Another Art Trading Card perhaps

Here is another large painting that was assembled in PS from four separate scans. I also used 'enlarge canvas size'  to add the framing area, text tool to add the title.

Building an Art Trading Card

Our final project is to design and print 2 or 3 art cards to distribute to the whole class. I choose this painting to make into an Art Card. I found a marvelous tool for adjusting colors, but I can't rediscover it now. I thought it was in selections /color range but I am not getting the same control window I had before, hmmmm. Using PS I was able to fine tune the colors to my liking, add a frame and a title. Beware the text tool, it is tricky to use. Be sure to check the font size and the text color for settings that will be visible. If you are lucky enough to get a result to keep there is a small button near middle of the horizontal control bar above that commits the text and clears the text box. I wasted some time figuring this out. The return key acts to accept other kinds of changes but gives a new row when using the text tool.

Everyone wants to know?

This piece from early in the class has been gestating.Finally it has found its purpose, it asks the universal question...

Text as 'text'ure

I have re-worked the old church again. Here the first page of Genesis from the 

Gutenburg bible replaces the cold winter sky. 

The church is a quick clone product, the text page is cut and pasted on another layer and trimmed to fill the sky only. The cream color of the page is used to paint over some of the bright white in the foreground to pull it together. I inserted a secretive surprise element within this image.

Beautiful day at the pulp mill

This image began as a "quick clone". I then quit the clone feature and just painted on top of the image further.

Puzzling images

This image of a 32" x 24" painting was created by scanning four times from each corner to collect the whole image. Then in Photoshop I put all the images back together using techniques that John  demonstrated for assembling a panorama from a photo series. It is like putting a puzzle together. 

One of the images is selected to add the other images to. The canvas is enlarged to accommodate the additional images. Make it plenty big, it can be cropped later. All the images are cut and pasted into the enlarged canvas. Each pasted image appears as a new layer. For each layer set opacity at 50% or less and move image to align. To fine tune placement use the arrow keys when using the move tool. 

In search of Quick Clone

"Quick clone" in Painter (under file menu) was used to make the left image. We can now pronounce artistic skill obsolete and irrelevant. All one needs is an eye and a hand. The only significant artistic choices left are subject matter, the only artistic skill used here is for  brushworking.

I was trying to figure out how John used a brush tool to make an underlying photo appear stroke by stroke as demo'd in our first class. The method created a remarkable simulated painting in short order. I couldn't figure it out but in the process, while experimenting with ideas, I created this image by painting on a layer (~50% opacity) over a layer with the photo image. This eliminates the step of having to sketch out the image first, reducing the skill-set needed to create this kind of product. Here we see results from color choice and placement, brush size and type choices, brush stroke and style.... the need to be able to see and draw is largely eliminated with these tech tools.

Trippin' on Technology

Here I experimented with combining photoshop and painter. I first manipulated a photo taken last week of warehouses on a dark icy night. I adjusted the brightness and contrast and cropped to my satisfaction, then I played with the liquify effect to get the crazy distortion. I switched to painter and created layers that I painted using mostly a soft airbrush tool. The liquify effect is impressive, it is very adjustable from subtle to crazy as used here. I expect this effect will be near the top of my tool box. It would be perfect for imitating Dali!

Photo Doctoring

I have digital photos of my old-fashioned paintings (as in colored paste applied to fabric using sticks tipped with animal hair). Unfortunately it is very difficult to get decent photos of a canvas. Glare and reflection are a big problem. Taking the photo with the canvas at a slight angle, not perpendicular to the camera reduces this problem but creates another one. The image of the painting is no longer square and the painting is slightly distorted. Here I did an excercise to correct these problems. I used transform/skew to adjust the distortion and to square-up the image. To eliminate the picture frame and extraneous photo margins I then selected the image with the rectangular marquee tool and cut-pasted into a new file. Viola', art-work photo on the cheap!

Up with CHANNELS

Here I did an exercise in selections and channels. I began with a photo that I had previously used to make a painting (a real painting) that I was never happy with. Though similar, this one is better and it didn't use $20 worth of paint!

A first brush with PAINTER

Now that everyone has mastered the intricacies of Photoshop (just kidding) we begin learning a new program, Painter. Powerful and more like making art the old fashioned way because of the Wacom tablet, a virtual sketchpad interface.

The selection of artist tools is overwhelming. So here we are at the bottom of another steep learning curve.

