During this lesson, we were learning more about how to use Photoshop. We were given a number of tasks to do and here is some of the stuff I ended up with.

Had to make a face out of pieces of fruit and veg. We had to cut them out of the pictures they were already in and then put the parts we wanted (the fruit and veg) into a face.

 

Here, we had to add the scarecrow into this image. We had to cut out the scarecrow from one picture and then place him into this one. To make it look more legit, we had to tweak some of the colouring so it looked all to be part of the same image. We were supposed to blur the background a bit so it looked like we're focusing on the scarecrow but I was too slow getting around to it. I like it how it is though.

We had to create our own version of a picture just like this one. The only difference was we were allowed to choose our own little phrase for the top right and the colouring. I had chosen a sort of bronze/brown look as I thought it was fitting with the clock, cog, and gauges.

This picture was all about sorting out the colouring. It would seem the picture was taken without sorting out the 'white balance'. It appeared a lot darker than this originally. Instead of just making it all a bit brighter, we had to tweak the Red, Green, and Blue colours to still make it look nice and vibrant.

I tried to make it look as if the rather large fly was coming out of this cup of coffee. Admittedly, I didn't do a great job. But if you look closely at the insect, the coffee becomes more transparent as the insect's body approaches the surface of the liquid.

Here we had to put two different people into various images, here are a few that I had created:

Here is a digital collage:

Textures and such:

Digital collages:

Digital collage research:

During our last lesson, we went out into the great beyond to capture some pictures in the woodlands. The plan is to make a digital collage with them all. We had to think of a particular word to use in our collage, related to our journey when taking the pictures. The collage also follows a "nature" theme. Originally we were thinking of the word being "chlorophyll", but after doing some research on other collages and a look at all the pictures we had taken, we though the word "camouflage".

Here are some of the images we had gathered:

Once our pictures had been gathered, it was time to look for some inspiration in other collages.

Our general idea was to make the collage into a certain shape. I'm not 100% how to explain but we'll use multiple images to make a picture of a tree. As we don't plan to use lots of fancy blurring tools, it will look like some of the images in here where more or less lots of images are just placed by one another. There will be a slight use of transparency as we will be hidden within the woodland collage. Thus the word "camouflage". Some of the images in my research shows this.

The beautiful finished product:

Cut/stick collage

During this lesson we were tasked to pair up and create a collage with some sort of theme. We were supplied with a large pile of old magazines and some newspapers that we were limited to. These were to use as our source of materials. Out of the concepts we came up with, my friend and I decided to go with this one. It is supposed to look somewhat like the growth of bacteria.

My Collage Project

Research:

Mood Boards:

Proposal:

Concept:

Development of my collage:

 Here I made a grid for each body part and made the top 3 characters as they originally should look.

 Then I swapped around the body parts and put them together as new characters at the bottom.

 I then added colour for the background of each square in the grid.

 I then added a texture over the background but made sure all the figures weren't covered by it also. Finally I removed the grid.

The finished piece:

Evaluation:

I have made a collage using pictures I had gathered at home. The theme is "lego figures" as lego was a big pass time during my childhood.

I think this is one of my best looking bits of work. I've heard it looks like it could be used as a piece of advertising for Lego, so I assume it must look somewhat professional. I haven't learned any new skills on photoshop but I think that I may have a bit more of an artistic flare than I had originally thought.

I'm happy with how this collage looks, it's nice, bright and colourful. I think it's success boils down to it starting off as a good idea, if I didn't have a decent plan to work off of I don't think it would have turned out so well. A lot of the proportions are wrong and positioning is not as precise as it could be but generally it's good.

If I could have made the grid have even segments, the body parts would not have to be stretched to such a degree and all of the proportions of each piece would have fitted together better. I think this is worthy of a Merit.

Second Collage:

Development:

 I added some pictures.

 Then, I added more pictures.

 I thought to myself, "this could do with some more pictures".

 So, I then added more pictures.

 Even more pictures were then added.

The final piece:

Throughout there was lots of alteration to each picture, trimming bits out and what not. Resulting in this beauty.

