Week Finals

Craft

First of all, I stated by creating layers that I was going to use for painting color. I used the eye dropper tool to pick the colors for a certain part of the photo and used my premade brushes to paint it. I started with the black background and used my sponge brush to cover the entire layer, covering all the pixels of the photo, then I used my various brush brushes to paint the bills in the back to the front then the thumb last. I picked out the most general colors.

Concept

The concept is really just a person holding money, but it's more about the brushwork, as it is intended to look painted by paintbrush. Also, a lot of the detail on the bills was generalized to just blotches of color. Eventhough the fine detail is gone, the viewer can still see that it is money.

Composition

In the original photo, the angle of all the bills create lines of force that guide the eye to them. In the painted version, the blotchy colors break up that force and the contrast in color between the thumb and the bills attract the eye to the thumb first.

Week 15: Photo Paint

Craft
I started by setting the photo as a separate layer on the bottom. After that I created a subsequent layers on top of the photo that includes separate colors of paint at different values, lifght to dark, for the background and then for the dog. Using only the eye dropper and paintbrush tools, I started by making a simple background by picking out just genearl shapes and colors that would not distract from the dog in the foreground. I omitted such things like what was outside of the windows and an other random objects in the room that did not have anything to do with the dog. I started by picking out the lightest colors of the dog and painted over it in a separate layer and then gradually picked the darker colors and painted the finer details in separtate layers.
Concept
The concept is simple, the picture is supposed to focus on the dog.
Composition
Since the random obects are omitted and the background is simplified, the dog pops especially with the contrasting colors over the background.

Week 14: Paintbrush Collage

Craft
The collage was made with only paintbrushes. First the background was painted black, then the circle brush was used as a stamper to make an arrangement of circles of varying color, size, opacity, and hardness. A simple color scheme was choosen. The white doves and signiture were drawn in grayscale on a separate document and made into preset brushes, then used as a stamper.
Concept
The concept is magician's doves flying away from the stage, represented by the bright, sparkling lights made by the circles.
Composition
The viewer's eyes are drawn to the doves first, then to the stage lights.

Week 13: Texture Collage

Craft
All natural and manufactured textures were imported with a scanner at 300ppi. In the first collage, the leaves were cut out with the eraser and magic wand tools. Their hue was changed to a brownish, yellowish orange. The textures in the background were cut out with the lasso tool and the inverted selection was deleted. In the second collage, the leaves' hue was changed to green. They were arranged to ressemble a shrub or crop and were merged into one image layer, then repeated, rotated, and rescaled. The rag textures had their hues changed and they were rearranged and skewed. The same rag texture was used used to create the barn with hue and saturation changes. The mountains were made with the sandpaper texture which was cut out in various shapes and layered with lessening opacity against a blue background.
Concept
The first collage's concept is to represent collors and textures of autumn. The second is a farm landscape.
Composition
The first collage draws the viewer to the leaves on top, then the brighter textures, then the darker textures. The second collage draws the viewer's eye along the row of foliage to the barn in the background.

Week 12: Photo Recolor

Craft
I took each of these photos and set the saturation to zero and set each of the layers to multiply to make the whites transparent. The center photo was lowered in contrast to make the ocean pop more once the colors were introduced. For the background, I used a basic blue, then I used a less saturated blue, and a tinted blue and painted picked out items.
Concept
The concept was to keep the beach scenes theme constant and to pick out smaller items to make them stand out.
Composition
In the first photo, the birds are painted with the dull blue to stand out amoung the blue background and the water is painted the brighter blue to draw the viewer to the water instead of the beach. In the center photo, the water is again brightened to stand out in the background. In the last photo, the lighthouses are brightened to stand out from the water which stands out with the duller blue against the sky and beach.

Week 11: Misfit Toy Final

Craft
Not much changed from the previous packaging except for teh font of the text on the box and the shape of some of the package's edges around the display window. I used the photo of the miter saw blade and cut out a portion of the blade and placed it in the corners of the cover of the box. I raised the value of the cropped blades to white and then used the eye dropper tool to match the color of the box and painted the cropped layers to the box layer so the orp shadows would transfer. I used cracked text for "Slaughterhouse Playset," made it bold and added a stroke. I used arial for the rest. I rotated the text in the upper left. For the playset layout, I used the same text, except I arched the "Slaughterhouse Playset" text over the playset layout.
Concept
The concept is to sell the danger aspect of the playset.
Composition
The red text taht stands out on the gray box and also the razor blade edges on the box stress the point.

Special Edition Blog: Art Institute Trip

This is a special edition blog regarding the Art Institute visit on October 14.
We had to choose 3 works that we thought were inspiring and write about their craft, concept, and composion.

