My Finals and Evaluation

Evaluation

I started off with the idea I wanted to do some graphics around a fashion style so I started looking in books and researching online.  I found three artists whose work inspired me, but I feel that my work relates mostly to Sophie Toulouse’s because of her use of imagery and added patterns. 

I first tried to make a movie poster twice and gave up because the tutorial was very complicated and I wasn’t really that into making a movie poster, it didn’t seem interesting enough.  I attempted it twice because I was new to Photoshop and didn’t really know my way around.  This helped my learning how to cut out an image and put it onto a new canvas. 

I scanned in a variety of textures to experiment with using these within imagery.  I traced around a Rankin image and then scanned in the trace and added textures to the trace within Photoshop.  I also used some textures from shoots I did for this project.

I did a number of shoots for this project and I haven’t used any of the images from these shoots for my finals, only to show examples of how to do things in Photoshop.  I felt the images didn’t represent what I wanted to get, and that they weren’t different enough.  Therefore I had to look on the internet for images because I had ideas which I couldn’t get myself such as the space images.

I researched a number of tutorials and found four that I really wanted to experiment with doing; the dreamy scene, smoke effect, watercolour effect and the surreal effect.  I really enjoyed the smoke effect and surreal effect tutorials and feel that I took the tutorial and made my own ideas out of them.  I used my own images for them and then just got textures off of the internet.  The first attempt at the surreal look didn’t go the way I planned and I almost gave up on it but I think this was because it was late and I was tired.  I gave it another shot and really started to enjoy it, but felt by the end of it I had pretty much copied the image on the tutorial, so I then expanded and once I had learnt how to use the brushes I created my own interpretation.  I loved doing the smoke effect because the brushes were great to use and really created a sense of movement in my images.  I found the tutorials really easy to follow and soon got used to using Photoshop.

I did a lot of ‘how to’ posts on the blog because I wanted to show my knowledge of how I did the overall images I created and also some stuff that is just useful.

Finals Evaluation

Black and white smoke effect - I chose this as a final because I love the smoke and the way it highlights the movement within the image.  I chose not to add colour to it as I felt this distracted from the intent of the overall image.

Colour smoke effect – I chose this as a final because I love how the smoke adds pattern and texture to the image.  I wanted to add some colour because I felt the original black and white was lacking without it.  I chose the one with the glitter because I felt it added some movement to the image.

Space self-portrait – I chose this image for a final because I felt it looked really interesting and I loved the nebula image and the effect it gave the portrait.

Surreal self-portrait – I chose this as a final because I love the use of the butterflies and light brushes used as the hair and the flowing flowers for the shoulders.  I feel it looks really surreal and this is what I wanted to convey in the image. 

Before I did this project I was a beginner at Photoshop and knew barely anything apart from how to quick mask.  I feel that this project has allowed me to learn a further skill needed for photography.  I hope to further my skills in Photoshop in the future.  I have enjoyed using Photoshop and creating all these different pieces of work.  I found Illustrator to be confusing and the tutorials not very easy to follow, but I feel that if I furthered my knowledge of Illustrator I could create some amazing effects using it.  I really enjoyed this project and wouldn’t mind doing something like this again in the future.