I spent two days and nights making this digital art piece, approximately 35 hours or more. It is the first one I've done on my new computer, with its 6 gigs of RAM and high octane processor. But I still ran into problems because in the Preferences fpr Photoshop, the maximum RAM that I'm able to allocate is 2 gigs. I did this but Photoshop was still running slow on this file, which at times ran upwards of 7 gigs!! (this is only 7% of its original size).

Late last night, after I had almost finished, the PSD file was bloated to more than 5 gigs and I hadn't yet merged some of the layers in order to bring it down to 2 gigs (which is the maximum that can be saved in Photoshop's PSD format). Well, the unthinkable happened. It was a Catch 22. I couldn't save because I wasn't ready to merge layers and I had to reduce the file down to 2 gigs in order to save it. I had worked since early morning. I've never known Photoshop to freeze, but it did, and shut down. My entire day's work was lost.

For about half an hour I was in shock and wondered if I should just forget the project. Then I decided to start all over again from scratch. The other version was completely different. Emina was in water and the background was completely different. Her dress was also completely different. Although it was a horrible experience, it turned out to be interesting seeing how the piece morphed into something so different from the first version. I think I like this one better, but I also really liked the mood of the other.

Tomorrow it's back to school (I had a week off). I've finished Term 2 and am beginning Term 3, taking New Media and Web Development, which includes design, Photoshop, Flash, After Effects, DVD authoring, etc. It's a great course but the course load is so heavy that I rarely have a moment to immerse myself in digital art.

I've used the face of the beautiful Emina, but the body is comprised of so many bits and pieces of images of my daughter Priya. I made the dress entirely in Photoshop. This is the original face that I used: www.flickr.com/photos/73629490@N00/76513874/ It was provided to me by Reiner1, who takes amazing photos.