Finishing Up Photoshop Week 3

I used a floral background texture from my sketchbook and placed it with my illustration. 

After playing with it a while, i decided i wanted her skin to keep the texture and the background to be something else as it felt too 'twee' to be left on its one as a final image. 

 These 2 images (blue on leaves and purple on leaves) were the finished products of playing around with the layers. I used colourise and hue on the blue one because it felt too loud when it had a green back ground with my notebook texture and drawing on top. The second image is using contrast colours of green and purple. My notebook texture is barely visible in this one, it just adds to the contrast in the purple bits. It looks highly digitalised and I'm not sure I like it but I think its really interesting to look at as many of the facial details have been taken away. I also like the two colours together, it made the drawing more edgy than it was before. 

 These 3 are all other finished designs, I really liked my red woman from last week, so I've chosen that as one of my finals. I decided to go back to the original untextured version of that to insert my notebook texture, I then proceeded to erase the texture from her skin so it was more block colour and so the texture just stuck to the background. I also touched up some of the colour (which is noticeable when you look at the original circle lady vs the notebook circle lady) and changed the opacity so its more gentle and pastel (which suits the flowers more I think).

Photoshop skills

I really enjoyed the photoshop tutorial this week, I've often struggled in the past getting to grips with the 'Mac' way of doing it, as I've previously learnt it on windows and learning it in 'mac' really confuses me. This week we did really simple things which were easy for me to memorise. 

I chose a image I'd made earlier on the week before and scanned it into photoshop, we talked about how you should always try to scan it in 300dpi minimum as it would look pretty bad otherwise. 

We all got shown how to adjust a photo if we'd taken a picture of it rather than scanned it in and I found that useful (although I nearly always scan it in, it's always handy to know). We got told how to change the perspective, lighting and colour of the photo so it almost looked like a scanned in image. Out of all the things I learnt I found the perspective the hardest one to figure out so I will definetly be retrying that one in the future. 

I learnt how to use the healing tool properly and how to get it to match the background, (also learning that the brush tool is better to use to wipe out big mistakes rather than smudge it around with healing tool). 

After some playing around I chose these 2 as my favourite images I made, the above one because it kept the texture of the page but I cleaned up the ink blots.

This one above as it looks almost digitalised and so different to the original drawing (see an earlier post). I also learnt to change the black to pure black and white to pure white which is great as I have never learnt that in the past. 

Photoshop skills - COLOUR

Today we learnt how to change the colours of our images and how to use the selection tools properly. 

I chose my old lady from last week (the clean digital version) to work with because I thought it would be easiest. I then started to select different parts of her to colour in. The hardest part of today was probably remembering to create a new layer each time (so you can change the colour without having to do it all again.) 

Then I experimented with placing shapes behind her, this I found quite hard to remember how, and I struggled with the opacity and getting the picture how I wanted it. Eventually I got it how I wanted it. I also added colours to the swatch so I could go back and get them faster. 

Then I experimented with hue and saturation and the colourise box. I also brought in a fabric layer, which I found easier to do than expected. I decided to match the hue to the circle behind her head and so the whole image was mahogany. I found today really helpful because it was all explained to me in a really easy way and I had time to write things down and play with it. I think its important to make mistakes on photoshop so you can learn how to rectify them and it was good that we learnt how to do that. 

Drawing from Observation

As well as reference drawing I also had a go at observational drawing. I found it much easier to draw from an object rather than a picture as it was easier to translate an object I was seeing infront of me than one on a screen or paper. 

It also allowed me to rotate the object or move around to understand it better, this first drawing I did was very rough. I didn't rotate the object I just wanted to capture it's basic shape.

I had another go shortly afterwards, now being able to focus on tone and more of a drawing style as well as translating what I saw infront of me. Everytime I looked back up at it I saw more detail, sometimes too late to add into the drawing. Because of this I did many more drawings for the observational drawings. 

Observation also allows you to experiment with mediums more, rather than trying to find a style that replicates the reference photo, when looking at an object you can play around with what you use to recreate it. 

I found that observational drawing also left a lot more room for personal interpretation of the object whereas drawing from reference made me feel like I had to copy the photo more than using interpretation. With this one above I chose another flower and just focused on tone to recreate my own version of it. Whereas the one below I decided to spend more time being detailed with my ink placement, neither drawing is exactly like the object but more of a translation of the way I saw the plant  through my eyes. 

