Unit 34

These are some of the images I have created using photshop tutorials.

This is an image I have created using multiple layers and effects such as colour dodge and overlay.

This is a poster I created using cutouts from magazines and placing them into photoshop to create a carnival poster.

After recieving feed back I created an improved image, focusing more on vocal points.

This is a collage of a few photos I collected on a walk to Hotwells.

This is a collage I made using summer images to create one collage.

I then made my own out of images I collected whilst on holiday.

This is an image made out of aindividual painted layers and layer effects.

This is an improved version including another strange creature.

Initial Proposal

This is some research I have collected on collages.

This is a research page based more on the main vocal points of a collage.

This is my first intial proposal on what I am planning to create.

These are some moodboard on the local woods and the main colours seen in these areas.

These are some possible textures I would like to use

This is a moodboard on different art styles

These are some of the images of the woods I have collected

These are some of my initial sketches of ideas for my collage.

For next week I will need to collect an image of hands, either a photo or find some images I can cut out and scan. I will also aim to either scan objects such as leaves and twigs in order to get a good textures to place on the top of the woodland landscape or the arms and hands.

This week I am going to edit and manipulate some of the images I have collected such as the arms and the trees. Im going to changes colours and maybe make the arms greysacaled.

Self Evaluation

Other images and textures.

Collages

These are some of the prototypes I created fro the two final collages.

Step by step

First I got an image of stained paper, then duplicated it and added curves to give a different affect. I then added another version of the original image on top of the curves and changed the opacity.

I then added two images of a rocky texture, both with varying opacity to let the stained paper texture still be seen.

I then placed a photograph I took of a few trees and put the lighten effect on to the image.

I then added a photograph of a red sky with birds flying across it. With this image I also put lighten on to it.

I then placed an image of a hand facing down. Before dragging it to this image I made the arm Grayscale. I then decided to use the pattern stamp tool to add a vine of foliage to the arm. I then needed to make sure the thumb could be seen on another layer so it could appear ahead of the trees, so i cut it out using the lassoo tool and cut it to a new layer as seen bellow.

I then placed the first tree I wanted to add. Making sure it was behind the thumb layer but infront of the rest of the hand.

I then added the image of the hand facing up, using the same technique as before. I then used the clone stamp tool to add a little more foliage to the bottom of the hand to add depth.

I then added a second tree doing exactly the same thing as with the other tree.

I then added an image I made of a few leaves blended together. I then decided to uase the clone stamp tool to add more of a tree leaf affect. I then duplicated the image to make the whole top of the tree covered.

Then using the burn tool I added a shadow shading affect to the leaves.

I then went around all the areas that needed shading or a darker colour using the burn tool.

After recieving feedback I got rid of the background of trees and a sky and made the red sky more more bold. I then added more vines to the arm and hand to give a more surreal look.

2nd Collage step by step

The first thing I did for this collage was get an image of a metal texture. I then changed the opacity and duplicated it.

I then added a second texture of a blue paint stroke. I then used linear burn and lowered the opacity.

I then duplicated the paint stroke and changed it to an overlay with 100% opacity.

I then added a grayscale image of my head. Using the lassoo tool I cut the top part of it open. The darker areas on the face are a later part of the work so at the moment it doesnt fit but later it does.

I then place the tree form my other collage and place it behind the open part of the head.

I then duplicated the tree to give a bigger and wilder affect. Then on a new layer I added shading behind the trees to give depth. I then went back to the metal and paint textures and using the burn tool I added a darker edge around all the images ahead of it.

I then duplicated the facial layers to give a darker and bolder affect.

I then added an image of a butterfly and placed it over the mouth. I also used greyscale for this image.

In a new layer i painted over the white parts of the butterfly in a darkish blue. I then changed the layers affect to colour so the blue would be painted into the butterfly.

I then added two images of grayscaled flowers and placed them over the eyes. I then used the burn tool to add a darker affect in the middle.

I then did what I did to the butterfly but with a red colour. I then duplicated the original flower images, placed them on top and changed them to overlay and added a low opacity.

Digital Artist Research and Critique

Jerry Uelsmann

Jerry Uelsmann is an American photographer and digital artist. He was born June 11^th 1934 in Detroit, Michigan. In 1967 Jerry was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship. Also in 1972 he was awarded a National Endowment for the Art Fellowship. Jerry is a founding member of The Society of Photographic Education. In 1994 Jerry was even more appreciated for his work by being inducted into the Florida Artist Hall of Fame.

