Our next project forces us to visualize our every move in terms of BLACK and WHITE. We will look at using Adobe Illustrator to convert photographic elements to absolute black and white and the same for drawings you have done by your own hand. The process we will use will visually harmonize these various elements and through Illustrator you will compose your work of art. It will then be projected (through the light of the projector) onto a sheet of 22" x 30" drawing paper so that it may be traced and inked in. The hand inking introducing the element of chance into your final steps. There is no undo button for this phase. If something goes unexpectedly you will have to react on-the-fly in the real world.
Below is a very simple breakdown to visually explain this project:
A photographic element (from your own photography, NOT GOOGLE) will be used.
A hand-drawn element (from your own hand, NOT GOOGLE) will be used.
The assortment of hand drawn and photographic elements will be combined. The above example is meant to serve only as a simple illustration of the process to use for this project.
Illustrator works by editing (for the most part) points and paths and giving said points and paths a particular appearance (fill and stroke). The pen tool is at the root of all of this. You will need to understand these basics to because they exist in Photoshop and After Effects as well. Here is the breakdown:
While in use the pen tool cursor may indicate a tiny plus, minus, arrow, circle or slash. Each cursor has a very different action associated with it. From left to right: The tiny plus means you can add a point to a path. The subtraction arrow indicates you have the option to delete a point from a path. The pen tool with the small arrow indicates you will effect a points direction handles. The cursor with the small slash indicates you are telling Illustrator that you want to resume drawing on a path that is not closed.
Drawing with the Pen Tool:
Drawing a Hard-edge Shape - The Triangle: 1) Select the Pen Tool from the toolbar 1) Click and release somewhere in a new document and you get a point. 2) Click and release a second time above and to the right of your first click and get a second point connected by a path. 3) Click and release a third time down and to the right. 4) Return to the point where you started and click to close the path.
Drawing a Smooth Shape 1) Select the Pen Tool from the toolbar 2) Click and drag (to activate direction handles) somewhere in the document. 3) Click and drag to another point somewhat above your first. 4) Click and drag once more somewhere below in and to the right of your last point 5) Finish by clicking on the point where you started to create a closed path.
Editing Points
Any preexisting point can be edited with the either the Direct Selection Tool (keyboard shortcut = A) or the the Convert Anchor Point tool (Keyboard shortcut = Shft C, or if you are already on the pen tool just hit the ALT key). 1. To add direction handles select the object you wish to alter, select the direct selection tool an click and drag away from said point. 2. To alter both sides of a points preexisting direction handles simultaneously use the direct selection tool (the white arrow) by clicking on the point (with said arrow) and then editing that points' handles. 3. To alter one direction handle but not the other use the convert anchor point tool to grab one direction handle at a time. 4. To kill a point's direction handles select the convert anchor point tool and click once on the point you wish to alter.
Drawing is drawing whether done with a pen and paper, a stick in the mud or a mouse and the computer. The better your understanding of how to make a good drawing the better your ability to work with line, shape, tone, color, texture, scale, composition, etc. If you want your image to be cohesive, dynamic and visually engaging you will have to know how to deal with these issues because there is no other option. More info on the specifics and examples of drawing fundamentals can be found on my other blog here. For this example however I'm going to stress one simple concept: WORK LOOSE BEFORE YOU WORK TIGHT (i.e. don't put on the icing until the cake is baked).
A quick gesture of your subject and environment will empower you to make big decisions in just a few quick seconds. The speed of the gesture will help you to make interesting decisions before you know you are even making them. Although this is just a first step the major formal relationships should be developing here.
The immediate next step I used was to stay loose but to make my initial underdrawing more specific through an application of color and tone. Some of the intuitive and split-second decisions made during these first 2 steps will play a major role in the development of the rest of the work.
I now started using my underdrawing as an armature on which to build my photographic elements. The looseness of the marks allows the photographic pieces to fall into place in a far more natural way than had you started without an underdrawing.
As the piece develops I focus on more and more specific parts (torso first, then arms then hands, then fingers, then fingernails). Remember large to small. Don't invest in the details yet. Details in drawing are the icing on the cake. Put them on too early and it's like icing a cake that has not yet been baked! It's an equally bad approach.
Final steps involve more detail work, and some additional decorative elements that help create a sense of space. Decoration is easy. Details are relatively easy as well. It's the bulk of the cooking, mixing all the ingredients together and heating everything to the right temperature in just the right kind of pan that will determine how good your cake is. The frosting and candles are just additional compliments. Happy baking.
The following exercise will look at how you can use the often overlooked eyedropper tool and the sometimes overlooked info palette to work with the curves palette to match color between two images. I used this same technique in class to color correct based upon a value in the image that you specify as absolutely gray. Essentially both ideas hinge on this same technique. It's not the most intuitive procedure so here's the breakdown:
1) I want to morph the eyes from this sculpture onto the man's face. First we need to make the color of the sculpture match the fleshy pink of the man's face. Fortunately the light source is coming from a similar direction and the angle of the head is similar.
2) I used the rectangular marque to make a selection around each eye of the sculpture image and used the move tool to drop those pixels into the image of the man's face. I transformed each (scale, rotation) slightly to fit the structure of his head.