Here's the picture of me.

Here's the picture of you.

Mountain Road

Joos de Momper II

1600-1625

Craft

This painting is oil on panel and utilizes brushstroke to bring the foliage into a realist fashion. Although the people and objects in the foreground have dark, noticable outlines and are painted with bright, sharp colors, the trees and landscape blend together with the evident brushstrokes to appear less illustrated and more like actual real life landscape scenery. The further in the background you look the more blending of color and contrast come into play.

Concept

The concept of this painting is striving for realism. As it is a baroque piece, close attention to nature is needed to achieve an accurate and realistic appearence for the landscape and foliage. The painting captures the vastness of nature and stives to accurately dipict real life perspective for the viewer.

Composition

The foreground uses sharper edges, mainly for the people and objects, but uses darker tones and the more defined edges to separate the foreground from the background which is the overlook from the valley. The large tree in the center is heavily illuminated on the backside and the trunk is darkend to show the illusion of natural light. Plus the tree is foreshortened somewhat and leans back into the painting and into the background. The birds flying in the air even like they are part of the middle ground and further give the illusion of space.

Still Life with a Basket of Fruit and a Bunch of Asparagus

Louise Moillon

1630

Craft

This painting is oil on panel and pays close attention to proportion, detail, and realism. Brushstroke is barely evident because this is not a landscape where differnet elements blend together but a still life. The brushstroke is so fine that the elements are separate from one another. There are very gradual changes in color were need be and high contrast with the differenet colors of fruits and black background.

Concept

Again, this painting is striving for realism, but with a still life rather than a vast landscape. The fruit and the leaves are trying to achieve not just looking like fruit and leaves, but showing the qualities and feeling of fruit and leaves. The fruits look ripe and juicy, the asparagus looks like it has been freshly cut, and the leaves look ligth and fragile.

Composition

The composition uses shallow space and dramatic lighting to illuminate every detail of the subject. There is also special attention to how the different shapes of the fruits and leaves react with the lighting.

Quadrangles in Two Planes

Irene Rice Pereira

1945

Craft

There are two levels in this painting that consist of a lower layer of oil on panel and a top layer of oil on glass. The bottem layer uses vibrant colors while the top layer uses mainly black for a high contrast.

Concept

The concept is to create a three dimensional painting with two dimensional geometic shapes that require two layers.

Composition

The vivid colors on the bottom layer contrast with the black on the top layer. This creaets depth and dimension. The colors on the bottom layer are lighter than the black and seem in a way atmospheric.

Week 10: Misfit Toy Packaging

Craft
The packaging was made for landscape format of tabloid paper. I started by making a large rectangle with the rectangle marquee tool and then filled it with a solid color with the paint bucket. Then I made guidelines around the box to make the sides. I made the sides of the box making rectangles again and then using different shades of the color from the front of the box for the sides. Then I used the transform-scale and transform-skew tool to adjust the size and angle of the sides to create three dimensionality and perspective. The front, top, and side were all in different layers. Then using the rectangle marquee tool, I made another rectangle in the front layer to make a window and then I deleted the selected area. Then I made another rectanngle behind all the layers with a solid color to serve as the back of the box. Then I compied and pasted the elements of the playset from the original photoshop file and resized all the elements together to scale so they would fit in the box. I rearranged them to fit in individual compartments. I made the compartments with the rectangle marquee tool and, like the box, made tops and sides for the compartment dividers with more rectangles. I merged the box and compartment dividers together. Then I used the blending options to add a drop shadow for the inside of the box. Then I added a drop shadow for all the objects in the box. I used the eliptical marquee tool and lasso tool to create the feature panels over the window of the box. With the gradient tool, I made the plastic window glare with 100% white opacity on the ends and 0% opacity in the center, then dragged the gradient diagonally across the window. I added the text and on the largest text I used the bevel and emboss blending option.
Concept
The concept is a box with different compartments and the meat chart in the background used as a backdrop.
Composition
I wanted the items to be arranged in a matter of importance. The slaugthering machine is in the center surrounded by the animals, meat, and bottles.

