Amsterdam Street Snaps

We took a couple of days off last February as a post-exams treat. Amsterdam is a beautiful city; actually underrated in my opinion. It is full of art, picturesque streets (De Negen Straatjes!) with a great selection of little (or not so little) boutiques, shops and cafe's. We honestly didn't have time to see and do all we initially set out to do (nerds).

Here is a couple of snaps :) 

The entire collection will be later uploaded to my flickr.

First Digital Painting with Tips and Tricks

My first completed Digital Painting. It took a lot of work, especially since I'm a noob. But really, the main things needed here are keen observation, time and persistence. 

Now, since at this point I do have more control with pencil and paper, I made a quick sketch and scanned it; Opened it on Photoshop and proceeded to sketch and shade over it with my Graphics Tablet. It's a quick trick you can use if you feel more comfortable with pencil. 

I won't lie, this doesn't make the process any less time-consuming or somehow magically easy, but having an outline ready makes it seem much less daunting than having a blank white page on Photoshop, especially when you're starting out with Digital Painting.

With this finally completed, I will definitely try and venture into using colour. It might seem scary when you're starting out, but a few sketches by hand go a long way, even just to have a few ideas in front of you.  

An important thing to keep in mind is not to worry about getting it perfect the first time you're drawing a line or filling in a strand of hair. You'll get to go back, add detail and perfection everything as you go along, bit by bit.

The most important thing however, is to work in layers. Like - for example -  sectioning off different layers to the face: base colour, shading, highlight, freckles, etc. It will help immensely.

Digital Imaging II

Digital Imaging II is one of the electives I have this semester. I love it, in fact it's one of my favourites. The First Assignment we had was to take photos representing points, lines and planes. Now, the only reason I haven't posted this here is because whilst I have taken photos for this assignment I still haven't decided on which photos to actually present.

Today, however, I shall post a teensy bit about what I did for my second Assignment. The Assignment instructions were as follows:

"Use the same 12 images (4 point, 4 line and 4 plane). Open a new project in Photoshop, (A3, landscape 300dpi, RGB) and transfer your images to this canvas. Create a digital interpretation of your images by reworking the images without the aid of Photoshop filters."

So basically, we had to create a graphic rendering of our image. Below I have uploaded a 'before and after' of an image I reworked on Photoshop:

I might have included more detail than was necessary but I think it was important in translating the image well. And that's all for today. I now have to go sketch more designs for my Xylography project. We'll start carving in wood soon enough and I still haven't decided on what design to choose for print. Hoping that inspiration hits soon enough, hah. 

Hope you had a great Weekend, I know I did. You know, it's amazing how much fun you can have just sitting down with a few friends over a drink or two. Really.

Tina x

Visual Awareness

On my Fashion blog, Voilà, I mention that I had a lecture today which I really enjoyed. Here, I will post bits and pieces which we were shown. It was an excellent lecture on Visual arts and perception.

One of the things I really liked was the part of the presentation related to perception. For example, this, below, is Beethoven's 5th Symphony:

However, this too, is Beethoven's 5th Symphony:

Even this is:

Work by William Anastasi called 'Beethoven's Fifth Symphony'
Image from here.

Perception. Visual arts and artistic skills depends the context of a work. You cannot understand a music sheet if you're not trained in it, so you cannot really percept what that means. But by listening to a piece you understand and fully perceive it. This is food for thought. You might think it's pointless, like maybe art is to some people, or philosophy is to others. But being more rich in thought, isn't that a purpose unto itself? It's something that someone said in class, that art doesn't have a point. Really, SOK is there for this precise reason and if we're not learning about these things from it, I really don't know why it's there in the first place. 

Anyway, I have two videos that I think are remarkable.

Awesome, right?

And now a good song with a great music video.

Disclaimer: Ideas for this post were taken from today's lecture.

Tina :)

Silence

Picture from here

Picture from here