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[The Lycaeum Forums]

 The Lycaeum Forums » Arts » Visionary Art and Music (Moderator: Hyperspatial Ape Beausoleil)Topic:
 Members Art Work

[Kosmo]

Now that pic makes me hungry!  Gooey chocolate laced creamy bon bon!

[whateveryouwantmetobe]

Check this picture out.  Yep it's yours truly.  It's using a new media I am working on: drawing with tiny fluorescent quantum dots.  Yep folks, a new era of artwork is upon us:



Ok ok!  So it's not quantum dots... I just used a photoshop filter on it.  But damn I can't believe how cool it looks now.  I actually did this chalk drawing back in high school circa 2002.  I picked up the last of my few photos from home recently and this was probably the one self portrait picture I did out of about 8-10 in 4 years that I actually liked.  Here's the original version:



I suppose my choice of clothing wasn't the best to blend with the background, but I think this was my favorite shirt/pants at the time.  That photoshop filter is really something though... Hermes do you play around with filters at all?  I had never thought to do it really until I got this new computer with extra hard drive space and could get our school's licensed suite downloaded... now I'm kind of hooked on playing with it.

[Kosmo]

Cool effects, Bio. But it might work better with other types of pics, because of the perspective, for want of a better word.  Until I saw the original, it wasn't clear exactly what I was seeing. But maybe that was your intention?

[whateveryouwantmetobe]

Well the original assignment from high school (way back yonder) was to have a self-portrait in front of another image.  I found the cool night photo of the highway behind me and since it is "going forward" towards the observer I decided to pose to be "coming out of the picture" towards the observer as well.  The highway photo has that "car blurring" effect going on, I'm not sure what that's from, a slow shutter speed combined with fast traffic probably.  This is what happens when you have art class last period of the day during senior year and you come back from lunch baked all the time.   

[farmerjack]

I love them both. Perhaps the original more because it is the original and the inspiration for the alteration(did you know I could rap?)

the colors of the second are captivating.

Did we have fun at Rothbury?

[hermes]

Hermes do you play around with filters at all?

Well, I use lots of filters for image processing, such as sharpening, blurring, noise reduction/addition, and so on. But I try to avoid using a strong filter as an end in itself. I often use things like the find edges filter (inverted, which is like glowing edges) to make a layer mask that I sharpen through, which allows me to sharpen only the edges in a photo, for instance, avoiding sharpening the noise in soft passages. Or sometimes I will duplicate the image in a layer, run a high-pass on it, and then change the blending mode to overlay, and this is roughly what the unsharp mask filter does, but this allows more control and allows me to put the sharpening in a layer where I have more control over it and can turn it off and on readily. Really, that's what the find edges type filters are for, to be used as layer masks so that edges can be isolated or protected for the application of a blur or sharpening pass.

To be honest, simply applying a strong filter as an end in itself makes it too obvious how you did what you did. And there is a temptation to rely on machine-generated special effects. I want most everything about the image to be something I did to it and that I controlled carefully and that isn't easily identified as just the application of a common special effects filter. One problem also with simply applying a strong filter effect is that it is overdone. Just search Google Images for "glowing edges" and you will see what I mean. I think even some camcorders have this effect built-in.

For most serious digital photographers and digital artists, the use of such filters in a significant way is big no-no. The filters are useful, but in more subtle ways. Nobody should be able to look at your work and immediately identify the bulk of the appearance of the image as a common, menu-accessible, procedural Photoshop effect. The glowing edges filter does often look cool, but that is precisely why everyone who uses Photoshop for five minutes finds it and applies it to a photo. The first part of Photoshop that we are attracted to is the special effect filters section. This is where we get the most immediate gratification. The serious tools are more mysterious at first and don't instantly give you a "wow" response. It takes time to understand what they are for and how to use them effectively. But for most experienced digital imaging people, the strong, procedural special effects sort of filter is the least used and least interesting part of Photoshop. I used to use such filters all the time when I first started using image-manipulation software. But now, I almost never do.

Here is how find edges is used in a typical sharpening workflow:

http://www.adobe.com/uk/designcenter/photoshop/articles/phscs2at_sharpening.html

[pshmell]

[roma's ghost]

Awesome, pshmell.  I love the 4th and last ones the best.