Week 9: Misfit Toy Draft

Craft
Starting with a blank 11 X 17 sheet in landscape format, I started by cutting out the cow with the magic wand tool and then touching it up with the block eraser. All images were dragged and dropped into Photoshop, then copied and pasted into the compostion. The pig was cut out the same way with the magic wand and block eraser tools. Both had simple backgrounds and sharp resolution. Next was the treadmill. It had a white background and was easy to cut out with the magic wand, including the background in the netting. The cuts of meat were cut out from a black background and resized with the transform-scale tool. The chart was placed underneath all layers, skewed to look tilted, and the white background was pianted silver with the bucket tool. The razor blade was cut out with the magic wand and placed under the treadmill layer. I temporarily placed it on top to use the lasso tool and selected the treadmill layer to cut out the arm so when the razor blade was placed underneath it looked in between the arms of the teadmill. The bottle was cut out with the magic wand and block eraser, placed in the background. The hue was changed to red from the original blue cap. A layer was added on top and painted with the brush tool with red with opacity set to around 50%. Then the two layers were merged and then that new layer was copied. The cow was copied, flipped horizontally, and the value was changed to white. Then with the paint bucket, it was changed to a yellowish beige, then on the same layer, painted with blotches of red with opacity at 70%.

Online Photo Reference List
http://www.annastoydepot.com/animals/cow-family
http://www.annastoydepot.com/animals/pig-and-piglet
http://www.dogtreadmill.ie/2008/10/23/dog-jogger-treadmill/
http://www.askthemeatman.com/hind_qt_cuts.htm
http://www.howto-cooksteak.com/

Concept
The gruesome reality of where our meat comes from is deemed socially unexceptable for young children to be aware of.
Composition
The composition was intended to look like an advertisement in a catalog or end-of-commericial still shot of a laid-out playset. I put the slaughter machine in the center with farm animals on the left and cuts of meat on the right so the eyes read it like a book. Here are some online images used for inspiration:
http://www.sourcingmap.com/gas-truck-tanker-model-fruit-bus-buddys-truck-toy-sets-p-23972.html
http://2ols.com/item_13150_462762954-Kids-Construction-Set-Toys-Construction-Set-span-style-color990000A-Savings-of-18-htm

Week 8: Misfit Toy Photographs

Craft
For these photos, I tried to get the highest resolution possible. I took a number of shots against a simple background so they would be easy to cut out in Photoshop.
Concept
The concept for my misfit toy is a slaughterhouse playset and the miter saw blade is part of a conveyor belt slaughtering machine. The water bottles will be used for fake blood included with the set.
Composition
The photo is a profile of the miter saw blade becasue it captures the sharpness and dangerousness of the blade and it is attached to the conveyor belt which is also a side view. The photo of the bottle will be rotated eventually to be vertical and be placed in the playset display.

Week 7: Collage Final

Craft
I used the same background as the original, but resized it using the transform-scale tool to fit the full size of the letter paper. All of the fruits and vegetables were copied and pasted in and then cut out using the magic wand and block eraser. Then they were all resized using the transform-scale tool. The smoke and the smokestacks were all resized using transform-scale and the saturation was reduced using ajustments-hue/saturation. The saturation of the smaller pear in the shoppers cart was increased. The shopper and the cart were cut out with the block eraser because of the busy background and fine detail of the low resoultion photo.
Concept
Oversized fruits and vegetables and the factory represent the point when manufactered produce becomes rediculous.
Composition
The compostion has the viewer see the giant fruit first followed by the shopper then the factory in the back. The actual background I think is somewhat irrelivant but grounds the image somewhat. As for the lower value and saturation for the background, they help show off the foreground and make the fruit and factory stand out a little more.

Week 6: Hue, Saturation, and Value

Craft

First of all, I removed the text from the composition, and also added photos of smoke for the factory's smokestacks. As for the hue, saturation, and value, I mainly used those for the background and only slightly enhanced the saturation of the fruits and shopper in the foreground while lightening the value of the smokestacks. For the background, I darkened the hue of the background to make the colors of the fruit pop. The saturation was also lowered for the background next to again make the fruit stand out. The value was lightening in the third to make the foreground show.

Concept

I removed the text because I thought that it was too distracting. I decided to make it the title instead. I put in more realistic smoke to make the factory more realistic and recognizable since the text was now deleted. The hue, saturation, and value were changed mainly in the background because I thought that the background did not serve much purpose for the message and I did not want to change the fruit and factory too much because I wanted them as recognizable as possible.

Composition

The composition makes the viewer notice the shopper and fruit first as intended, then the factory. The saturation and value changes of the background achieve this by causing the foreground to show better. The reviews from peers said the same thing basically. Besides some photoshop clean up needed, the resolution of the photos were the biggest hindrance but most got the factory concept and thought the value lightening in the background was the best at doing that.

Week 5: Collage Final Draft

Craft

For this version of my collage, I added more fruit and the shopper with the cart which proved difficult because of the low resolution photos. I used the same backdrop from the rough draft and but I add smokestacks which were one that was copied to create a row that symbolize a factory. I added smoke in photoshop to make them more recognizable as as smokestacks. Lastly, I did add the text "Fresh Produce" to draw the viewers eye to the factory in the back.