Evaluation:

I have made a collage out numerous pictures of a ship I had created with Lego, back when I was a child. I took many different pictures of it from multiple angles, as you can see by this mis-match of images. I knew from the start there would be a lot of "white space" for this collage, and there could have been even more if I had removed the background of the pictures (not the actual lego). However, I felt it looked better keeping the background on most of the photos, seemed a little plain without it. I could have purposely not re-made the lego creation with the photos but I thought having them just strewn about randomly just seemed a bit too aimless. As I made up this lego ship, nobody would be able to recognise how it should look if it was left for the viewer to piece together in their mind, so reconstruction was the best option in my opinion.

Although it may look like a bit of a mess, it was actually quite difficult sieving through all the pictures and picking which ones I should use and which I shouldn't. My abilities were tested trying to find what pictures should be used and more importantly what part of pictures should be cropped out for the final piece. There was lots of work done to each photo to get it to work in the collage. I think using lego again for this collage was a good idea as the theme is all about construction/creation.

I'm glad I went for this sort of style because if I hadn't been set to do two collages, I probably wouldn't have gotten around to experimenting with this. I think my research on David Hockney payed off.

I kind of feel that the collage is missing something, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Seems almost as if this is a piece of work that is not yet fully completed, maybe if it was scaled larger on the canvas that would help? Other than that, I like it. It does look all dis-proportionate and the angles of certain parts don't match up but I quite like the amateur sort of look that it gives.

I feel that the whole collage looks a bit empty, so if I were to do this again I think I'd include a background also. I think this is worthy of a Merit.

Artist Critique - Diane Fenster

Diane Fenster is an internationally exhibited digital photographer and photo illustrator. She has been using the computer as an artistic tool since 1989. Her work has been called “an important voice in the development of a true digital aesthetic. She views herself as an alchemist, using digital tools to delve into fundamental human issues. Her work is described as being: literary, emotional, and full of symbolism with multiple layers of meaning. Her style consists of an innovative combination of her photography and scanned imagery. Pieces of her work appear in numerous publications of digital art and photography. She is often a guest lecturer at many seminars and conferences. Her well known photo-illustration style is an outgrowth of the explorations she has taken with her personal work. Her commissions range from editorial to advertising to web.

Diane Fenster was the first artist to be inducted into the newly formed ‘Photoshop Hall of Fame’; sponsored by the National Association of Photoshop Professionals and Adobe Systems, Inc.

Diane Fenster: “My work derives technically from two different mediums, from the computer which I first learned as a graphic design tool, and from photography which I initially used as ‘found’ material in the vintage or family photographs that I used in my art. It also derives from the practice of photography itself which I began to explore in 1992 by taking my own photographs as a source for the images, or photomontages, that I had created with my earlier work. My experiments with photography opened a surprising new realm of meaning for my work, as I was able to find my own voice and create personal landscapes from images that persistently impelled me to photograph them.”

From my personal experience using Photoshop, I can see that Diane Fenster uses multiple photos which are all melded together for the finished product. I notice she uses a lot of overlays in her work to do things such as applying pictures of people’s faces onto objects. All the images used are professionally blended together, successfully removing the edges of pictures/photographs so each one seamlessly continues into the next, resulting in a montage of imagery. As mentioned above, there is a particular theme in most of Diane Fenster’s work, that being family. “Viewing Fenster's work one can see the influence of the Dadaists and Surrealists”. Here is an example of her work where you can see all of these techniques being put to use:

Personally, I don’t think Diane Fenster’s work has much relation to traditional art but that is purely because traditional art was not constructed digitally. However, the contents of the artworks are similar. That being that her work and traditional art tends to have a lot of pictures of people, nature, and other objects. If her work was of a futuristic theme I don’t think there would be any relation to traditional art at all. Although saying this, I believe her artwork embraces the future as we head towards a more technological age; impressive artworks are being produced digitally whereas in the past they were limited to only being produced through other means. After all, Fenster describes herself as an, "Alchemist using a new technology."

I like how she can make multiple pictures belong by putting them together in to a montage. The aesthetics of her work is admirable and I find it inspirational, I’d like to be able to create work to such a professional standard eventually. I wouldn’t say I ‘respond’ to her work as I personally can’t read any story or emotion behind the construction of her pieces. That’s not to say that I do not like them though.