Happy Birthday Q

More Birthday wishes, this time I am thinking of my “little buddy,” Q. Q is one of my cats and the reason I have him is because he was born on my birthday 8 years ago today. Q is one of the most interesting cats I’ve ever met. He is a bit psycho, a bit neurotic, and perhaps has a bit of multiple personality disorder thrown in for good measure.

I attempted to capture a bit of Q’s personality in this piece. I started with one of my favorite photos of Q and processed it a couple times in Photoshop using a few layers. One layer I simply made grayscale and added some film grain to make it a bit edgy, just like Q. Then I took another layer, also grayscale, and just adjusted the levels a bit. I then masked that layer with a big bold letter ‘Q.’ I also applied some inner and drop shadow effects to make it stand out better from the grainy edgy layer. The shadowing effects inadvertently gave the letter ‘Q’ a bubbled effect, kind of neat. I then added hue adjustments to each layer for added effect and to help further separate the two layers visually. Finally I took the original, color image and masked out everything but his eyes, which are, after all, the windows to the soul. Here ‘Q’ looks a bit like a tough guy which is funny because he is really not a tough guy.

Happy birthday little buddy! You are one of my best birthday gifts ever.
See you all tomorrow.
Sean