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February 10 2010
My First Attempt with Watercolor
For my February 9 Thing-A-Day, I decided to create a watercolor drawing.
One of the things on my list of ideas for Thing-A-Day projects was to do a pen and ink drawing with a watercolor wash. Actually, its been on my list for much longer. The watercolor paper I used was from a package I bought about five years ago with the same idea of trying to learn to create watercolor drawings. I finally opened that package today.
It’s almost like that package of paper has been a barrier keeping me from giving it a try. Mocking me on days when I notice it setting on the shelf. I need to work on that whole right brain, left brain thing to combine more of the creative side with the analytical side.
Pen and Ink with watercolor
This project started with a photograph I took several years ago of the pickup. It is a 1946 Chevy half ton pickup. It is an old farm truck my grandfather had.
Photo of 1947 Chevy pickup.
The Process
From photo to watercolor took place with the assistance of Gimp and Photoshop (I’m trying to find my way around in each). I used the programs to edit out the background, enlarge the image, use the edge detection filter, and flatten the range of colors to black and white. I printed out the manipulated image and used vellum tracing paper to ink over the lines.
Composite from Photo to Watercolor.
After I had the pen and ink drawing, I placed a sheet of watercolor paper in the printer. From there I used my Staedtler watercolor crayons to add color. For the highlights I layered lighter colors like yellow and orange then touches of red. For shadows I used red, and two increasingly darker shades of brown.
Pen and Ink Tracing.
One great thing about Thing-A-Day comes from inspiration to try new things. I’m excited about the way this turned out and I don’t think that package of paper will be as intimidating in the future.
I have access to several books about Photoshop with a lot of great information to help learn the mechanical techniques of operating the program. For me, one book stands out for inspiration more than the others, it’s “Creative Thinking in Photoshop“. It focuses on creating art from a collection of hand drawn media plus manipulation within Photoshop.
I have some web sites that I’m beginning to work on and hope to incorporate some hand drawn artwork into the themes they will use. This exercise has given me a good place to start.
– About SomeoneKnows –
(c) 2010 Vince Thompson
February 02 2010
Thing-A-Day1+
My Thing-A-Day projects got off to a rocky start by missing the midnight deadline for my first project. I’ve been wanting to learn more about Photoshop, plus I’m wanting to get some promotional materials put together for our Make:KC group. So, for my first project I chose to create a logo using some advanced Photoshop type effects.
Thing-a-day logo project.
It didn’t quite turn out the way I imagined but I did learn new Photoshop features while working on this project. I was working from the Photoshop Type Effects Visual Encyclopedia book using their Soft Plastic technique. There are a number of great looking typography styles to choose from in the book.
Photoshop is capable of much more than my normal usage, mostly croping photos, adjusting the image slightly, creating a few montage images, and using a few filters. For this project I ended up learning about using the Alpha Channel.
Alpha Channel
I don’t know why I haven’t used the alpha channel before. I kind of remember reading something a few years ago about how difficult it was to use these channels. That may still be true but I found that using the alpha channel as a way of saving a particular selection set within your image was easy and is great.
– About SomeoneKnows –
(c) 2010 Vince Thompson
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