Wallpaper: Constant Dripping Wears Away a Stone

I made a wallpaper to go with an email mentorship session I'll be emailing to my folks in the next week or so (I try to do one each month).

Here's the final image (click image for full size):
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And if you just want the blue by itself:
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The proverb reads: 水滴石穿, 绳锯木断 or "Constant dripping wears away a stone.  If you keep using a small string you can cut down a whole tree." with the implied meaning of "through perseverance, any goal can be reached over time."

This was done in Blender:
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And after some post processing in GIMP:
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I also made this version, but it's too bright for a regular wallpaper (made in Blender, click for full size):
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Technicals:
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The blue background is just a plane with a noise texture added to it.  The text was actually converted to an SVG in Inkscape, then brought into Blender since Blender doesn't seem to directly support UTF-8 input.  The clock was a royalty-free SVG file I found on [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]  A duplicate of each was made and raised slightly higher and given a smaller offset and bevel.  A lattice was used on each to give it a nice curve to get some bling shots off the black-and-white HDRI environment texture.  The image was rendered in Cycles at 1,000 samples just for good kicks.  The blue background and the rest were rendered on separate layers so I could post process the text without making unwanted changes to the blue background.

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Once all the elements were brought into GIMP, I duplicated the text layer and made it a complimentary color to the blue background (which was a orange-ish color) using Colors > Colorize, then set to dodge and lessened the opacity.  The clock and the text were then split into two layers, so I could make the shadow go left on one and right on the other.  I then made a lesser shadow to go the opposite direction to simulate Ambient Occlusion.  I duplicated the blue background and set the layering mode to doge and 60% opacity to make it a little bolder than it was.  Next, a vignette from the gradient tool with an offset of 60 was added.  Finally, a couple of subtle flares (Filters > Light and Shadow > Lens Flare), and it was all set.

I hope you all like it!

Very cool... and interesting. I'm supposed to be working on a logo for a friend this week. I'll be sure to (if it's ok with him) post what I come up with! Anyway, for me, this was very timely! Thanks for sharing.

I really like the second wallpaper. The grays and the simplicity of it are quite nice and I can imagine it as some sort of fine print ad.