For my first visual assignment, I chose the one titled “Normal to Extraordinary”. Why? because I wanted to make fun of my best friend who I consider more of a sister than a friend.

INSPIRATION; The inspiration behind my choosing this assignment aside it being fun is my friendship with Araba who I like to call Misira. We’ve been friends for so long after a while we stopped counting. What makes this friendship so special is the moments we have shared together. For one thing, we share the common bond of being African Immigrants from Ghana  who have gotten the opportunity to school in the United States to make something meaningful out of our lives. We’ve seen each other through thick and thin, a lot of ups and downs and the the solid ground our friendship was built on has remained unshakable even through the tough times. What I love most about Misira is her compassionate nature, selflessness, humility and a high tolerance for my nonsense sometimes. LOL! Rarely do you meet people that you just feel so connected to within a short period of time. On the outside, she appears as an introvert and for the most part she is, get to know her and she is the most horrible joke teller(I mean that). Her personality is fun and that is why I chose a lot of bright colors for this assignment. She is fashionable as well, hence all the make up and touch ups.! I hope you enjoyed reading my inspiration for this assignment.

TOOLS NEEDED;

                             (a) Access to a computer( I used windows and so most of the instructions are catered to windows users, it shouldn’t matter though)

                            (b) Camera or a recent close up shot of a friend.

                          (c) Picasa and Picnik

TUTORIALS;

                   Step 1; Take a picture or upload picture of a friend onto picasa. Be sure to crop out every distracting background image to place emphasis on face.

                  Step 2; Upload picture onto Picasa and click on edit in picnik.

                 Step 3; When in picnik, go specifically to “Touch Up” which will be located towards the right of your screen on the top part.  Options will appear at the left hand side of your screen for you to choose from.

* Whatever you decide to do at this point is your choice but for the purposes of this assignment,I shall direct you according to what I did.

Step 4; Choose lip color according to your preference, remember the title of this assignment is “normal to extraordinary” and so the expectation is for you to go all out with bold and bright colors.

    Step 5; Repeat step 4 this time changing the hair color by clicking on “highlights”

Chose brush size  and fade out. Remember the lower the percentage of the fade out, the brighter the effects.

  Step 6;  Highlight the eyes by adding the mascara effects all located on the left corner.

Add blush to fade out blemishes

Even better? add a sunless tan, you would find it amazing how much these little effects dramatically affect the picture and help in the extraordinary transformation.

Step 7; Apply airbrush to some areas of the face, go all out, don’ t think too much, JUST DO IT!

Step 8; Apply “Insta thin” to make image look a little thinner than the original.

Step 9; Go to effects and choose… I chose the Boost effect because it highlighted the many bright colors I used.

Step 10; Save your work if satisfied with the changes, if not, you can always go back and add some more changes.

Step 11;  Copy and paste into windows paint, align images side by side to show the effect. When saving, remember to save it in JPEG format. It works better for me.

Hopefully you found my tutorials easy to follow and stress-free.