Seventh Week of Intro to Digital art

 Wow, late blog again. I really need to be more on time with these. Anyways last week was interesting since we talked a lot about surrealism. I've heard of it before and have seen a couple of documentaries on the topic. I find it cool how surreal painters have always tried to bridge the gap between realism and fantasy as closely as possible. Of course, I don't know everything about the subject, so I'm curious about how exactly this art moment started and why. Was it World War I or perhaps the booming economy that occurred after the war that allowed many artists to financially take risks towards making art that was something new and otherworldly? I'll be sure to do research on that. Although the main point of talking about this topic during class was to prepare ourselves for the next art project, which was coming up with our own surreal piece. The media we would be using is Photoshop on a couple of photos. We are expected to combine several photos to make something unreal, and it's been fun doing the project. It's really unreal what Photoshop can do with its tools. I recall back last week, when Professor Garbutt was showcasing the tools that we could use, and there was one that allowed you to make an image look like it belonged in a different image, and it did so by messing around with the values of light for the object. It blew my mind how much that object harmonized with the background now, after the usage of the AI tool. Overall, I'm looking forward to finishing my dreamscape project, and I hope that the end result will be surreal enough to make people go wow, that is realistic and fake at the same time! 

My progress so far with my dreamscape project. I wanted to create a mesmerizing, peaceful setting of an old man fishing atop clouds as the sun sets, with the viewer watching it all unfold within the confines of a plane. I hope to evoke a sense of hope and fulfillment in anyone who sees my piece.

Sixth week of Intro to Digital Art

 Time flies by, one day I'm entering class for the first time in January, now I'm writing about it in March! This week, we had to finish our photography projects, but before we could do that, we had peer reviews. The peer review went really well, thanks to Professor Garbutt and my peer, who, while not having 5 photos for the day, the ones she did show me were heartwarming and cute, and I wish her luck with the project since they were nice photos. Before I got to class, I made sure to at least have some semi-completed photos. I tried to experiment with every tool that I learned this week in Lightroom, but I found out when I got to class that there were more that I didn't know about. The professor showed me the separate color sliders that you could use along with a graph where you could manipulate a line in the middle in order to make values darker or lighter. When finishing up my project, I made sure to experiment with these tools. Some of the photos, I used the color tool more heavily than others. Overall, this wasn't that hard and honestly really fun. I am for sure going to use Lightroom again, and now, since I know a bit about how it works, I'll use it on some of my other photos. It really does wonders for how they look, and it helps deliver a certain mood in the photos. 

At the beginning of this Unit, I felt that I enjoyed doing photography, but I've never really tried to tell a story in the majority of my photos. However, now that I have finished this project and this unit, I'll try to tell a story more often in my photos by incorporating elements of art and design. This shift mainly happened because of the interesting video we had to watch; it made the idea of storytelling in photography and how to do it seem easier to me. To answer the last question, it felt fine to share unfinished work for me. I know for some people, they might be anxious since people judging their work while it's not complete can sometimes seem unfair since they aren't seeing the completed vision, but in my opinion, it's a great thing. It helps you rethink your decisions in your workflow, which could save you time and improve your vision. That if you receive constructive criticism, as I did in the peer review. 

This is a photo that I took of the San Carlos Beach when I was on vacation last summer. I edited using Lightroom and the summer preset that we had to do for an assignment this week.

Week 5 of Introduction to Digital Art

 

Photography has always been fun for me, and this week has been a great example of that. We are learning about composition and editing for photography, and it has been going well. I enjoyed the walk near the school campus this week, and thanks to Professor Garbutt's help with her showcase of the rule of thirds and other compositional techniques, I would say that some of the photos that I took during that session actually came out better than what I expected. One of my favorites had to be the "Dog Rose Above" photo. The main technique for that one was the rule of thirds. I also took another photo of the same subject without using the rule of thirds, and I have to be honest, that compositional technique genuinely makes more of an interesting photo to look at than the one that has the flower in the center. We are also using the Lightbox app, and I think it's pretty neat that such powerful editing software can be on our phones. We really have come a long way from the 90s. Overall, this week has made me think about my process of taking photos, because while going to photography class in high school and being friends with a photographer who has done professional shoots and recordings, I've never really given a real effort in putting more work into my photos than using the usual "make things pretty" techniques. I would like to incorporate more story elements and complex compositional elements. Since this would not only make my photos look stronger but would also greatly improve my other forms of artwork. 

This is a photo of a Chinese Rose that's in my backyard. I love the colors and shape of the flower.