Final Inkjet

My final inkjet piece. I am, overall, very happy with how this image was turned out. I was told by my lecturer how to use the blending options in Photoshop, this allowed me to create the different opacities throughout the piece. A fair deal of the color I put into this image in the first place has been removed, the drawing of the house being more visible, but most has been sustained and resides above the building sketch. Even though it's my final, I didn't spend much time combining the geometric shapes and the drawing together. I thought about adding something more but quickly decided that it would get too busy and cluttered. I think I have achieved something which is of a psychedelic, brightly colored nature but does not verge on the edge of being tacky. It could be said to be a mixture of Rachel Duckhouse and Monika Grzymala's geometric / line work with the architectural drawings of Mies Van der Rohe. I am very pleased with the result and would like to do more of this style.

Screen Shots

First of all I scanned and imported a drawing of a building I had previously drawn into Photoshop. I scanned  it using the black and white settings which resulted in the optimum quality and most realistic replication of the actual drawing.

Once I had my drawing on Photoshop I imported my geometric design onto to the same project. I then opened the Blending Options using Layer > Layer Style > Blending Options. By using these blending options  I was able to create all manner of different effects. It changes the transparency and opacity of certain colors. 

Here is the finished piece, it is a very abstract image, I altered the contrast on the hand drawn building to make it look more funky and textured. I will now write a small evaluation on the piece. I am happy with how it has turned out!

Geometric Lines

Inspired by some of my recent artist research, I decided to try and create my own digital artwork using only straight lines and color. I wanted to make something similar to Monika Grzymala's work, but, as I have said before, with more organisation and conformity. To start with I opened an A3 document on Photoshop, and selected the grid by clicking View>Show>Grid, and then enabling snap to grid by clicking View>Snap To>Grid. I then began to freestyle with lines on this page. After about an hour of drawing, with over 600 layers, I came up with this.

I quite like what I have done here but I think that it could do with something more, perhaps some color. After deciding this, I started to add color using the paint bucket tool. I wanted to make transitions of color all over the image so I had to fill in each small quadrilateral, triangle within the piece. It took me a very long time to add the desired color onto it but after about two hours of Photoshop work I came up with this result.

I didn't want to fill the entire thing with color as this would have been overpowering. The transition effect has worked well in this, my favorite section being the red/black on the left. I want to use it for my A3 Inkjet final but I need to merge it with something else.

Rachel Duckhouse

Rachel Duckhouse is another graphic designer I have recently found, and I am also extremely fond of her work. The form in which she produces these designs generally follows a vague trend but without the precise measurements and exact dimensions which I prefer. This piece, called New Work, shows the typical style which Rachel follows, the minimilistic colors offer a subtle resulting image, understated yet effective. I am not sure whether the work is based on anything, or is just a free style experiment each time. I would like to imitate certain aspects of her work, but do not want to create an image this busy.

Monika Grzymala

I was browsing through artwork created by just using lines and other geometrical shapes when I came across some unusual work by an artist called Monika Grzymala. The pieces produced are three dimensional, in exhibitions and are very abstract, one of my favorites being the creation, Miles and Miles of Sticky Tape, pictured above. They are usually black and white, very rarely are they made in color, except for a few examples. I like the contrast between the blacks and the whites, and the way in which it can be viewed in any direction, giving off a different idea from every angle. I would like to create something similar to her work, except with more guidance and less of the wildness. My work will also be two dimensional and created using a digital format, to assist the desired conformity.

Pencil Spectrum

Just a little color testing with a pencil I found online. I cut out the pencil and then copy and pasted it about 30 times so that I was able to have a steady transition of colors.

Finished House

Here is the finished image, I quite the like the colors I have used, I chose them at random and tried to seperate similar colors as much as possible. The building design by Mies van der Rohe looks, in my opinion, better here than it does in the photo. Because of the accuracy I have traced the original picture with, it has a professional feel to its understated, quite structure. I added the color using Photoshop, but simpler programmes such as MS Paint would be as sophisticated. I will use this as one of my final images.

Screenshots 3

Here is the finished drawing, the colors are now to be added. I only used bright colors to make the image more appealing. I went for an abstract, wild color scheme. I clearly show where the Paint Bucket Tool is located.

Screenshots 2

Here is the drawing coming together, I have clearly shown where the Line Tool is located on the toolbar. As you can see some of lines in the drawing are weighted 2px, wheras the majority are just 1px. I like the look of the steps up to the building.

Screenshots



To start with I began to draw the main edges over using the Lines tool as shown in the picture below, this allowed me to create an accurate, architectural drawing of the building.

Mies Van der Rohe

Today on google, an architect named Mies Van der Rohe was honored with a google doodle. I researched his name and found some of the buildings which he designed. This one struck my eye and I loved it at once. I have decided to use it in one of my final images. I plan to import it into Photoshop and draw over the main frame of the building using black lines of different thicknesses. I will keep the blog updated using screen shots.

Word Shapes

I like the idea of creating an image just using words, to do this I would start off with an image of the thing I wanted to create, and then make many word layers to fit onto the background layer. After I have filled it up I will delete the background layer leaving the new image. It is a bit like digital tracing.

Karol Kolodzinski

Karol Kolodzinski's work is absolutely breathtaking! The amount of work that goes into one of his pictures is truely incredible. He uses bright colors, a dazzling array of brushes and his images somehow work. This is a favorite of mine, I like the contrast between the man who, on first impressions, seems a horrible, frightening fellow, and the childrens toys. The way it has been displayed could represent memories coming from inside him, escaping. The sun glasses and the suit show how he's representing himself, these clothes are often seen as the city's uniform. You can see the city beneath, and the ladder shows his escape to the heavens, and the flood of colors and thoughts is him letting himself go, unloading stress. Kolodzinski's work would be very hard to recreate because of the intricity of it.

USA Flag

This is a flag I created for my Diorama project. I thought I would add it onto my blog as the production of the image used a number of different image manipulation techniques. To begin with I drew out a very accurate American flag with all of the correct dimensions which I had previously researched online. Once I had my colorless pencil drawing correctly scanned in at a high resolution and imported into Photoshop I began to find the right colors to use. I found an image of an American Flag online and then, using the eyedropper tool I selected the red from the stripes and, using the paint bucket tool, filled the correct stripes in. I then made the union of the flag the bright blue that is used in reality. The stars were harder as they were the color of pencil lead. To correct them I had to set the tolerance of my paint bucket tool to a low number, the tolerance defines how similar in color a pixel must be (to the pixel you click) to be filled. I made the stars completely white to replicate the real thing. I am happy with the end result and enjoy the technicality and precision needed for accurate flag drawing.

Kid Spaniard is a graphic designer using illustrations that she has created herself. She edits photographs and drawings to make them appear to have been crafted on a computer, but she does this subtely, in a smooth, seamless fashion. The colours used are always very dull, and in some cases almost lifeless. She never uses eye catching colours, the backgrounds, mainly, are almost transperent, showing the commonly used white background beneath.