Drawing from Reference

We spent the day drawing from reference and observation to see this difference, we started with reference. I picked a picture of a woman at some red carpet show. I found it was really hard to copy the photo but much easier to translate the most important bits. 

On my first attempt I just translated her coat which was chiffon circles into a patter that could represent her coat, I also tried to capture how her hair moved within the photo. It was really hard to copy the same angle and get it into perspective. 

My second go was better, the fact we were only using black ink and only allowed to colour in monochrome helped too. This time I tried to use greys to highlight her body and the colour of her hair. By drawing from reference I started to notice exactly how many chiffon circles in her dress there were so this time there's a lot less on her coat but more strategically placed. 

The next go, I focused more on tone to bring the illustration off the page abit more. I tried to focus on making the circles more coat shaped (rather than just circles) but tried to keep the pattern on them as accurate as I could. I also tried to tone her hair less and focus on how it moves. 

My last turn I tried to tone her cheekbones and structure. 

10 Things drawn around Leeds

4. HELD IN YOUR HAND / 5. WALKING

Whilst at the Royal Armories I looked for items being held in hands, I drew from two models of men and although it's cartoony I'm quite proud I managed to draw hands that resemble hands. Again drawing from reference made a real difference here. 

I also found that having to sketch walking people with items in their hands really helped me to not worry about the anatomy of the hand itself and more about what it was holding it and how the hand was holding it. They were originally drawn in 2H pencil, when I got home I then coloured them in. I'm counting this one as walking as well as held in hand just because I struggled to actually draw walking people and it was much easier to focus on one smaller point of them. 

6. ARCHITECTURAL

I definetly enjoyed the architectural section the most, I stuck to fineliner because I didn't want to worry over it being too perfect (if I had chosen pencil I would have definetly taken longer to draw one building). Although they aren't the most accurate they have the important components of the building in them and for this task I felt like that's what was needed. 

7. FROM ABOVE 

Most of my from above drawing were of hands (which went into my held in hand section). Being sat high up meant I got a good vantage point to see what people were holding in their hands, if I had drawn every person there would have been a lot more iPhones drawn that day, although I am playing with the idea of going out and drawing again just to see whether people really do just only hold phones on their hands. As well as the hands I drew a girl from above as she was walking away (although the perspective was hard to get right). 

The only thing I got a good above view of was the girl drawing next to me standing on leaves. 

10 Things drawn around Leeds

8. MAKES YOU SMILE 

I didn't see many things that made me smile apart from this cute little cake stand in the gallery, I just really liked it so I drew it in fineliner (my favourites are the cupcakes on the stand). I think if I had more time, I would have chosen watercolour because there were some really great textures I tried to capture with my fineliner but would have come across far better through watercolour. 

9. SMELT OR HEARD / 10. UNNECESSARY 

 One natural thing I heard was leaves falling off a tree and so many at once it sounded like rain, I wasn't close to the tree but I could draw it from a distance. I wrote in pink what I heard as a tree doesn't talk I didn't want to use speech bubbles.

I used speech bubbles in this one as it was actually said! I heard was just a girl shouting for a lighter right across the pond, I thought that drawing it quite simply worked as it just captured the moment (although it's not the most accurate drawing).  This one also counts as my unnecessary as it was really nice and quiet and the girl who shouted could have just walked over (I drew her with her hands by her mouth cause she was doing it to help her shout). 

10 Things drawn around Leeds

1. OLD 

The drawing above was done in the Art Gallery in Leeds, I chose to draw old people as my first intial response to 'something old'. I picked this one because I liked how someone old was using something new and I thought it made a good contrast. 

I also drew guns from the Royal Armories to represent old. I picked this drawing out because I was really proud if myself for capturing the aesthetic of a gun. I think being able to observe it directly helped me translate it into a drawing that actually resembled a gun, drawing from reference sometimes takes away depth and I think seeing the depth and observing it in person really helped me. 

2. ORGANIC 

I drew plants and part of a woman sculpture for organic, I did this mainly because the plants in the gallery cafe were really interesting shapes and I thought they made for good drawings and I drew the sculpture of the woman just because the human body is organic. 

I'm probably going to go back and draw them again at some point but this time I would use a thicker brush pen and really try to focus on how the leaves are composed rather than a quicker fineliner drawing. 

3. UNNOTICED 

For unnoticed I've picked out two sketches, one (above) of a giant bark sculpture thing on the side of Leeds University. It was really high up so I couldn't get much definition but if I had more time I would use charcoal and use that to tone what I saw. The second was a lamp that I thought looked like a spaceship.