Selections Exercise

http://misscabral.blogspot.com/

"The Life of Jalem"

This is a photograph of my little

brother Jalem playing in our back yard

  

   After completion of the piece "The Life of Jalem", I was glad to successful create the piece but it was something I really wanted to create, however the process was extremely difficult for me. Not that the task was extremely difficult itself, but I had to do the project three times over. The easiest task was uploading the pictures onto the computer, but nothing else was easy. Simply taking the photos of my 3-year old brother was immensely difficult, as he wouldn't cooperate, stay still or stay in the frame. Aligning the photos were also difficult because he pushed me around and caused me to move. However, the most difficult part was getting the layered photo masks right, because I layered the photos wrong, and with photos not lined up it was even more difficult.

     The mediums used in this project were Adobe Photoshop C6, the move tool, layering mask tool, opacity tool, the brush tool and the color picker. The move tool and opacity feature allowed me to align the photos. The layering mask tool, brush tool and color picker allowed me to allow the different subjects to show on the same photograph.

     My strongest area was manipulating with the pictures so they would line up. For example, I had to resize the pictures by enlarging them, making them smaller and stretching it so it would fit perfectly on top of each other. I was able to change the brightness. saturation and contrast settings to make the pictures all the same, because I had to deal with clouds covering the sun as well as the sun setting.

     My weakest area  was lining up the  pictures. The photos themselves were not taken in the same place. My camera also changed color settings as the sun changed as well, so I had different colored pictures, pictures that were shifted and some that were closer or further away from my subject. So not only was I trying to layer pictures on top of each other, but I had to resize them and recolor so that they would look the same. 

"The Infinite Links"

Artist Reflection: Single Letter Composition

                After completing the task of creating a composition based off of a single letter, I learned that it was a challenging task but rewarding at the end. The easiest task of the activity was choosing a letter, but even that was tricky as I was very indecisive. I wanted to choose a versatile letter so I had trouble choosing between a few. My final choice was the letter U, because I liked how it was circular and could make larger shapes. The most difficult aspect of this art activity was deciding what would be my theme or my objective. What was I going to produce with the letter U? After making different patterns, shapes, and colors, I chose a theme that I liked; pastel colored links.

                The mediums that were used was the program Adobe Photoshop C6. The tools that I used within that program were the move tool, text box tool, layering tool, opacity tools and the color palettes. The text tool was used to insert the letter U and the move tool was used to move it to my liking. I also used to copy shortcut to make identical versions of the letter to save time. The color palettes allowed me to follow a theme, because the program already provided one to choose from. The layers and opacity also allowed be to create depth within the piece. And I also used the shortcut for sending objects forward or to back, and this was essential for creating the layers that I intended to make.

                My strongest area of my work was the choice in colors. I was successful in choosing a color scheme and following it. In this project, I stuck to light pastel colors and I had two categories within them; warm and cool colors. I mostly had beiges, pinks, oranges, greens and blues. However, one area that I could improve on is my organization. This was partly due to the fact that I was very lost in the beginning, so I put things together and let the outcome happen. After finding a “groove”, I went along with the pattern, and that was when I began to organize my artwork better. If I could do this art activity again, I would take a more specific approach. I would draw rough drafts on paper and create different pieces, so I could then have options to choose from and create something I like, as opposed to creating random things and see what would happen. All in all, this was a successful project as it taught me to be creative out of the little that is given to you, and it taught me to accept the challenge not as an obstacle but as a learning experience.