I took some pics at the zoo I thought were cool....  I hope this is the right place for them.







And then out my bedroom window....  I love light and darkness, and blue.

[vampirebunnies]

Nice photos, Roma's Ghost!  The bedroom one (#5) is a great composition and animal portraits are always fun. 

[roma's ghost]

thanks vampB

I completely understand that not all people are as fascinated with the sky/clouds as I am, but I thought I'd throw these out there....  Maybe Moo will like them?

These were taken last weekend just west of Grand Island, NE.


...

...

...

...

...

Is 8 too many?  They look a lot better when they are bigger but apparently ImageShack was like fuck you, roma.

[pshmell]

double helix design thing


unfinished portrait


ERICA!


Marie, unfinished as well


I spy a roach clip...

[Mimos]

[3lbs]

I really like that. nice colors, dig the shape, it has a mood to it...I love water colors, but man they're hard, especially the whole using the paper as your white.

ps I was trying to figure out your new handle and went here, i didn't expect this

NSFW (surprise) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labia_(genitalia)

[Mimos]

Thanks.

Ah the handle...well the new handle is what popped up as a captcha when I was registering for another account on StumbleUpon and it had a nice ring to it, so I nicked it.


Round Two: Orchids.

The picture really does it no justice at all. There's a lot of little details such as stamens and the color fading/shading of the leaves doesn't show up well.

[Noman]

Zygopetallum!
I have two of them!
I couldn't paint them to save my life though.

[Mimos]

I think species identification is the best compliment I could have received, Noman. 

[farmerjack]

the photo almost looks like a piece of cloth with the flower embroidered on it.  love those blending colors of blue green and grey

[Mimos]

Here's a picture taken with a real camera and not my shitty cellphone:



They're not too close to what the pictures I've seen of those orchids look like, but I was using a little thumbnail pic in the instruction manual as a template for what they looked like.

[farmerjack]

the reds are quite intense for water colors

[Jah PM]

Hamilton Lake. 1200 vertical meter ascent about 4 hours from where I live.




I was trying to come up with an idea for a T-shirt graphic in Illustrator.




Figure made in Illustrator, then imported to Photoshop for the glow-line and background gradient.




Some work done on paper, scanned onto computer, where most of the work was done in Illustrator.




The buddha is a statue that sits on my desk. Everything else is deviant stock, compiled in Photoshop.




Took the face of a guy on another forum, stuck it on a stock body, and did everything else in Photoshop.




I was just playing around with floral brushes in Photoshop.





If anybody would like a chop of a high resolution picture of their's, I'm open to it.

[Jah PM]

Well, I use lots of filters for image processing, such as sharpening, blurring, noise reduction/addition, and so on. But I try to avoid using a strong filter as an end in itself. I often use things like the find edges filter (inverted, which is like glowing edges) to make a layer mask that I sharpen through, which allows me to sharpen only the edges in a photo, for instance, avoiding sharpening the noise in soft passages. Or sometimes I will duplicate the image in a layer, run a high-pass on it, and then change the blending mode to overlay, and this is roughly what the unsharp mask filter does, but this allows more control and allows me to put the sharpening in a layer where I have more control over it and can turn it off and on readily. Really, that's what the find edges type filters are for, to be used as layer masks so that edges can be isolated or protected for the application of a blur or sharpening pass.

To be honest, simply applying a strong filter as an end in itself makes it too obvious how you did what you did. And there is a temptation to rely on machine-generated special effects. I want most everything about the image to be something I did to it and that I controlled carefully and that isn't easily identified as just the application of a common special effects filter. One problem also with simply applying a strong filter effect is that it is overdone. Just search Google Images for "glowing edges" and you will see what I mean. I think even some camcorders have this effect built-in.

