Sorry for the late post this week.  It has taken me a while to catch up on things because of the long weekend.

This week's wallpaper is a tribute to General George S. Patton, the famous commander of the U.S. 3rd Army during WWII.  In this piece General Patton salutes members of the Third Army prior to delivering his famous Blood and Guts speech on the eve of the Allied invasion of France in 1941.  This piece is a portrayal of that moment as depicted by Franklin J. Schaffner's 1970 Academy Award winning film "Patton."

I designed this mockup some time ago for a political consulting agency.  This design never went into development but I still thought the design was nice so I decided to replace the content with placeholder text and post it here.

I just returned from vacation in Puerto Vallarta.  I had a great time!  It was so relaxing to be away from everything.  The weather was perfect, the beach was beautiful and the people were very nice.

Being on a beach gave me an opportunity to do something that I've wanted to do for quite a while; assemble a collection of sand and water textures.  I spent a little of each day walking around with my Canon S3 IS taking pictures of various objects and after all was said and done, I took over 400 photos. 

More information after the jump.

I just got back from my vacation in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.  It was nice being away but I'm happy to be home.  This is a photo I took by the beach at dusk.  I spent quite a bit of time taking some texture photos while I was away so expect to see some really great freebies on the site very soon.

Well, I'm on vacation in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico right now.  It's been a long trip so I'm trying to take it easy tonight so I can hit the beach pretty hard tomorrow, the next day and the next day after that.  I brought my small tripod along with me on this trip so I thought it would be a nice opportunity to take a few pictures of the beach at night.  Anyhow, this is the view from my hotel room overlooking the pool.  I'm going to try and take some cool beach photos over the next few days.  If they come out well, I'll add them as textures for you to download in the freebies section.

This week's wallpaper of the week is a recreation of one of my more popular pieces titled "There's No Place Like Springfield."  Springfield was an experiment in colors that I designed early in the year.  Hopefully you guys will enjoy it.

"American Hero" is the latest in my series depicting American heroes.  In my last three pieces I paid tribute to General George S. Patton who famously commanded the American 3rd Army during WWII.  In this piece I decided to pay tribute to Senator John McCain who is currently running for President of the United States. 

I designed this piece some time ago.  It was a low resolution experimental piece so I chose not to post it at the time based on the fact that I couldn't really print it at a high resolution.  The more I looked at it however, the more I liked it so I decided to post it.  It reminds me of strawberries for some reason, hence the name.

In this piece, I wanted to see what would happen if I formed some glass-like elements into a spiral. This original document was created as a 24 x 24 inch document but I scaled it down to 18 x 24 for the online version. Needless to say each file save took nearly five minutes.

This is a website that I designed and built for an organization in Kentucky called Kentucky Consumers for Energy Competition (KCEC).  KCEC is a non-profit organization made up of large and small businesses, organizations and residential consumers who want choice in their natural gas suppliers.

This piece was an experiment with some of my earlier techniques creating glass-like objects.  I've been spending a lot of time lately working on the new website so I haven't had much time to experiment with new artistic techniques but this technique is certainly worth following up on.

After a lot of hard work, I'm finally ready to announce the launch of my new website!  The site finally started to come together last week after having to switch my hosting plan to allow for an upgrade to Movable Type 4 (my blogging software).  Once that was done it was just a matter of implementing my new design and gathering together all my artwork.

I developed Colorburned.com as a means to showcase my artwork, share my thoughts on current design trends, and from time to time, offer some unique design resources and tutorials to other designers.

In celebration of Colorburned Studios' first week as a fully-functioning blog, I'm releasing a second set of wallpapers today.  Today's bonus wallpaper is based on another one of my favorite designs.  My rendering of a transparent glass-shaped flower was the result of the intersection of a number of techniques that I developed in Photoshop.  I found the final result of those techniques to be a breathtaking piece of art.  If you feel the same way, feel free to download this wallpaper in any of the 4 different resolutions below, or if you own an iPhone, download the iPhone version.

AiBurn posted part II of my two part tutorial explaining how to create an animated three dimensional poker chip today.  In part I, you learned how to create the chip itself, in part II, you will learn how to animate that poker chip and export it to flash.  To view Part II, click on the following link: Part II: Create an Animated 3D Poker Chip.

This week's wallpaper is based on one of my favorite designs.  Equidistant was an experiment in shapes and colors.  It quickly rose above the rest of my designs as one of my favorites.  It also spawned its sister designs Equilateral and Blood Diamond.  You may download this wallpaper in 4 different resolutions as well as for your iPhone.

