Church Logo

Can I come out from my hiding place now? I feel like I've been carrying around the weight of this "craft" project for a really long time now. And few of you will even know what this thing could possibly be. Oh well, this gives me a chance to explain!
I was not chosen to be the team artist for my church retreat group. However, when the woman who was chosen had to leave the job half way through, I took over. And thus, you see the results. This is the logo for the upcoming church retreat. The original artist, Kathleen, did the bird and hand part and I added the leaves and branches. And I did a lot of the computer technical parts.

It's not really a craft project I realize. But it is an art project that has been snagging a lot of my time that I usually reserve for crafting. As the retreat date draws closer, I'm sure I'll be showing off some more retreat crafting projects! Get excited!

I did most of the art for this logo on Gimp, which I believe a blogged about a while ago, but is a freeware photo manipulation software that I have downloaded for my laptop. I have nothing but good things to say about Gimp considering that it does all the stuff that I normally do using Photoshop, but is completely free. It's also quite easy to use, though I really ought to get a mouse for my laptop for these kinds of projects. The touch pad thing for your fingers is really tough to use for selecting specific regions. That's a personal problem, not a software one. I did have to shout out for help from my coworker and complete computer graphics guru Eric. He helped with the feathering on the outside of the blue circle.

I'm so glad to be emerging from this project! I get kinda stressed out about digital art projects. I feel like you can always find more ways to enhance the digital files, so the toughest part of a digital project is saying "done!" I am apt to "gild the lily" as it were and keep messing with things until it looks overdone. I hope that this one is simple and dignified yet technically decent. That's all I'm shooting for here folks.