Panda

I could not wait to blog about this Photoshop piece! I will get right into it!

The reason that I am so excited for this piece is because I did it entirely myself. I can't say the idea was absolutely original, but I followed one particular tutorial as a guideline. Additionally, a friend of mine suggested the idea for a panda, and I ran with it. I used shapes and the pen tool to complete the entire project. The only part that actually has a texture and an altered image, so to speak, is the lettering. This is different than a lot of my pieces, because most of them incorporate photo manipulation, whereas, I completely constructed this from scratch using just the pen tool, some Photoshop effects (such as the gaussian blur for highlights and shadows) , the tutorial, and my reference images. Below I will display what I used as reference.

The various reference gave me the ability to see where realistic shading would be, as well as the ability of how to make a realistic snout. As you can see, the third image provided me with the shape of the panda. If any of you are interested in doing the tutorial or trying to create your own fuzzy creature, the link can be found here: Tutorial

Story Book

This piece was one of my favorites to do because it taught me a lot about depth perception, something that I have struggled with before. This piece was also challenging because I had to find most of my own stock photos. As I have become more experienced with Photoshop, I like to test myself by finding my own images and seeing if I can use the tutorial as more of a guideline and follow along. This way I can have my own unique end product and work on bettering my artistic eye. When following a tutorial step by step and word for word, I find that I do not really learn anything about art and what looks "good", I am just going through the motions

This is the final product:

After looking back on this project now, having completed many more, I can almost instantly pick out areas that can be improved; however, I'm sure many of you would not pick out the same things!

I started this tutorial by inserting...

...these two pictures.





I transformed the wood picture to fit across the bottom of the canvas, and cropped the sky picture, so I just had clouds filling the top of the canvas. I also needed to darken the wood a bit to match the time of day, which is dusk.

I then worked my way through selecting the book, which can be a somewhat tedious process, but when done well, can look almost flawless. I then laid the book over the wood and worked on projecting a light shadow. The next and most time consuming part was the grass.

As shown in the tutorial, the grass needed to be warped down into the binding of the book, so that it actually looks like an open book. If I had just laid the grass across it, it would not have looked natural. It was difficult to cut the grass so that it perfectly outlined the top of the book. Once all that was done, the fun began. I enjoyed putting in the bench, lamppost, and road because those are the items that give the book the "pop-up" effect. Unfortunately, I cannot find my stock image of the bench, but rest assured, I spent an extremely long time selecting it from its original background.

The road was already mostly set up for me. I just needed to transform it a bit, and it naturally gives this nice illusion of fading off into the distance. When I put the lamppost in, I worked on brightening up the lights a bit so it looked like that it was turned on. I needed to match the shadow of the book to the shadow of the bench and lamppost. I was taught a few good tricks to make good shadows. It looks as though the lamppost is shining onto the bench. I do remember having to really match up the color/shade of the bench to fit in with the scene. I used the burn/dodge tool quite a bit for this project. Overall, I had really looked forward to doing this tutorial, and once I sat down to do it, I could not pull myself away. It was nice medium-length tutorial, and I just thought the concept was very interesting, which is something that I critique heavily when determing if I want to do a tutorial or not.

In case any of you are interested -- Story Book Tutorial

Bamboo Create!

I have my sights set on this in order to start some beginner paintings in Photoshop!

Bamboo Create

Starting at the Beginning

Just a quick post because I feel as though I have created this blog and then neglected it. I figured the best place to start is the at the beginning of my Photoshop adventures. These two images I am about to upload were my two very first projects, and as you will see I am a bit disorganized. I have no reference images for either of them. I actually completed the Vector Style magazine cover from scratch. I later learned that Illustrator is the best program for vector images. Both of these projects are also completely different from my current interests and my current pieces of work.

                                      Before                       After

The most noticeable change here is the wall. I spent a lot of time practicing using the clone tool (funny, I don't use it much now). I also practiced using the selection tool and changing the color of the shirt. This was a very simple project, but an extremely big step for me with getting to learn how to use the different tools. Lastly, I worked on maintaining the shadow that is holding the beer bottle.Once again, a big step for me because I needed to learn how to maintain real life (i.e. making it not look photoshopped). It is evident with other projects that when having a source of light, it is key to ensure that shadows are created, as well as bright spots when needed.

