New Technique: How to Blend in Photoshop.

Blending is all about the 'Option' key on a Mac, and the 'Alt' Key on a PC.
What the Key does is change the color to the color that is on the page. So if a brush is set to change opacity with pressure and slowly becomes more transparent the color can be changed to match.
Also the 1- 9 keys will slowly change the transparency on a color.

With continually using the Option/Alt key to slowly change the transparency of the color, one can blend colors together a bit.

Also a good thing to do is to go into the actual eyedropper tool, and change the "Sample Size" to 3 by 3 Average, which gives a bit better sampling of the colors.


Result Example:

New Techniques:  Actions in Photoshop.

Actions can be used to create sets preferences that can be enabled with just a key stroke. This can be used to create realistic brush strokes set with preferences a the touch of a single key.

Example:

• Actions Window: Record
• Create new Layer
• Create Layer Style
• Select Bevel and Emboss
• Select desired preferences (Less Depth, Chisel Soft Technique, Highlight Mode Color [warm highlight color, cool shadow color] Opacity of Highlights and Shadow)
• Actions Window: Stop

Result Example:

So now we can easily create a painting with a lot of simple texture. This was just my 3 minute test sample and it looks like I can use this to make a brush texture for later from last Technique.

New Technique: Making Brushes, and Making Texture for Brushes

 New Technique: How to make a brush.

According to Bro Burr, the preset brushes in Photoshop SUCCCKK. So the first thign we are doing period is making all our own brushes.


New Technique: How to make texture for brushes.

• Take a picture or create an image in a 10x10 inch square, 
• Turn the image into grayscale image, 
• Merge down to one layer.
• Edit ->Define Pattern. Name it something relevant.
• Note: Patterns slow down Photoshop a LOT!  Solution - Assign the pattern to a brush, which will save the pattern (ie: Gesso brush), then delete the pattern. The brush will keep the pattern but will not slow down Photoshop.
  

Homework: Create 6 different panels that will be useful for my brushes using that technique.

Texture Pic I took in class to turn into an interesting texture.

Assignment: Apple with Layers

Assignment: 10x10in, must have 3 Layers, Only an apple.

It took me a rather long time working on this to get it here. I'm rather proud of it for my level of ability but I could easily work on this for another 20 hours. Still, I hope you enjoy.

I got the concept from a friend who was in another art class doing a sculpture. That said I believe I was able to take the concept and make it mine. I wanted the effect to be a bit subtle, but I don't think the .jpg compression has done me any favors. Still we'll see how noticeable it is considering I've been staring at it for 4 hours now. Now just to find me a Jewish Princess with a midget entourage to offer it too.

Version 1:

Critque: So far it looks like my style was successful, but we didn't like the skull. So I'll make it even more subtle and work a bit with my colors.

Version 2 (Final):

In hindsight, I realized after getting rid of 90% more of the skull that I lost a lot of valuable texture, so I had to go back in and re-add a few parts where the skull was to maintain the appearance of texture but still keep things looking more like an apple.  I also lightened my reflected flare a bit and added a bit more color into the left side. This is the result.

Assignment: Copy a Master - Vitruvian Man

Homework: Copy a master artist in photoshop using homemade pencil tools, and notify professor at byui.

So I chose da Vinci's Vitruvian Man to do for my first assignment and OH MY GOOD GOSH, I LOVE drawings things digitally!! I enjoyed this so much, I'm tempted to do some of da Vinci's other sketches. It still took me a few hours to produce, especially since I tried to copy many of da Vinci's orginal pencil strokes. We'll see how this develops if I choose to do more of them.

Anyrate it's below, enjoy!

Original

Version 1

Critque: I'm lacking color. I could do a lot with the actual color of the strokes which were done in a brownish type of Ink.


Updated Version: I did this for my critque. I was quite proud of it. I was asked to add color and make it feel more 'inky'. I did QUITE a bit to this to achieve an ink look. I first took the layer and created a color overlay on my first layer, and made it a dark brown. This made all my marks brownish, but then they became rather too light. So I took the old image and added it to another layer creating a second dual drawing to darken the brownish look. I then added two other layers which I toned down their opaque level in the main layer options. One layer I made a red/brown, the other a yellowish to give it an aged inked effect with the opaqueness. This is the end result. I'm happy with some of the yellow strokes so I might go back and see if I can soften them so they don't look so apparent.

Welcome to my new Art blog.

The purpose here is to create a location for my mistakes and publicly post them while I go through the process of learning in my art classes. Most of the work here will be seperate of my previous work, though I may decide to change that at some point. So this is especially for my Digital Illustration class at BYUI.edu and all things will be done through Photoshop.

I call my unique brand of art style: "Dyslexic, half blind, three year old on near by kitchen wall while standing on one leg". Lets hope it improves as I gather more from our class about how to correctly use the tools we have.