3) I selected the eye dropper, set the sample size to 11 x 11 and SHIFT-clicked on the sculpture(make sure you are on the right layer) in an area where the most average color existed. By average I mean, not in the dark shadows or highlights but the local tone of the majority of the sculpture. I then went to the layer with the man's face and SHIFT-clicked the average tone there as well. You can see what areas I selected in the above image. Each shift-click creates a target (labeled #1 and #2 in this example) that represents the RGB values (labeled #1 and #2) that have now popped up in the info palette. In the above image the RGB in the sample of the man's face (#2) is R255, G182, B162. The sculpture sample area (#1) is R183, G167, B131. To get the sculpture color more like the flesh of the man's face we need to make the RGB values for the sampled area of the sculpture to match the RGB values of the man's face. It takes a lot of words to describe but it's very straight forward. Here's how to proceed:
4) To alter the exact values on your sculpture layer to match the exact values on the flesh you need to tell photoshop the exact area of the curves that needs to be affected. To do this view each channel (R, G, or B) individually in the curves palette and APPLE-click the target sample on the sculpture layer (in the above image it's #1). As a tip make sure you are on the layer of in the layers palette that you want to affect.
5) Once you have APPLE-clicked the target in each of the channels you can use the up and down arrow keys to nudge the values displayed in the info palette for #1 to be exactly like #2. Remember all this is just a matter of taking one set of RGB numbers and getting them to look just like another set of RGB numbers. That's it.
6) Above you can see the results of matching these values and how those affect the curves in each channel. You can also see how the sculpture layer has a very similar color range to the flesh of the man's face. Check out the #1 and #2 in the info palette. They are just about spot on.
7) I added a layer mask to the layer of the sculpture eyes and used a soft brush around most of the pixels to blend the two layers together. I used a harder edge around the outter left edge where his face meets the sky.
8) In the end I ended up going back into the curves once more to adjust the overall RGB for each eye to increase the brightness of the midtones in the eye on the left and decreased these values slightly to darken up the eye on the right. I also slightly desaturated the eye on the right using hue and saturation because I felt like the colors had grown a bit too intense. There's no one fix-all for such a make-over but I did the majority of this exercise using the eye dropper, the curves and the info palette.
I wanted to use the following two artists to highlight the idea of Project 2. You will be taking photos of a 3 dimensional object that you have fashioned out of some material (clay, paper, wood, etc.) and using that as a "blank" canvas on which you will paint photographic elements. Consider the construction and how it relates to the photographic elements and how the figure will nest itself into an environment. Consider the environment from the outset or it will most likely end up looking tacked on.
First Artist: Daniel Gordon currently shows with Zach Feuer. Daniel's paper-like figures are subjected to violent action and torn apart or disemboweled . The collision of artifice and reality holds the key to the tension in his work. Additionally I would call attention to the settings for each piece. They are simple yet give the figures a believable environment to exist in.
above image: Daniel Gordon
above image: Daniel Gordon
Second Artist: Ida Applebroog currently shows at Ronald Feldman Gallery. She was the artist featured on ART 21 that originally inspired the idea for this project. Her use of crudely formed petite (yet monolithic) sculptures serves a starting point for more developed paintings. The vagueness and ambiguous nature of the small sculptures allows her to develop them without such a definitive outline for how to proceed. I would keep that in mind with your own sculpture. How ambiguity and looseness at the beginning can serve the development of the work until the final details come into place in the end. Work loose to tight, just as you would a drawing.
Layer masks are a dynamic way to work with layers in photoshop. You paint inside of the layer mask with black and white paint to hide or reveal your image. Black hides, White reveals, and Gray will make the pixels become semi-transparent (depending on how dark or how light the gray).
For the following quick tutorial we will combine the image of a man and the image of a lion to create a hybrid construction that utilizes the most interesting elements of each image. See below.
First I made selections around the man's features, copied and pasted them onto a new layer.
Then I created a layer mask by targeting the layer I wanted to apply the mask to and click the "add layer mask" icon in the bottom of the layers palette. Once you click this button you will notice a layer mask has been added to your layer.
Using the brush tool you can paint into this layer mask with white or black paint to reveal or hide pixels respectively. Make sure you are on the layer mask and not on the layer itself when you are using the white and black paint. The double border around any layers thumbnail will ensure you are indeed on this layer. I used a soft brush and painted with black paint to hide the hard outer edge of the pasted layer.
I continued this process with the man's features until I came to an interesting combination. Remember that altering your brush size (bracket keys on the keyboard) and brush hardness will help manipulate the image.
Next I made a selection around half of my lion's face and dragged it into Photoshop. I duplicated the layer (CMND +J) and flipped it horizontally (EDIT > TRANSFORM > FLIP HORIZONTAL). I proceeded to use layer masks on these new layers to create a sort of mask around the head of the man.
I continued to drag selections over from the lion image and work with layer masks in this way until the desired effect was achieved. The finishing touch was to create a new layer (CMND + SHFT + N) above all of the other layers in my layers palette and fill it with a warm color. Then I changed the blending mode for that layer to Pin Light.