Since I couldn't access photos I had on  a flash card due to...anyway, I resorted to real life drawing with the Wacom tablet of a fellow art student. Sketched, painted, erased all on the Wacom. This exercise used the technology in the simplest way; as a replacement for brushes paint and paper, no fancy tricks. 

The eraser feature of the backside of the pen is very expedient, however I kept activating some feature by accident that was turning it into a magnification tool that I couldn't figure how to turn off (very annoying). 

Hold the space bar down then click and move the canvas around, very handy. Ctrl + or -  are the way to enlarge and reduce, there is no navigation window like in PS.

The Wacom tablet isn't large enough to operate some of the long pull down menus so I find myself going back and forth between the tablet for drawing and painting and mostly using the touch pad of the computer for managing tools, operations, and files. It is instinctive to try and use the Wacom tablet like a touch pad, too bad it doesn't work like that.

Virtual Art or Vapor Art?

Well...I got a little carried away. Colored under-layers and some erasing all behind a doodle composite that began as an exercise in extracting a pen and ink drawing.

To the untrained eye this might look like an ugly mess, and maybe it is.

To my eye it has redeeming qualities, the colors, the textures, the movement.... I rest my case.

No it won't be on my next Christmas card, I probably won't even print it, it is just an experimental art happening for the moment. No big investment of energy, or materials, or fore-thought...

Perhaps that is why I distrust this technology, art becomes disposable just like everything else in this modern age of technology and consumerism.

"Vapor-art!"

Thanks to todays advanced technology and manufacturing we all get to have lots of stuff and most of it is broken.

Bits and bytes, zeros and ones, dust to dust in a digital age.

Head-space

Another composite of doodle images. I used the image/transform function repeatedly for resizing and repositioning the various elements. I had many layers containing single elements. A cumbersome way of doing this probably but I am feeling my way along at this point. 

Doodling 'round

I've worked up two pieces so far where I am trying to create a palette, so to speak, of discrete line drawn images to use as elements within a composition. 

For my exercise I have collected dozens of random doodles that I find within the note pages from when I am working by telephone or am in a long meeting. The doodles are interesting to me not because I think they are good drawings or are art per se, but because they are created mostly by the subconcious mind with very little active attention. The images seem to appear of their own accord and I wonder where they come from the same as I wonder at a strange dream. Indeed I find the images that I am producing from these are rather dream -like. I chose to use an oval shape for this composition which is like a mandala.

For a time Carl Jung would literally lock himself in his basement in the evening where he wished to be undisturbed so that he could paint mandala images. I don't believe anyone ever saw these mandala paintings.  Perhaps he only needed a doodling pad by his telephone. Or perhaps he preferred the basement to his wives company.

    

Collage in College?

As an excercise in moving back and forth between analog (material) and digital methods, we constructed collages. Mine is made from magazine cuttings and is augmented with felt marker and white-out pen. It has an industrial look and it reveals my appreciation for cubism. I used some areas of text for a textured-gray quality.

After scanning the collage I used Photoshop to manipulate the digital image. I added digital brushwork

to brightening up the existing color scheme. 

Introductory post

This blog is required for a class I am taking, Art and Technology, taught by John Fehringer. 

My computer experience is mostly limited to what I have done at work which includes a lot of Excel and Word, and only a little photoshop elements. I want to pursue learning how to multitrack record on computer (basement band practice) as well as learning fine art applications. 

My experience in digital arts is only working a little bit with photoshop to manipulate photos and to experiment making CD cover art. I have been taking digital photos for a few years, including photos of my own paintings. 

I am taking this class because I felt it would be a rare opportunity to learn how to work  digitally in art from someone who is successfully making a living at it.  

My goals may develop as we go but right now I am thinking I want to learn all about the production of quality prints, from the image capture onward. I also want to learn the manipulation of images for creating on-screen work. I have imagined incorporating text into works, I can see that this technology will go there easily. 

Projects I hope to tackle may include:

Printing photos of my paintings, and possibly manipulations of my paintings

Manipulating photos

Combining text as a compositional element with manipulated photos or paintings 

I've never had my own personal computer but I have a PC at work. I intend to purchase an apple for this class and for my home use. I am convinced that apple computers are a superior platform for most applications, about the only disadvantages are software availability and co$t. 

Do I identify myself as an artist?  It depends on how artist is defined. I think that everyone has artistic ability, some people cultivate it and some don’t, some value it and some don’t. I have cultivated some ability, due to my interest, I appreciate and value art.

Since I am new to apple; assistance with this system will be helpful to me. When working with the applications repeating and demonstrating complicated instruction sets is very helpful since the computer at our desk is sometimes a distraction.