Once we had gotten some understanding of photoshop and re-coloring pictures we were tasked with coloring a grayscale or a black and white photo. We had a range of photos to choose from and I chose one that I didn’t think would be too difficult (I was wrong). It was a wooden boat dock with wooden posts about every fourteen planks looking out onto the ocean with some clouds in the sky. After I had chosen this I searched for pictures of sunsets/sunrises over the ocean online until I had a sense of what the colors looked like and how they interacted with water. I began playing with the different tools until I had a good sense of what I was doing and then I began. I used the quick select tools to pull the sections I wanted and then made a new layer to color on (this was part of the masking we learned when working with sandwiches). This was extremely helpful because I could just delete layers when I made mistakes or thought my picture looked better without that certain element. After I had gone through and colored the big sections I did the borders with the pencil and paintbrush tools. I would use the eyedropper to take the adjacent colors and put them into my color palette then use the paint brush and pencil to draw in the pixels. In some sections the uncolored parts were so minuscule that I had to take the size of my paintbrush and turn it down to 1 pixel! This meant that I was coloring pixel by pixel which would drive me crazy if I had to do an entire drawing in that fashion. You wouldn't think that the little uncolored parts would be that important but, they were what held my entire picture together. It is very easy to spot little uncolored sections and the difference between the little spots and the color is an amazing change. When I was done with the cleanup and edges I tweaked the final colors a little bit and then my final product was complete.
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Today we worked on design elements and photography. Our assignment was to go around the school (inside and out) to take pictures of different elements and principles of design. We had 14 different elements/principles to capture, line, shape, color, texture, scale, space, contrast, repetition, alignment, proximity, proportion, emphasis, rhythm and balance. I found that many of my pictures could work for multiple elements and principles. When we are finished with these pictures we will put them in a website with descriptions for each one. These concepts are all fairly new to me, I have heard of some of them but not as in depth as this. In middle school I had a short unit of photography composition but it was much more general and generic than what we are doing now. I haven't had much experience with photography but it interests me so I'm glad we are learning about it. I noticed that many of the schools features were symmetrical and had nice textures because it was mostly built out of stone. These photography techniques are also good for me to learn because I can use them not only for photography but also for drawing and other compositions. Now that I know these techniques I can see what artists and graphic designer might have been trying to do. We aren't done with these yet but, I have already learned about many new design compositions and I am ready for what is next.
These past weeks we have been learning about photoshop and for me this was the first experience I had ever had with photoshop. There were tons of different tools and options so at first it was complicated and it took me a little to get used to doing things fluidly. It was especially difficult because I would learn something one class period and then have to re-learn it the next class period because I forgot. Another problem I faced was when I would fumble with the controls and tools and do something weird. This was very inconvenient because I didn't know how to use the program and I would try different ways of fixing my problem sometimes it would work and others I wasn't too lucky. On one assignment we were tasked with making a sandwich using the different "layer" tools. I liked this assignment because the layers concept made sense it was almost like making a sandwich in real life. For this assignment we had to practice using non-destructive editing which was a new concept for me. Instead of deleting certain aspects we would just hide them so if we needed them later we could easily make them appear. We used a "quick mask" tool that would turn the things we selected a light, translucent shade of pink. I accidentally changed this selection color to a solid black and didn't realize it. I re-read the instructions multiple times and couldn't figure out what was wrong because I was doing everything correctly what I didn't realize is that I had changed the mask color. I got help and I finally got to work. Once I had cleared that roadblock things were pretty smooth. It was things like this that made me wish I had a little more experience in photoshop because I could be completely halted by a minor alteration. My overall experience has been one of learning and I am enjoying it.
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AuthorI am Giacomo Hardin and this is my blog. I will be reflecting on my time in Digital Design and Game Art class. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools Archives
May 2020
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