One key feature I have noticed looking at all the work he has produced is that they are all black and white and this is an effect I enjoy, this makes it easy on the eye because some times when there is colour or too much of it, it is hard to make sense of what the picture conveys. Where as all the work I have seen is quite easy to understand the separate images put together.

Another key feature I have found is the blend of natural and built items cropped together. Such as the images of buildings or houses cropped into a tree stumps.

Also like the work I am producing a key feature with a lot of the art jerry has produced is hands holding something hands don’t usually hold or can’t hold.

One thing I have noticed is that the work is most likely created through using Photoshop. I think this because I have learned techniques to a basic standard of what I think have been used to create the images. Such as the blending in images could be achieved through using a layer mask. Or just simply placing an image on top of an other but spending time to make the blend correct.

In my opinion the art work Jerry has produced is largely based upon surrealist art work. The blend of realistic and strange impossible images make the work jerry has produced very surreal. The work Jerry ahs made is similar to other digital surreal artists such as Tommy Inberg and M J Ticcino.

In my opinion I think the art jerry has created will be enjoyed for a long time due to the unusual look of it. The surreal aspects add a lot of questions such as what is that? Why is it like that? Or where could that be? That is why I think the art will be enjoyed for a long time.

I enjoy the art work Jerry has created not only because of the questions that get raised when looking at it but the distinct style and the accuracy used when creating these pieces of art. You can see this when looking at his art you notice that although these two different objects are joined together they look like they are meant to be joined together. This has shown the amount of detail he really has gone into.

Design Report

For this unit we were asked to create two digital collages with the point of getting a message across. The message I have chosen to convey was nature but with a surreal twist. I wanted to use a range of resources such as photographs and scanned textures.

The first thing I did to achieve these targets was research existing digital collage using websites such as society 6. With the examples of the collages I collected I looked and took note of the main vocal points and how effective they were. This research gave me an idea of the work I’m aiming to get close too. I then started to draw some rough thumbnail sketches of the early ideas I had. 

Once I had a few sketches and a basic idea of the main images I wanted to create I went out to collect photographs at the local woods of trees, flowers and textures of soil and rocks. When I uploaded the images I started to manipulate them to get more ideas for my final collages. I then moved on to using some of the textures I found or downloaded to make an interesting background that doesn’t take the viewer away from the vocal points. Once I believed I had done this I moved onto adding some of the human aspects to the collage. 

An idea I had from the beginning was to make the arms and head black and white through using the grayscale tool on Photoshop. I then started to try out some different ways of adding the natural elements to the collage. I did this by adding different images of trees and bushes.

Once I had finished my first designs for the collages I received feedback on what I could improve upon. One of these things was to make the red collages background more of one colour other than having two. I was also asked to add a bit more foliage to the arms and hands holding the trees. For the other collage a few people mentioned that I should maybe add more colour to some of the black and white features like the flowers covering the eyes. To achieve these goals I used the colour tool to paint over the texture of flowers in a reddish colour to achieve a realistic look. I then also did this for the butterfly but this was coloured blue.

For the other collage I removed the background, which included the trees and bluish sky and then added more of the red texture I had in place. I then added more leaves by using the clone stamp tool. I did this too add an even more surreal take on the image.

After I made these changes I asked for more feedback on what they like and if I still had more to add or change. For the blue collage I received a lot of positive feedback due to the effective background. They said it was strong and appealing on the eye but it never took you away from the vocal points. I also received good feedback for the vocal points. The people I asked said they were very clear and affective.

For the red collage I also received a lot of good feedback saying the two different background textures worked well with each other and also like the other collage it does not take away from the vocal points.

Looking back at my work and thinking about what I could of created instead or to improve the existing collages with more time, I would of liked to have improved the look of the face and make it look more like a photo. Making the features of the face more defined and probably make the shading more precise. I would of also liked to get more specific textures from certain trees that weren’t available to me when I was gathering the resources. I would also like to experiment with white space because whilst doing so with my current designs it didn’t work well and looked very uninteresting. But overall I am pleased with the work I have managed to create whilst still learning how to use the software.

Luke Watters

lwgamesdesign.blogspot.co.uk