Photoshop Painting
Pastel
Our photoshop unit in Digital Media this year was, one of my favorites because we had the freedom to use our own photos and images to create something new with the skills we learned. We learned Photoshop pastel painting, watercolor painting, and compositing, and the countless creative applications that Photoshop has is very impressive. I liked the Photoshop compositing the most because I was able to create a setting for our worldbuilding unit in English, where we came up with our own unique characters, worlds, and universes.
Watercolor
My inspiration for this project derived from all the other amazing pastel art I’d seen. I was genuinely so shocked at how well other paintings turned out, and how great they looked even compared to the real photo. I decided to use a nostalgic picture of my friends and me during one of our birthday parties because it’s an important memory to me and I wanted to put it into art.
The main challenge I encountered was actually managing to use the brush strokes correctly; I often felt like my brush wasn’t painting enough or wasn’t on the exact right side. In short, I was being a perfectionist. But I realized I was zooming in too much, and you couldn’t even see the minuscule details at full length. If I could change anything, I would want to make the eyes of all the characters in this painting a little less lifeless, as it was difficult to color in the whites of their eyes. Some of the characters still look like zombies…. But despite this, I am still satisfied with the way my painting turned out.
During college app season, it’s really easy to get caught up in stress, anxiety, and all around other negative feelings. I think a lot of seniors, like me, forget the good times – hence my inspiration for this project, bathroom shenanigans and having fun with my friends. The main challenge I struggled with was deciding whether or not I actually wanted to paint this, as it may not seem a little unconventional. But like my last project(photoshop pastel painting), I realized it’s more meaningful to me to paint a picture of a good memory. It wouldn’t feel as authentic if I copied a picture from online, or found a boring old photo.
While it may look a little messy, I think that adds to the derpy aesthetic of the original photo. This project helped me change the way I see my own art, to be something I create that has a special meaning to me. Many of my past projects use photos from my camera roll, and I hope to keep having the option to do that.
Through this project, I grew my use of Photoshop and my digital art skills; I now know how to create a watercolor painting through tools on photoshop instead of direct painting. I am most proud of the way all my paintings turned out to be their own different, unique colors, and I value the beauty of digital art that is available to me for my own creations. This project has changed the way I see art through the fact that many pieces may not even be drawn directly, and it’s possible that there are other tools that draw better. I still feel like the authenticity of a real hand drawn painting or art piece is worth much more, but I do believe there is a unique picture in this project.
Photoshop Compositing
In our Photoshop Compositing unit, we went through the countless tools of Photoshop to make compositions like the ones you see below. We also put doors into stone, lion statues into mountains, and even a magic door on the road. This was a super fun unit that I loved using my own images combined with cool stock photos.
My inspiration for this project came from our Worldbuilding unit in English, where I and a few other group members are creating a story about a mammal run country, rather than humans. This Photoshop surreal composition is a landscape creation of the Panda nation, who live in an excluded, secretive, and mountainous area. You can see a rich city at the top of a mountain, a panda face statue rather than a human, and a temple at the bottom of the mountain. I am most proud of the way my coloring and image placement turned out in this project, and I definitely see myself working on Photoshop art like this more often.