Week 4 tutorials

This tutorial was about how to rightfully change things without damaging the original image. What i learned was to make a copy of the background, but what this tutorial was saying is that you could use the button next to the add new layer. That will add an additional layer, but it will help from changing the image and possibly damaging it to where you cannot do anything to it.


This was a really neat little thing I never knew about. There is a vanishing point option within this program and the person talking in this tutorial was talking about how the grids are color coded to help understand what will work and what would not. I thought this was great because I learned from Art 119, that in order to do that sort of thing you would have to make your own lines and what not. That was horrible and I am so glad that I know that there is justice for us.

This was interesting to learn. This guy was walking through about turning colored images into black and white photos and I thought neat...lets see what this is about. Well this guy pulled up the screen showing the individual slides of colors and then what he did was proceed to talk about how you can change the shades of things depeending on what color they were before. So for example, he wanted to brighten the trees and grass so he went to the color green slide and moved that up towards the white. That brightened up only the parts that used to be green. That was fantastic to learn so that way I can still dr. my images up even if I want them black and white.

Pathfinder Tutorial: BittBox

I wanted to explore pathfinder a little bit more since it is such a useful object in illustrator. I was sent this little tutorial, thanks to Kate, and it help me keep things straight and I learned about the expand button which was very helpful. Thought it could have been one of those buttons that would start the self destruct mechanisim knowing my luck haha.


Anyways, all fakeness aside, I make a quick couple of items; A black rectangle and a yellow star. I placed them on top of each other and then selected them both. This little demonstration you see above is the result of me clicking the upper left corner "button" right below the words "Shape Modes". It is the Add to Shapes area. This combineds the two shapes together into just one. The color takes form from the top shape hence why you see yellow. If a person wants to make this just one object, the person must immediatly click on the "expand" button on the far right of the menu.


This is the second in on the left hand side of the top row. This is called the subtract from shape area. This minuses out the top layer and leaves only the remains of the top layer and the bottom layer. Again, right after clicking the button, a person can click on the expand button and make a single shape out of it.


Third in from the left. Intersecting Shape Areas. This little button will take the overlapping parts of the objects you have selected and then making those overlapping parts the only parts you see. As you can see, two parts of the star are gone, you will see where they went in the next capture.


Last but not least, the Excluding Shape Areas. This creates the opposite effect of the above capture. It is taking the outside of the top shape and making it into an cutout.
Overall, in each of these pathfinders, a person can click on whatever shape area they want and then make it into its own shape by itself by just clicking the "expand" button. Love this little tool and will most likely use it a lot in the future.

Photoshop Tutorial: Photoshop Text

This was a photoshop tutorial that I needed to do for my book. This was a test trial one that I did before I went on to do my final Hoots piece. So you can start off with any photography that you want within the words. I picked a photography I had used previously for my tutorials.


So the first step is to load up your image and then drag the "background" layer down to the bottom of the layer page and make a copy of it. Simple so far.


Now what you want to do is to create a new layer and put it between the two pictures (background and the copy) like what you see above. Now fill the whole first layer with white; you can use the paint bucket from your tools to get that.


Now clicking back on the background layer, you click on the "T" tool (text tool). Now you write whatever you want. I choose to say that Riley is the best horse ever! (true fact actually; very sweet horse) You can do a free transform of it so that way it will fit how you want to ctrl+t (PC) or apple+t (Mac) *Note: make sure your text is bold enough so you will be able to see the background image. Cursive is not recommended


Now you must put that text layer below the background copy. It was above, now it must be below. This step insures that you will still be able to see the text when you move on to the next step. Now what you must do next, once you have that set up is to go to your layers bar up near the top of the screen and drag down and select the "create clipping mask" or you can hit alt+ctrl+g (PC) or symbol (don't have an equivilant on the PC)+apple+g (Mac). *Note: will be under the exact same layer selections so don't worry. It actually is sometimes difficult to find the right symbols to tell people for macs. O well, grew up on PC's and it seems to run these programs fine at this moment. Anyways, once you create that mask you will be in business.

So this was my final image. I think I could have gotten the text larger if I used less words, but its a text trial and it worked so what the hey. Hope this is helpful to anyone.

Final Book Project and Final Thoughts

So this was the final project in Art 120. This book was a fun one to make; Luckly I ended up with no pix. or anything really going wrong with my prints. Overall, the creating was the easiest yet the production of the book was a bitch. I never sweated over making something this much, but for all that sweat and panic at times, I am very happy with my first book. I loved the paper I used (and thanks to the wonderful staff at Paper Source for helping me) and the whole thing was just fun. No real regrets that I can really complain about.

This right above is the inside cover of my book. The book is titled "Hoots!!!" and it is a short narrative about a little carved owl he got in India. The page opposite to the title page actually has my wax seal on it. My wax seal is of a peacock with green wax; found that my first year of college and I loved it. Now I use it on my pieces to signify that it is indeed mine and also I sign my name (on Pen Hoots, a page within the book, I actually incorperated my name).

This is a close up of the front cover. As you can see I used a french roast brown to go on the binding to go along with the bright yellow and white paper used for the actual cover. The cover is actually used with a lightweight book cover that was on sale for 50% off at Paper Source. It has a papyrus feel to the white parts of the cover, but the yellow parts are slightly raised off the main sheet. The texture is almost a "rubbery" feel? Well thats what I feel, but just wonderful stuff, and I still have some left which is fantastic since it is such neat paper.

