Getting down to the wire, feeling a bit overwhelmed.

Hyper Realism and cubism are finished (hopefully), and I have a pretty good idea of what I want to do for my optional project now. Moving forward with collage, I decided to keep the theme alive from cubism and continue with music, while doing some research I found some work by Richard Hamilton that I really enjoyed and see my project looking something like this image

http://www.blckdmnds.com/richard-hamilton-o-pai-do-pop-art-britanico/rh8/

Now I need to finish my sketches and search for more photos

 

 

Finishing Cubism

Overall cubism turned out to be a much easier process than hyper realism, I think the subject for cubism helped out as far as inspiration. Playing guitar for the last 20 years, it really has become something that is completely second nature to me and it was a lot of fun, taking all of my guitar apart and rearranging them into a cubist vision. Looking at it while i was presenting to class, I feel that the overall arrangement was perfect the way it was, the only changes to be made were the canvas size and adding the wood texture to the background.

Getting back to work.

Getting back to work on cubism after 8 days with no power, followed by last weeks blizzard and the resulting insanity at work really slowed down my progression. Thankfully my sketches for cubism were a real help once i got into photoshop and started putting fenderstein  together. The over all composition was pretty a pretty quick process, the real work was experimenting with filters to give it more of a painted look.

A sneak peak at Fenderstein in progress

Hyper Realism Improvements

I was feeling a little stumped about my sketches for cubism so I went back to my Hyper Realism project and made some adjustments. The composition needed some work, and I changed the idea a little. I got some better pictures of acorns so I extracted them using them magic wand tool and replaced the old acorns I had.

Next I was thinking composition, the pile I had in the right corner drew attention away from the rest of them image, originally I was going to put the pile behind the tree but I did not like the way that looked so I tried taking the graves out and putting the pile on that side. I was much happier with the overall image when I took the graves out.

Then I added a few leaves to the tree and using the marquee tool selected each leaf individually and increased the saturation to make the green really stand out.

Finally just to make the living elements of the image stand out more I created another copy of the background image and using an adjustment layer made it black and white, then moved that layer above the original background layer. Using the eraser tool I erased the color in all of the trees, and grass in the original image, leaving only the purple flowers under the tree in color. Then just to blend the acorns onto the grass a little better I used the same technique as I did to flatten the graves into the image. I sampled the grass with the clone stamp, turned the opacity down and blended the acorns into the grass.

Hyper Realism is now FINISHED!

Cubism, Week 2

Researching Cubist artist helped get some ideas for my project, I wasn’t too sure what I was going to do as far as the background for my image.

http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/georges-braque/musical-instruments-1908

This piece by Georges Braque gave me the idea using a page of sheet music as the background, maybe add some notation in boxes to add to it. Some other ideas were to use a closeup of a section of a guitar, or maybe my bass amp which has a cube grid infront of the speaker.

The colors were simple enough to figure out, I have 5 guitars each with different colors

I just have to take pics of all of my guitars when i get home tonight.

Cubism

Thinking of Cubism ideas was abit of a challenge, not sure if I even completely understand the project but see my cubism section for ideas.

I am so grateful for all the years of photography I have saved, I can always refer back to my iphoto library for inspiration. I had some good fall landscape shots, statues, and flowing water from tibetts brooke park. For my last idea I thought it would be cool to do a cubism project with all the textbooks from my last 2 semesters.

Presentation Reaction

I feel the Hyper Realism presentation went pretty well, having done a critique earlier in the week for painting class helped me feel less anxious about speaking in front of the class. The presentation itself was a positive experience. Hearing thoughts from my classmates and Prof. Krikun gave me some ideas to make my image stronger.  Some goals for my “Hyper” project

1) move the pile of acorns behind the tree.

2) get more(better) pictures of acorns.

3) cover trees in the background with leavcs

4) manipulate the names on the graves, I’m thinking mother nature. Also adjust the color of the grass around the grass, make it darker, brown to look dried out.

Hyper Realism Presentation Progression

Working on my Hyper Realism project, I knew my concept and how I wanted to achieve it, but all my previous photoshop experience was soley with retouching images so using tools to extract images and create layers was a new experience for me.  Getting familiar with the tools needed to cut the necessary parts from each image was my main concern starting off.  Using the magnetic tool and quick selection tools, I was able to make my extractions and begin layering.

My concept changed a little once i got started. Initially I was going to use the flowers around the graves to represent life, but as I progressed I came up with the idea of the squirrels using the acorns to bring the tree back to life. Luckily a few days before I was able to get photos of acrons for the project.  Going along with the “Hyper” aspect of the project, the acorns were enlarged and the squirrels made smaller.

Placing the flowers in the tree was the biggest challenge. They looked more like they were floating in air rather than growing from the branches. To cover the stems I used leaves and covered the bottom of the flowers which I feel made it look more realistic.

I have a few edges that need to be smoothed out but overall I feel that it came out pretty well.

Progress

I’m not having any luck uploading my progress onto Word Press.   I have a rough draft of what my Hyper Realism project is going to look like but i need t start it over, for some reason some of my pics were only 72 DPI even though I shot them as RAW files at the highest resolution, luckily I had all the original files back out so I can restart it in class.  I was also able to go out yesterday and get shots of tress to add into the background, and i was lucky enough to find a tree with acorns scattered around it. I was able to get shots of a few of them and gathered some together to get a shot of them in a pile.
Photos are all on the way once Word Press starts cooperating with me.

Week 2, Sketches and Ideas

Some rough sketches for Hyper-Realism, Life and Death project

First sketch is of the dead elements, dead trees, graves beside it, spooky foggy background

Adding some elements of life, a bed of flowers growing from the graves

Also adding in some pictures of a squirrels, gathering acornsand climbing in the tree.

 

And the finished imaged, Graves with bed of flowers to one side, the other squirrels gathering food and playing throughout the dead tree and leaves (life) added to the trees in the background.