Week 7: Digital Drawing and Painting Continued

Week 6: Digital Drawing and Painting

I learnt how to use the Coral Painter X interface for the first time but only learnt the very basics of changing colors, brushes and other drawing tools. When exploring the Wacom tablet I found that it was easier to draw certain shapes and pictures rather than using the mouse, however it still did not feel quiet right. 

There was a picture I took of a tram that I traced over using the Wacom tablet in Coral Painter that I was thinking of using in one of my final pieces with the Eureka but I liked it better with some other painted backgrounds I made.   

Experimenting with collage

Here are a couple of pieces I experimented with in photoshop. Making these helped me to figure out the how to use most of the basic tools in the program such as the smudge and paint brush as well as how the layers work.

Week 5: Collage the Digital Way

One of the artworks that we looked at this week was by David Hockney titled 'Pearblossom Hwy' April 1986. It caught my eye because I liked the layers of multiple photos used to create the single image and the way it makes the landscape appear to have more of  a rough landscape texture. 

Collage has always been one of my favorite mediums because I really enjoy putting a mixture of good pictures together to produce one whole that brings them all out in a more interesting and revealing way.

 

Week 4: Vision and Manipulation

This week I brought my digital camera into class and played around with the different modes and settings on it to better improve the overall quality of the photos I take. It was really interesting when I found lots of settings and modes that I had no idea about that had been on my camera such as the burst setting that allowed me to take three photos in one shot and the macro and micro modes that improve the focus in certain pictures. I experimented with the exposure settings the most as that was what interested me the most in regards to my theme and I came up with these three shots shown above.

The program photoshop was really great to learn more about as well as this was the first time I had used it and started to figure out how to edit and transform the photos I had taken.  

More Mobile Pictures

Week 3: Mobile Phone Art

We experimented with the various sound, image and video applications that can be used through almost every model of mobile phones in todays society. The bluetooth application was also proved to be very useful in easily transferring this data straight onto the computer.

I choose some pictures that i had taken of plants and some landscapes and gardens from around Melbourne. I liked this one on the left because of the overexposure from the sun and the effect it made on the plant.

I also took a couple of pictures from my apartment looking down at collins street that turned out surprisingly better than I expected. In relation to the Theme that I chose revolving around the relationship between natural and industrial objects in the city I also recorded the sound of the trains and trams that I was thinking of using with one of my final images to make it more interactive.  

 

Week 2: The Text Effect

In this class we looked at different ways of how text can be used to create digital artworks. One of the main things that I learnt was how to use the text and path tools in Adobe Illustrator although I ended up loosing some of my work because i didn't save it correctly. So I just made another example that you can see above.

I got the idea of drawing a tree out of the words that describe it such as branch and tree trunk and so on. I was thinking of using it in one of my final pieces as it relates to my subject but am still unsure if I will use it.

Additionally I also learnt that vector graphics refers to geometric primitives, such as points, curves, lines and shapes.  

 

Tracy Moffatt

Adventure Series 6, 2004 Color Print on Fujiflex Paper 132x114cm by Tracy Moffatt

The cartoonish layout of the mixed media artwork is great in presenting the different stages and events that happen in movies and comic book adventure stories and I really enjoyed looking through this series as it shows a simple link between each stage of the adventure.

(Diptych No.5) by Tracy Moffatt from her Plantation Series 2009

This piece caught my attention due to the old photo effect it is presented in and the shadows and their contrast to the brightly lit field and the small orange, red and yellow spot next to the man walking. This bright spot also appears in the rest of the pieces in the series which I think is very intriguing.

Inspirational Artist: Tracy Moffatt

Anne Slater is a New York Socialite by Tracy Moffatt from her Portraits and Doomed Series.

I love this piece because I think the mixture of ink on rag paper and the portrait photo is very grabbing and has a great overall impact on the viewer.

The composition is deliberately made to present half reality and half abstract as the portrait photo is not front on and the colours from the brightly coloured ink mixes into the photo also showing a link and relationship between the two.

A friendly and warm nature permeates from the portrait, due to the subjects great smile and the spark in her eye that was a part of what drew me in along with the happy and fun feeling I got from looking at the vibrant use of colour.

What I would like to get out of an Introduction to digital art this semester...

Hopefully, gain a better knowledge of computer programs that can be used to help manipulate and create digital forms of art. Therefore expanding my ideas and broadening the choice of media I can use to present my ideas and final pieces in a more distinct way. 

Learning and becoming more aware of artists that make great pieces of digital art and also just for general inspiration is something I would like to get out of this unit of study too :-)