David Harper says:

    Kendra,

    This was a great post to read, brought "sun" flowers to my evening.

    Thanks

    David

Leave a Reply to David Harper