Tea in the Park?

This week we learned how to use the copy, paste and transform tools in Photoshop.  I found it a lot to learn all at once, as a total beginner, but with a bit of help I managed.  It is comforting to remind myself there are You-tube videos available if I get stuck anytime in the future!  Our task was to add, duplicate and move around teapots against a background scene of a park.  Here’s how I got on with it… Take one teapot…  

… Fill the screen with teapots… 

… Turn a few of them round…

 …Make some of them transparent…

Opps!  I added too much shadow! (Due to wrong brush selection).

Then I added the right amount of shadow, but in the wrong colour (too green). I wasn’t worried about that because I knew that if I wanted to I could have put that right. 

So that was the instructions part of our lesson.  Then we got to try out our own choice of items, related to our current art project (which for me is Goddesses).  So I selected some Goddess related images to practice copy, paste and transform with.

Here are my choices:

1) The Amazon.

2) A pomegranate (a symbols of death and rebirth.)

3) Rosetti’s beautiful painting ‘Proserpine’, (who is also known as the Goddess Persephone).  In this painting she holds a pomegranate symbolizing her fruitful womb.

Using the techniques I’d been shown, I made this, which I like. 

For me it’s an image about this time of year and what’s happening in the world right now.  There is a widespread concern for our planet and the environmental.  This artwork references the rain-forest alongside the seeds of new life in the pomegranate.  Digital and traditional art are mixed in this image which portrays the Goddess Persephone.  

She is the Goddess, who in mythology, travels into the underworld at autumn time and is reborn in the spring. She is a Goddess of sadness, death and transformation but she is also a Goddess of hope and new life. 

REFLECTIONS

On reflection, I can see these tools will be useful to me in the future.  I was already wondering how to duplicate images digitally, how to create a digital sketchbook to try out ideas quickly.  I can see there’s plenty of potential for making patterns, designs and composite images digitally.  I can also see that it would be easy to create collages and combine different types of traditional artwork, such as sculpture and painting into one new image.  

Being able to resize and move shapes around also offers a lot of control.  I can see Photoshop being particularly helpful with design as this is something I have struggled with in the past.  Also using photographs and magazines there is potential for resizing and re-purposing images.  There is a huge range of possibilities for expressing ideas and telling stories.   

I am beginning to appreciate just how ‘anything, anywhere’ really sums up the possibilities with digital art.  

I am interested in adding movement, music and spoken word to images eventually.  The possibilities are exciting and seem endless.

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