mixed media and playing with the results in photoshop 101
Winter Woods, Icy. Vivien BlackburnToday I wasn't in a 'serious' work mode so I played with watercolour, coloured pencil and oil pastel on Ingres pastel paper.
The original is below - not very exciting, just an experiment to see how the media worked together on the Ingres paper (quite well - it's something worth experimenting more with). Simply an imaginary scene with no reference.
Winter woods, experiment in watercolour, oil pastel and coloured pencil on Ingres pastel paper, about 10 inches, Vivien Blackburn
Digital manipulation of the sketch aboveIn this one I applied a dry brush effect first, to simplify shapes down and altered the colour balance slightly - more cyan in the highlights and more blue in the shadows.
Then I duplicated the layer and applied a find outlines filter. This creates a layer of scribbly fine lines wherever it finds edges of shapes/colours. I upped the contrast on this layer to make it simply a light background with dark lines. I used a mixture of Levels and Brightness and Contrast to do this.
Next I multiplied the layers and flattened the image - the scribbly lines are now part of the underlying painting layer.
For the image at the top I applied Invert to change the colours and then a Gaussian Blur filter to soften the hard shapes this gave and create a slightly mistier feel. I could work further by applying more Gaussian Blur to the background trees to create a really misty frosty feel, selecting them to adjust without changing the foreground elements.
This is a short and simple idea of the way I begin to play with images in the computer - there are usually many more stages and layers, with erasing, selecting smaller areas to change, cloning .... whatever it takes,
Anyone who hasn't got Photoshop could download Artweaver for free to try experimenting :>) It's really just a matter of finding out what it can do under the various headings and playing. You'll find some surprising and beautiful effects and these can feed back into paintings with more traditional media - I never copy them but the paintings move on again, developing from the experiments.
Does anyone fancy doing a digital manipulation challenge?
Comments
annie
I'd love to be part of a challenge but need more memory in my computer. If you get it going, I'll have a go and see if my Mac can survive the experience.
Another year full of challenges, right? May it be a good one, Vivien
I didn't need a scanner Annie - this was done from a digital photo of the sketch - it was just a little too big to fit my A4 scanner
Robyn you could keep the images smallish and work at no more than 150 dpi. Your computer shouldn't go into meltdown then :>) I have to do that at college or their system crashes constantly.
I'll do a digital challenge then when the new year is a little more underway.
Simply reproducing them in paint doesn't interest me at all`. The digital manipulations often spark ideas for future paintings.
One very very quick ink and wash sketch that I played with digitally led on to several oil paintings and 2 series of collage prints that were all very very different - but were sparked off by those manipulations :>)
I really enjoy the way in which images move around and develop in different directions in different media.
PS - I had to sign up to blogger to post. Doesn't it normally allow you to sign in with other accounts or with a URL?