Author Archives: Alica

Alica – final project

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For my final project I’ve selected a technique of double exposure in Photoshop because I wanted to challenge myself and wanted to see how much work goes into those wonderful pictured one can find online. This technique was not covered in our Ps tutorial but I felt confident that I can follow some tutorials that are available online. I also wanted to create something related to human faces as I liked drawing them in my previous art class. I call my project Four Seasons.

Going through this project I found several challenges. One was to find portraits with white or very light colored background as this is recommended as the best for combining two pictures and overlaying a face over the other background. There is a lot of portraits of women with loose hair which is quite difficult to outline and use for overlay.  The second challenge was to find a tutorial that is easy to follow and gives all commands in clear way. Since most of the tutorials are created by experts who don’t think about every single step in the process, I was ot able to use them because I was not sure how to do what they did.

As one can see, there are three types of pictures in my project. The Fall  was created first and it actually turned our different from my original vision. The tutorial I was following was not completely clear and I ended up posing picture of the rain over the portrait of a woman. As I could not follow the tutorial, I left it that way, and it turned out fine. The Spring was created second, following a different tutorial, which became confusing, and after I put flowers in the shape of a woman, I left it there and added different color butterflies to fill the empty space. Summer and Winter were created last, and I followed a tutorial that was clear to get the picture looking like I wanted them.

The entire project took me much longer than anticipated because I had to learn some new tricks – one of them was  how to add and subtract shape when using Quick Selection tool. Overall, I think that my project is successful. I like the picture representing summer the most because it’s colorful like summer and it has the most interesting shape in it (a surf wave with the sun in it). With more practice, I will be able to create better pictures in the future.

Spring  Spring        Summer  Summer

 

Fall  Fall-web

Winter  Winter

Alica – Final Project Proposal

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For my final project I plan to create four pictures that represent four seasons. I’ve seen a lot of beautiful pictures online that combine people with different nature and urban scenes and depict beauty of both elements. Each picture should incorporate a silhouette of a women and a picture that captures one of four seasons. Even though most pictures of nature are in color, I’d like to create pictures that are monochromatic in the shades of blue. There are two reasons for color blue: one — I like the color, and two, if a final product is of a reasonable quality, I would have it printed on canvas and hang in my office or bedroom.

I have selected Photoshop to expand my knowledge and skills in using this software. Before this semester I had no prior experience with it and during this class I have discovered how versatile it could be and how it can be used for manipulation of existing images or creation of new ones. Understandably, it was not the main focus on the class, but short exercises that were part of the class allowed us to explore some basic functions and see opportunities for some future art projects.

The upcoming challenge I see with this project is that I’ll have to find tutorials that will teach me steps that are needed for creation of the pictures. I am not very experienced in using Photoshop so I anticipate that much more learning will be involved. I’ll also have to find pictures that will match the purpose of each picture and communicate the mood of each visual representation.

Here is an example of a double exposure picture.

Face

Alica – Project 3

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For this project I wanted to create a box for Easter eggs. They are very fragile and take a lot of space to be shipped because they are in packages with lots of cushion materials. My box has a fold on each side to support the egg from wabbling on the inside and the box can be put in a shipping box stacked into cubes or rectangular prisms. I did not put any specific product name on it because it’s obvious what it is and for what occasion. I suppose that if it was manufactured by some company, the company’s logo and info should be on the box, together with nutritional information – probably on a side that does not have a bunny on it.

Box-scatch    Open-box

Side-1 Side-2

Alica – Color and Composition

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Rule of Third – For this painting I tried Bob Ross’ technique to paint the tree and the entire scene. My husband likes watching his shows (they are recorded, as Bob died in 1995) and sometimes I sit with him and watch. Bob mixes the colors first, then he dips his brush in it and instead of using strokes to cover the canvas, he touches canvas with the top of bristles and leaves marks of color on canvas. I haven’t had a large round brush and used the flat brush, but the large tree looks pretty realistic.

Tree

Rule of Odds – I took an idea from a picture that I came across online. I’ve modified the colors of trees and struggled to figure out the color for the background. It was challenging to keep the background color consistent as one can never mix colors the same way.

Rule-of-third

Alica – Color Contrast

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For this assignment I did a picture of a tulip that I found online. The dark version is close to the original picture. The light value version differs from the dark one mainly in the color of background. In the dark verstion I used raw umber mixed with black, while in the light version I mixed it with white. The contrast between the background and the flower is high in the dark picture, yet much less significant in the light picture.

Dark-tulip      Light-tulip

Alica – Color Uses

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  1. Bezold Effect – This was a time-consuming task and the result shows how colors are perceived differently in the same pattern when one color changes. In the picture on the left orange with red dominates over the combination of purple with green while in the picture on the right blue overpowers all other colors.

Pattern2    Pattern1

 

2. Expressive Color – Our family is looking for a dog and while I was looking at dog pictures, I came across a picture I liked and transformed it into a picture with unrealistic yet fun color combinations.To make a clear separation of colors, I used a black marker to outline individual parts. My 12-year old son wants this picture framed in his room :-).

Puppy

3. Color discord -for this exercise I used a pattern on our carpet and filled it with discord colors to see how the pattern changes. I used earthy colors inlcuding umber, sienna, and ocra and combined them with dark green, which still matched the color scheme, then added the red to make the pattern really warm in nature, and ,finally, added light blue that does not fit any of the used color schemes and stands out.

Discord