Concept

The concept that I chose to go with is the point at which food production in the U. S. becomes ridiculous. I try to achieve this by creating overgrown fruit in the foreground, overbearing the shopper who kind of struggles to push her cart. The factory in the background symbolizes the processing and how it is more chemical than natural growing.

Composition

The composition consists of the shopper in the foreground surrounded by overgrown fruits and vegetables. This is to make the distinction that this is a market or farm stand but the overgrown produce is the ironic part. The factory in the background then answers this irony. That is the general direction that the viewer's eyes should be lead.

Week 4: Collage Rough Draft

Craft
Using Photoshop, we were to combine at least one person, one place, and one object from the photos that we took previously to form a collage. As for the place, I chose the park because I thought it was the best shot and used it for the background or setting. However, stretching the image to fit the paper distorted its resolution too much so I left it alone which effected its small size upon printing. For the person, I chose the crossing guard. The quality of the photo was one of the worst but I thought it was one of the easiest to cut out. I was still in a state of practice mode. As for the object, I chose the pear. I chose it because it was the best one that I cut out and we needed at least one unexpected or ironic aspect in our composition.
Compostion
The compostion itself is small due to the lack of resizing the background image. The crossing guard was rescaled to fit the scale of the foreground as well as the pear which was rescaled and left large in comparison with the crossing guard and park setting. The pear was duplicated and rescaled so there were three overall and the each were overlapped to make some depth. The pear in the front was brightened and the pear in the back was darkened to enhance the illusion. However, the sunlight in the background photo is different from the sunlight in brightness and direction from the crossing guard and the pear.

Concept

Mostly I was just practicing when initially making the collage, and lost focus on thinking of a concept especially with the photos that I had to work with. What I plan on doing is changing the background entirely to a different image as well as the crossing guard. I have a picture of a shopper with a cart instead and I thought that a concept could either be about concerns of genetically altered food or the wasted surplus of produce in America. The concept as it is now does not really have any meaning except for a bit of irony in that there are giant pears with a crossing guard.

Week 3: People, Places, Things Photos

Craft

Using the same camera from the previous assignment, I thought of people who I thought I could easily get photos of. It was difficult to actually get the photos taken off them because first of all they are moving and second I had to be inconspicuous. Most of the photos came out OK but some that were taken in sunlight had clarity problems. The people in the shade were the best.

Next were the places. The best one I thought was the park because it was the clearest of them all also I thought it was the only one that really provided a blank, clean setting. The objects were similar to the objects of the previous week with the exception of a mailbox.

Composition

I tried to center everything as much as possible with an unobsructed view but that was difficult for the people photos because of the angles and locations that I took the photos at. It would have made cutting them out difficult because of the objects. The locations were easier to take but some were in shade while the photo was taken in the sun.

Concept

For this photo shoot, I wanted objects, people, and places that were unobstructed, and very visible in sunlight. I also wanted photos that could easily be cut out and not blended with the background.

Week 2: Isolating Photographs

Craft
For this assignment we had to choose and photograph ten objects in isolation against a simple background to isolate in Photoshop. First of all, I have no photography experience, so being able to set up a clear and easily isolated photograph was not necessarily easy. The camera I used was a borrowed Kodak DX6490 4.0 Mega Pixel digital camera. As for the five indoor objects I choose, the setting was in a bright room with florencent lighting, and the objects were rested on top of a box with a white cloth for the background and photographed from above. The five outdoor objects were photographed during the morning on a back patio in the shade. I think the clarity of each object was about the same and it was not the greatest clarity either. The indoor objects were more succesful I thought because of the brighter pictures and the more neutral backgournd. As for the picture I thought was best was the starfish because I thought it was the most interesting and one of the more easily isolated ones.

Composition
I wanted to take centered pictures as clear as possible. Knowing that we would have to cut them out I wanted to make sure that all the objects had a simple background that was different from the color of the object. I think the biggest problem came from the lighting for the indoor photos because there was too much of a shadow that made cutting them out difficult. The outdoor photos were actually the easiest to cut out.

Concept
There was no concept in choosing which items to take pictures of. I just wanted to pick some objects that were interesting and they had nothing in common really.

Week 1: Introduction

Hi, my name is Kevin, and I am a graphic design major at Saint Xavier University. This is my second year in this program, and I do not have much experience with Photoshop other than a semester of web design I took in high school.

Originally I set out to accomplish an engineering degree at another institution but decided to go into what I had originally had planned on doing in college. What I hope to accomplish is an understanding of the tools used in graphic design and how to translate a textual rhetoric into a visual rhetoric.