                                          Vector Magazine Cover

This is one of my favorite projects because it taught me how to use the pen tool. It also gave me a better foundation using and selecting objects. This project also had about 100 layers, so my organizational skills were definitely tested. However, I liked the concept of creating a project from scratch and not just manipulating photos (but I now love manipulating photos...). The pen tool has helped me immensely throughout my Photoshop endeavors. It is an aspect of Photoshop that should be learned, and unforunately, not many Photoshop professionals are savvy with the pen tool. I have a few projects where it is important to see my uses of the pen tool in creating custom shapes and selecting difficult images.

This post is it for now. Definitely more to come (school is busy). I have also started a new Photoshop project that I have been working on when time permits.

First Official Post - About the Background

It is exciting to finally have my blog up and running and to have my first official post. Discussing the creation of my background would probably appear to be a simple post, but it is not. I would like to comment and say that the background you see now was not my first idea. I actually got about an hour in to my first idea, realized it was not working and scrapped it. I was passing the time at work the other day, and the idea came to me. I have always wanted to do something with a phoenix, and this was exactly it! I used a total of 5 reference photos. I honestly had no idea which direction I wanted to go with the phoenix, but I decided most of the phoenix birds are displayed in vibrant colors with flowing tail feathers. I drew up an extremely simple sketch, and then the Photoshop work began. The reason this piece is my first post is because it means a lot to me. Most of my posts will be based on getting exposure and learning through the use of tutorials. This is probably my first real solo piece; therefore, how I got from scratch to background means a lot and took a lot of time. By doing my own background, it also enabled me to pull out my Photoshop knowledge when it came to doing certain things. I also learned some color theory...which was much needed. I'm going to insert my reference images and then explain a bit from there...

I knew I wanted the phoenix to have a bit of an abstract and glowing look. The difficulty really came in to play when trying to match up a vector image with translucent images. This was my base image:

Getting the phoenix the way I wanted it took a lot of back and forth with constant touch ups. I started out with a light, lilac background and then played with some blending modes to get the phoenix to fit. A great tool that I used was color range. I was able to select all of the black quickly and easily and make it a different color.

Next I worked on the trail from the tail and the wings (although the wings came later) using these two images:

 

Once again, I was able to use the color range to just select those nice, translucent strokes of blue. Then I changed it to a bit more vibrant magenta. However, the tail and the phoenix, at this point, were not cutting it for me. The tail needed that extra shine to make it really stand out and represent the fire from a phoenix. The image on the top was placed over the magenta trail and with another blending mode it gave the tail that shimmering glow (and made it even more vibrant!). Of course, erasures and touch-ups were needed. Now the phoenix was lost in its own tail's radiance.

These were the last two images I used. I just placed the stars under the phoenix to give it some more glow, once again using a blending mode (those really come in handy). Also, I placed the blue swoosh over and under the phoenix to give it some body and direction. I also used an effect to place an outer glow around the phoenix itself, just adding those extra touch-ups that make all the difference.

Some other finishing touches were the red spiked tip wings, as well as using the select tool with a feather, on those bottom tail feathers. I just gave them a vibrant purple with a slight fade effect to make them pop on top of their trailing counter part. As I mentioned, using the trails on the wings were a last minute touch that really brought the piece together. The phoenix was now surrounded by the trails and was able to become the focal point of the piece. The most challenging part of the piece was overcoming various obstacles. It takes time to use different tools to get it just right. It takes time to select different areas and play around with colors and see what works. Many times I went back to make changes to certain layers. This is why the piece ends up taking quite some time but is well worth it. Lastly, another struggle was getting it to fit properly on the blog. I had to make many changes to get it to blend appropriately, as well as look good on any computer screen.

This is only the first post of many! I will be providing a lot of my other work accompanied with links to various tutorials (if I still have them), as well as what I did to make the piece my own.