Week 4 Digital painting and Colouring

Digital Colouring

In this weeks lesson we learnt about how to digitally paint, in this case it was painting over an image we had already taken. I chose to do an archway near the cathedral.

Here is my photo I will be painting

Here I have sampled the main colours already in the image to create a digital palette that exists on its own separate layer. these colours are useful when I need to paint a specific shade from the image

I lowered the opacity of the main image to see what I was actually painting,

Here I started with the darkest tones in the image, the shadows and dark scaffolding to the left

Then I added the next lightest colour to the image overlaying where it lies on the actual picture

I then added another shade of brown and more detail to the arch

Again more detail to the arch with another shade of brown

I then added the fancy metalwork that surrounds the glass

Here I added in the glass and the main basic forms and shapes of the statues

This is where I added large areas of colour mainly to the brickwork

Here is the painting with the under image of the photo

I then added a frame to the image to cover the over running brush marks

Here is the finished piece:

This task was harder than I expected it to be but I did enjoy the experience, it did feel a bit cheap to just paint over an image, just like digitally tracing. The result of the painting isn't my favourite digital piece but I can definitely relate that image with my original photo.

Week 3 brushmaking

This week we are designing brushes to use on photoshop from paintings that were scanned in from our homework

Here is one of the wavy paintings I produced for my homework

I selected and cut out a block sections of streak

Here I opened the paint brush option and started messing around with random features to get interesting results in the box space

Here is the swatch palette of all the brushes I created 

Torso of my creature

Here ive tried to create a multiple arm effect

right arm

same process with the left arm

Left arm

legs made of paint splatter

his hands are made entirely of fists

The main bulk of the head

The eyes are made of a blood red colour along with his wolf like ears

I have also included a bit of background to the image 

Summary:

I really like the almost child like, teddy bear quality of the creature. The playful colour tones of the body and arms really don't match with the dark shadowy features of the head which add to the fierce monster like tone of the image. The shadowy floor gives the image a real sense of depth as if hes coming out of the gloomy night 

week 2: Opposites image development

Here is my design process on designing art based on the opposite theme of high and low

here is my A4 blank layout

I have overlayed my original drawing 

match it to size

Using the polygonal lasso tool i outlined the crevice

i also used the poly lasso tool to outline and fill the mountain

i then swapped the colours over that the darkest was in the foreground and the lightest was in the background

I then created a clipping mask over the mountain layer to give it a shaded graphic effect

The mountain looks much better and i have also added a background shade

I decided to create another mountain range alongside the current one using the lasso tool

Here it is filled in

The two smaller mountains really add to the scale of the first one

I then created another clipping mask on the crevice

i used another shade of purple to create further depth

I then created another one but also a shade lighter

I also used the clipping mask to create a cloud like effect on the mountains behind

I also added text to further illustrate my point whilst using contrasting colours

In summary:

I really enjoyed this exercise although most of these methods and processes were things that I already knew it gave me confidence in using them in a greater context for example creating a meaningful image using them.

As for the image itself I used a very limited colour palette of light orange and dark purple, that is because these colours are the most contrasting and are used on roadway signs to catch peoples attention, this same principle is also used in artwork. The composition of the image is very strong and really shows an almost desert like scene due to the strong oranges.

Week 1 Introduction to Digital Illustration

 Designing a creature based from our dreams/Nightmares

I have decided to base my character on a human/basking shark crossover person, I cropped a body from an old tennis advert and removed the head.

On some new layers I then overlaid an image of a fish head on an airship as the head of my person.

Here is an image detailing how intricate I was cropping throughout this process

I then used the main dorsal fin to add on to the ballon to add to the effect of a merman/merperson

I added on orange tone onto a timber wood pattern for backgrounding effect

I then selected all the missing areas on the cutout of the original fish image and dragged over to my artwork with a blue coat to finish off the image.

Here is the final piece

The long head of the man really conveys the main feature of the basking shark which really relates well to my fear of them, so I think that aspect worked really well with the image. And the background also adds to the weird creepy vibe of the overall image almost as if its a weird dead aquarium of animals.