New to the board enjoy reading

[UVsaturated]

Hey all, I am new to this board.  I was raised Christian but have found my own sense of spirituality and do not label myself under a religion.  I call myself gnostic meaning I understand what I feel is God telling me what is true and I do not rely on listening to preachers inside a church.  I feel that God should have access to each individual within their own conscious, and that you find truth within yourself and not outside of yourself.

Anyway, many atheists whom I respect have helped me establish my belief system in that I admire the critical thinking that has been applied to Christianity.  Christians simply do not want to answer the hard questions because it demolishes their faith.

So with that, I joined this board for two reasons.  One is that I plan on reading the commentary and ideas and two I believe in giving back.

I am an artist and developing my own sense of style and humor.  I thought I would drop this image here for anyone to use.  I have copyrighted works, but for the most part I love to create photoshopped comedy on a daily basis and send it out to friends and the world, because they make statements about how I feel about things.

So enjoy this one folks, and I do take requests:

[Recusant]

Welcome to Happy Atheist Forum, UVsaturated.

I really like that image.  As an infidel, it's hard to decide who to root for in that particular battle royale, let alone make odds on the outcome.

[curiosityandthecat]

I'd put my money on the guy with the giant balls.

Welcome.

[UVsaturated]

Now that I am admiring my work, I have to admit that Jesus looks like he is trying to remember someone's phone number or maybe he is about to clear his sinuses.  ??

Anyway, I would probably pay to see a match like that.

[Phillysoul11]

Welcome :nerd:
How long you been into art? pretty abstract question  

[VanReal]

Hi and welcome!

[UVsaturated]

Welcome :nerd:
How long you been into art? pretty abstract question  

Well actually I do not use Photoshop.  It's expensive and frankly, it is a total rip off.  People think that because it is so costly that it must be really good and produce good high quality results, but not so.  

It takes a good eye, and talent to paint and blend things in a painting or portrait and digital software takes away some of that skill, but there is a difference between someone who uses a piece of software to do their work and someone who can actually paint and draw and not just copy and paste things into a photo editor.

I use GIMP, which is exactly the same thing as photoshop.  Photoshop costs $700.  GIMP is free with no additional bullshit software added to it - totally open sourced.  Here is a link:  http://www.gimp.org/

To really get good results, you need to do away with the mouse and get a tablet, which is a flat pad with a hand held pen that is much more ergonomic because you are used to writing with a pencil or pen anyway.  So you can paint with a tablet, and I use a cheap 4x6 made by Wacom.  It's around $100.  

With that, you can actually paint digital pictures the same way an artist would with an easel and stand, but you don't have to buy paints or media, or wait for the fricken paint to dry, and you have virtually millions of colors to work with.  Plus you can get creative and do shit that you can't do with a canvas, like cut and paste photo images and blend them in.

Here is a work I have for sale that I did in about a week on a 6 year old XP system with a $100 tablet and GIMP.



I call that one Cindy Does Fallujah

I have a website where I am trying to sell my stuff, but that's not entirely why I am posting here.  Atheists may not believe in God and I never had a hard time with that because I have never believed it was my job to be my brothers keeper until I took care of my own ideals, but since I have I feel like I can share with you all my sentiments on Christianity through my art and whatever.  I really think things are changing fast in the world right now and a lot of people are getting scared because the foundations of what they have based their belief systems on has been totally wrong and they have been blind.  Therefore, if through my art and comedy I can make people day better and make them smile thats fine with me.  I have a lot of comedy snippets I create on a whim that people can use to post in emails or whatnot that I don't copyright - just free hilarity, and some better works that I intend to sell to earn a living, and thats all I ask out of life really.

Here's my website if you're interested:
http://benanderson.ning.com/photo/album/list

Perhaps some atheists could give me some ideas and suggestions on some paintings I could do to get certain points or themes across??

[Phillysoul11]

Well actually I do not use Photoshop.  It's expensive and frankly, it is a total rip off.  People think that because it is so costly that it must be really good and produce good high quality results, but not so.  

I use GIMP, which is exactly the same thing as photoshop.  Photoshop costs $700.  GIMP is free with no additional bullshit software added to it - totally open sourced.  Here is a link:  http://www.gimp.org/

Heresy!
But really, GIMP is a nice basic program for digital painting, but it doesn't hold a candle to any recent version of Photoshop. People use Photoshop for much more that digital paintings

you have some nice art, keep it up.

[VanReal]

I think Cindy should have a tat.  

[UVsaturated]

GIMP is a nice basic program for digital painting, but it doesn't hold a candle to any recent version of Photoshop. People use Photoshop for much more that digital paintings

Perhaps, I have never used photoshop because of the expense, but I can imagine it can automate things to a degree, but where is the fun or skill in that??

Seriously though do you use photoshop or where do you get your information.  Is it firsthand or is it something that you have heard?

[UVsaturated]

I think Cindy should have a tat.  

[VanReal]

I think Cindy should have a tat.  

I do see it over there, didn't notice that at first.  Let me guess, is it "Where's Waldo?"

[Tanker]

I think Cindy should have a tat.  

We do have some muslim and former muslim posters so it might not remain a secret forever. Welcome to our forum, the more view points the richer the forum as I always say and by always I mean just now and this is the first time, regardless welcome.

[Phillysoul11]

Perhaps, I have never used photoshop because of the expense, but I can imagine it can automate things to a degree, but where is the fun or skill in that??

Seriously though do you use photoshop or where do you get your information.  Is it firsthand or is it something that you have heard?

[/quote]
gimp is about as helpful as MSpaint when it comes to web design, its only useful for digital painting and basic photo editing IMO. Other than that its just a dressed up MS paint. You can get lots of discounts for adobe products these days, I bought adobe creative suite (after effects, illustrator, photoshop, indesign, dreamweaver, and flash) CS4 for 320$ from my university with a student discount. I would highly recommend checking adobe out, they are hands down the best in the business right now. I have been using photoshop for around 4 years, doing freelance work for some companies. Some small, some large. Mostly small things like logos, and basic website design but nothing to difficult. What about yourself?

[UVsaturated]

gimp is about as helpful as MSpaint when it comes to web design, its only useful for digital painting and basic photo editing IMO. Other than that its just a dressed up MS paint. You can get lots of discounts for adobe products these days, I bought adobe creative suite (after effects, illustrator, photoshop, indesign, dreamweaver, and flash) CS4 for 320$ from my university with a student discount. I would highly recommend checking adobe out, they are hands down the best in the business right now. I have been using photoshop for around 4 years, doing freelance work for some companies. Some small, some large. Mostly small things like logos, and basic website design but nothing to difficult. What about yourself?

Well that actually makes me happy.  I don't know where you quoted that from, but it means to me that a lot of these so called professionals have to use all that expensive software to create digital effects which are easy to pick out to a keen eye.  I think GIMP is a far cry from MSpaint but I see your point.  I know for illustration work adobe is probably the way to go, but I am finding shortcuts to doing a lot of things that adobe has packaged in their software.  I guess it just depends on the user and what they want to shell out.  I think for the average user, GIMP is great way to get started without the expense.