Photoshop Session 5

Today was our final session of Photoshop. 

So far in these Photoshop sessions, we have covered the basics of digital drawing techniques.

I have revised how to scan drawings to a high resolution and how to open them in Photoshop.

I have also learned new skills and shortcuts which have improved my competence in digital drawing.

We had free time today to focus on any Photoshop tools that we wanted.

I felt as though I had exhausted the parrot I had been using in previous weeks and so brought in another drawing to work on.

 

Siamese Twin drawing scan. This was a drawing I produced in Visual Language in response to the theme 'Circus'. I wanted to add textures to this illustration and experiment with colouring the girls without ruining the original drawing. I decided that taking it into Photoshop would give me a great opportunity to add layers behind the image and see how it could look in different visual formats.

I enjoyed making a digital collage last week when I added textures from photographs to my parrot drawing. This week I wanted to use some of my own sources and began scanning the textures and patterns of my scarf.

 I managed to arrange the scarf so that the creases and folds suited the stance of the girls as a dress and how it would hang on their frame. I think that this was a really simple way of suggesting dimensions and giving more life to the garment.

I also scanned my arms, forming a 'skin' texture that I placed underneath the drawing. I don't think that it is very obvious that it is my skin and because I only used a small sample, it didn't look as lifelike as I would have liked. The style of the illustration isn't realistic, but I did want a tactile aesthetic from my textures. Perhaps by scanning a larger area of skin and applying it proportionally to the illustration, this would produce a richer sense of flesh.

I often focus soley on the forground subject and forget about the scene behind the action. What is happening behind the girls? Where are they?

I used a photograph of a woodland to give a sense of place and contextual information to the scene.

In future practice, I would like to use my own photographs to inform my drawings in this way.

 I felt that the background compared with the digital colours brought too much light to the image. I found it too distracting and didn't think it matched the slightly macabre tone of my illustration. I lowered the saturation of the image to try and tone it down a little.

I also added drop shadows to the characters, adding to the dark and gloomy atmosphere of the scene.

 Monochrome

Converting the illustration into a brush. I then painted the drawing onto different textures.

 

 

Preferred the black on colour/white to the white on black/colour

 

 

I think that this is one of my favourite images I made today. The tone is so sinister and 

I saw some students making really impressive work with graphics tablets. I've never used one before so this is something I'd like to focus on and learn about next time I use digital media.