This is a side view of my book. A total of 30 pages; some are double sided making it really 38 pages.

And the final veiw of the book. I loved how it turned out, and except for a few bumbles such as glue, and "exposed" book binding, the book has turned out very well. Only one other person created the whole book binding like mine and so I was proud that I spent a little more time to create something different (although some of those other books were fantastic I must admit, there were some that I just wanted to have a copy of just because they were so neat like the straw one, or the barn one)

Starting Book Images No. 2

A live trace and live paint to the owl. The photo was made in photoshop, but I live traced it and live painted it in illustrator. I thought that the brown color for the wood texture and then the green eyes to give it a different look was good.


Where is Hoots? My pen rendition of this little owl. I used the illustrators mesh tool to create a funky background for my owl. And for this I was inspired by the fashions that are coming back. The summer of love is a huge hit, so I wanted to use some psychodelic colors to emphasise this aspect. And because everything was so different, I used a smaller owl and made the colors more outgoing.

My Pencil rendition in photoshop. I scanned in my original piece (just the hand drawn owl) then I made it so I could knock out the white. Copy and Pasted him in a 7x7.5 postcard and then added some color with the paintbucket. It was hard because I had to thicken the line. I used the pencil tool to make lines where I needed them to be darker. Then I went with an organic, earth tone colors for the bird and then I added a night scene for him in his little tree.

Starting Book images

This is Hoot. He is an craved owl that I gave my boyfriend. I took a photo of him and this is a picture of him with a filter off of illustrator. This is the stamp filter and I changed the settings around so it showed some details.

This is my tri-toned owl. I made him black and white first, then I went to image - mode- duotone. and then from there I changed it to a tri-tone. I used a m+m looking blue, m+m looking green and a yellow. I don't know how the figure has highlights but it makes it look like someone carved it out of stone.

This was a hue and saturation change. The hue was -42 and saturation was +43 and it created this really cool  pink color. I thought it would be cool if there were a multiples. 

This was my second rendition of this group. I thought it might need a background color. So I thought that possibly a green would be good.

This was an interesting idea that I thought up of. Just his head popping out was a cute idea. This was a combination of a photoshop image and the thought bubble and words are in illustrator. 

This was my original picture that I thought up of. I just took the image I had and I put him to the edge of the page that I had. 

Week 3 Tutorial

This tutorial was very interesting and helpful because I needed to put text in a circle. Starting out with a circle, you would then add text to the circle. Then you would copy and then paste it right on top of the original text. That makes it so the text is bolder. From there you would go to the type on a path option. You would select the accender and flip options. You can also preview it if needed. From there you can select your flipped image and then all you have to do is rotate it.




This was interesting tutorial because it taught me how to create my own spirals. I was wondering how to do that because the spirals for illustrator are quite recognizable. So this was a good thing to know. The person started out with an elepse and then used a direct select tool to pull out one side to create a brush like stroke. Take the convert anchor tool and make the tip more at a point. From there you can go to the brushes section and create a new brush. From there you select the spiral tool and create a spiral. Then you select it and then apply the brush you just made. Then from there you can change the point size of it so that way you can thicken or shrink your spiral.



This tutorial was how to use the illustrator tutorial without really making to much change. To make a spiral then use the direct arrow to change where the edge of the spiral to match with other spirals you may have. From there you can change the thickness of the point level.

For the Andy Worhol look I looked up http://www.melissaclifton.com/tutorial-warholphoto.html. From there I learned a way on how to make my own pop art with my own pictures. First you want to create this main picture in another layer so that way you will still have the background to work on. From there you could pen tool the outline of the objects you want to see. Then you would use the desaturate and change the brightness. From there you would use the cutout filters to make the levels change to the picture up above. To get the colors that you want, you could fill in color to the background layer the color you want. For the people colors you could it this way.

Create a new layer in the "frame 1" set and rename it "pc". (That stands for people color, not very imaginative). Place this layer between the two existing layers. See below picture. Now holding down Ctrl click on the layer "photo" in the Layers Window. You will see a little dashed-line square appear on the cursor hand. See image below.
Note if you are HAVING PROBLEMS WITH THE ABOVE, instead click on your "photo" layer in your layer palette thenSelect >> Load Selection
Look at the canvas and you will find the "photo" subject/s perfectly selected. Now still working on the "pc" layer, grab the paint bucket tool and fill the selection with you a vibrant color.
Now click on the "photo" layer and change the mode to Screen. See images below. That's method 1 done
Create a new layer in the "frame 1" set and rename it "pc". (That stands for people color, not very imaginative). Place this layer between the two existing layers. See below picture.
Now holding down Ctrl click on the layer "photo" in the Layers Window. You will see a little dashed-line square appear on the cursor hand. See image below.
Note if you are HAVING PROBLEMS WITH THE ABOVE, instead click on your "photo" layer in your layer palette thenSelect >> Load Selection
Look at the canvas and you will find the "photo" subject/s perfectly selected. Now still working on the "pc" layer, grab the paint bucket tool and fill the selection with you a vibrant color.
Now click on the "photo" layer and change the mode to Screen. See images below. That's method 1 done. (Taken from the website)