UPDATED: Look Mom! I Got a Tattoo!

          Creating this Photoshop assignment was extremely fun. This was my most confident project and I am very satisfied with the outcome. Creating the tattoo by combining two existing tattoos was very interesting as I had the flexibility to arrange the tattoos any way I wanted to, so this was quite easy. The most difficult part was painting the tattoo because watercolor paint is easy to mess up and my brush did not allow me to be precise, so it ruined the sharpness of the tattoo. But after letting it dry and going over it with a thin sharpie to clean up the lines, I was able to get the result that I wanted.
          The mediums that were used in the program Adobe Photoshop C6 was the move tool, the magic wand, the warp tool, filters, the layer mask and paint tool, the dodge and burn tool as well as the blur tool. The filter was used to remove the white in the tattoo. The move and warp tool was used to place the tattoo on my arm and make the tattoo appear to be more dimensional. The layer mask and paint tool was used to get rid of any of the tattoo background that remained. At lastly, the dodge and burn tool was used to add dimension to the tattoo, so it would seem like it was actually on the skin.
          My strongest aspect of this project was painting the tattoo and arranging it on my arm. I liked the color schemes that I chose for my tattoo, and it made it seem like a genuine watercolor tattoo. I also traced it with a sharpie afterwards, because after conducting research on watercolor tattoos, I learned that black skeletons are needed for watercolor tattoos to last, so I did the same on mine. I also liked the way I sized and warped the tattoo. It did not look awkward or flat on my arm, it was an appropriate size and it looked somewhat real. My weakness in this project was the finishing touches such as utilization of the dodge and burn tool. The finishing touches were difficult to master because I wanted the tattoo to look absolutely real, but there were some errors such as the line in the middle of the tattoo. Overall, If I could do it over again I would do a more drastic tattoo and do a better job at the finishing touches.

       

Album Cover

          After completing the task of creating an album cover, I feel very satisfied with my work. I had a difficult start as I did not have a vision for what I wanted to create nor did I know what I wanted my 13 items to be. But after some thought of what I was interested in, I found 13 pictures very easily. The easiest part of the project was finding the pictures but the hardest part was applying filters and arranging it on the picture. Being a very decisive person it made it very difficult because I didn't want to finalize my product but after manipulating the photographs, I was able to find an arrangement that I liked.
         The mediums that were used was the program Adobe Photoshop C6. The tools that I used within that program were the move tool, blend modes, the magic wand, the paint tool, layer masks and filters. The blend modes and filters were used to distort the picture. The magic wand was used to remove the backgrounds of pictures and keep the objects that I wanted in them. I also used the crop tool before this to avoid the same problem. This allowed me to blend the pictures more and avoid sharp edges and blocks. The layer masks and paint tool were used to erase segments of pictures that I didn't want to keep and  blend the pictures as well. I also used the move tool to arrange the pictures, resize them and more. 
       My strongest area in this piece of work was maintaining a consistent theme in color. I chose very colorful pictures and I also used vibrant filters to make them stand out. I drifted towards pictures that were solely warms or cools to create a nice contrast between them and make the album color pop. There are few dull areas in my picture, and the dark parts themselves bring out the brighter colors and add to the overall vibrancy of the collage. My weakest point however, was arranging the pictures. I struggled with grasping the idea of arranging them sporadically and without order. At first, I lined them around each other, spread them out and kept them relatively at the same size. But after consulting with my art teacher Miss Cabral, I learned that what makes the pictures blend nicely is overlapping the pictures, over sizing them and adding interesting filters. After learning this, I played around with the pictures some more and created a very nice piece. To conclude, this project taught me to step out of my comfort zone and be creative and free in my thinking, and unique artwork will form as a result.