AiBurn just posted the first of my 2 part tutorial explaining how to create an animated 3 dimensional poker chip.  In part 1, you'll learn how to create a 3 dimensional poker chip.  In part 2, we will learn how to animate that poker chip and export it to flash.  To view my first tutorial click on the following link Part 1: Create an Animated 3D Poker Chip.

This should be the first of many tutorials that I will write.  I hope you enjoy them!

This piece was a result of a couple adjustments that I made to the earlier glass flower that I designed.  In this piece I wanted the flower to have some more transparent elements.

This breathtaking piece was a result of a combination of a few techniques that I developed creating floral and glass patterns.

This is the first in my series adding complex elements to basic shapes.  I really like how the shapes in the center interact with each other.  I am also very happy with the border and center flare.

This is the second in my new series experimenting with new types of basic shapes.  In this piece I used an equilateral triangle as the base shape.  I also extrapolated on some of the techniques that I developed in an earlier design; adding some textures and additional lighting.

Blood Diamond is the third in my series using basic shapes.  I loved the look and style of the original piece that I designed and before I began branching off to do other things I wanted to first master the three basic shapes; circle, square and triangle.  Well, I didn't do a square because I felt that a diamond was a more compelling shape to work with.  In the future I want to experiment with combining more shapes and elements to see what happens.

A salute is a gesture, often made by the hand, used, to display respect.  In Franklin J. Schaffner's 1970 Academy Award winning film "Patton", General George S. Patton, played by George C. Scott salutes members of the Third Army prior to delivering his famous "Blood and Guts" speech on the eve of the Allied invasion of France in 1941.  This piece is a portrayal of that moment.  It was designed using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

This was the second piece in my series depicting WWII hero General George S. Patton.  General Patton, who commanded the famous Third Army during WWII was famous for carrying a flashy ivory, handled .45 caliber Colt Single-Action revolver.  The inspiration for this piece was derived from Franklin J. Schaffner's 1970 Academy Award winning film "Patton."

Standing in front of a massive American Flag, General George S. Patton salutes members of the Third Army prior to delivering his famous Blood and Guts speech on the eve of the Allied invasion of France in 1941.  This piece is a portrayal of that moment as depicted by Franklin J. Schaffner's 1970 Academy Award winning film "Patton."  It was designed using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

This was the first of my series paying tribute to American hero General George S. Patton. 

I derived the title for this piece from an episode of one of my favorite cartoons growing up, G.I. Joe.  For some reason, this episode terrified me.  During the episode, some of the characters melted away like wax.  For some reason that image stuck with me.  After I designed the piece, I thought of it immediately.  Surprisingly, this piece became one of my post popular designs.

This beautiful and colorful design is a continuation in my series of glass art textures.  The first piece I did using this technique was also one of my all time most popular pieces of art.

When I started this piece, I was wanting to design a composite piece.  I pictured a girl dancing in the foreground with some shapes swirling in the background.  As it turns out, I never found a suitable photo of a dancing girl, so instead I'm just posting the backdrop which is still pretty cool.

This is another experimental pattern.  This time I wanted to see how shapes moving in random perpendicular directions would interact with each other.

This was an experimental piece I designed using some new techniques that I developed dealing with basic shapes.

This is a vector self portrait of myself.  I based this drawing from a photo of myself.  I used Adobe Illustrator to then trace and color myself. 

Fashion sketching is an important step in all phases of garment creation.  It serves as a roadmap for fabric and color selection as well as the actual construction of the garment.  For the most part, fashion sketches are done by hand by talented artists and designers but many designers also use Adobe Illustrator to refine their sketches.  This sketch was my second attempt at refining a hand drawn sketch.

As you may notice, I don't have any freebies on my site just yet.  My first priority is to get all my artwork online and then get my site working the way I'd like it to.  Once that happens, I will use this section to share some of my artwork as downloadable backgrounds for your computers and mobile devices.  I also plan to release some unique artwork and resources for graphic designers to use in their own work.

This is one of my all time favorite pieces.  I love how all the shapes and colors interact with one another.

For some reason this piece reminds me of Star Wars.  It reminds me of some of those infinitely long falls that seemed to occur so frequently in those films.

In this starburst I embedded the shape of a flower.

I was attempting to design a new logo for this site.  Somehow this design happened by accident.

This piece was inspired by one of my recent trips to New York City.  I've been taking quite a few trips up there lately and this piece kind of made itself while I was working with some simple 3D shapes.  

This was my fourth and (probably) final attempt at replicating retro artist James White's technique.  It's been a great learning experience trying to figure out how he gets very basic shapes to interact in such an incredible way.