For most serious digital photographers and digital artists, the use of such filters in a significant way is big no-no. The filters are useful, but in more subtle ways. Nobody should be able to look at your work and immediately identify the bulk of the appearance of the image as a common, menu-accessible, procedural Photoshop effect. The glowing edges filter does often look cool, but that is precisely why everyone who uses Photoshop for five minutes finds it and applies it to a photo. The first part of Photoshop that we are attracted to is the special effect filters section. This is where we get the most immediate gratification. The serious tools are more mysterious at first and don't instantly give you a "wow" response. It takes time to understand what they are for and how to use them effectively. But for most experienced digital imaging people, the strong, procedural special effects sort of filter is the least used and least interesting part of Photoshop. I used to use such filters all the time when I first started using image-manipulation software. But now, I almost never do.

Here is how find edges is used in a typical sharpening workflow:

http://www.adobe.com/uk/designcenter/photoshop/articles/phscs2at_sharpening.html

Well said hermes.

I never really use filters, except for Liquify (I think that's under filters, though its not really a filter), and some others in subtle ways (like adding a ripple to a low opacity reflection on water).

Although in the picture of the blue flame guy with the two energy orbs above, I did actually use glowing edges for the first time! The lines on his body are actually from a glowing edges layer.

[Jah PM]

Did this last night.

[farmerjack]

^^^^ nice, it would be a good album cover

[vampirebunnies]

That blue guy over the forest   I think I have seen him before  Nice work

[Jah PM]

Thanks a lot guys.

VB, your work is amazing. Praise definitely means a lot coming from you. And I think we've all seen that guy hovering at some point.

Farmer, I'm actually planning on doing a similar project to my "album cover" one. It's going to have the same grungy style, but all the components are going to be original (the one above uses some brushes and stock photos not by me). It's going to have a girl in front of a shamrock or Irish flag. I'm hoping that if I do well enough, an Irish bar nearby might use it. Getting something used commercially would really move things along for me on the graphic design front.

Also, I was going through this thread and noticed this:

but as a left-hander I always found pencil drawings to be an absolute nightmare to work on!

uuhhhhh well uhhhhhh I'm not an artist but how could it possibly matter?    I've never seen a left handed pencil

I'm left handed too. If you draw or write in pencil with your left hand, you're going to do a lot of smudging because we naturally write and draw left to right, and for me that involves a lot of dragging my hand over my recent pencilling.

[farmerjack]

I'm actually planning on doing a similar project to my "album cover" one. It's going to have the same grungy style, but all the components are going to be original (the one above uses some brushes and stock photos not by me). It's going to have a girl in front of a shamrock or Irish flag. I'm hoping that if I do well enough, an Irish bar nearby might use it. Getting something used commercially would really move things along for me on the graphic design front

We went to a small street fair in the city tonight, called Dalley in the Alley, and one of the big sellers there were the posters advertising the many years' earlier Dalley in the Alley's. There is a market for almost everything. Maybe you can sell your stuff to the street fairs, art festivals, etc that every city seems to be having more and more of?

Every bar that has live bands playing would need new signage weekly. With a little advance notice you should be able to crank these out and make a buck.

[Jah PM]

Yeah. There's definitely a market for low budget local design. It's a portfolio driven marketplace though, so I need published material for my portfolio. That's why I'm hoping a few "pro bono" projects will slide my foot in the door.

I worked for an hour or so on this tonight. Most of it was spent tracing the pub's damn logo text and adding a cool floral swirl pattern to it. I'm not as quick with Illustrator as I am with Photoshop. All the samples are taken from other artists as yet. I'm just trying to get an idea of the composition right now. I'll get a friend to model and get all original stock, etc. once I know what I need. I'm still not even close to finished with the composition though. I'll probably spend a good few more hours on it first.

The original girl with the guitar is:




I may just contact her and ask her permission to use this image. Because it's perfect for what I need.

But this is where it's at right now:

[farmerjack]

it looks better than the stuff I see around here.

there are many colors in the Irish poster. Will that drive the printing cost up? so high the bar won't pay it?

[hermes]

Nice work, Jah.

there are many colors in the Irish poster. Will that drive the printing cost up? so high the bar won't pay it?

That's true if it's a spot color print, which will of course yield sharper edges and whatnot, but if a full color offset process is used like four color CMYK or even hexachromatic CMYKOG, the colors you can use are unlimited.

Do you have a tablet, Jah? If not, you simply must get one, preferably a largish Wacom Intuos tablet or Cintiq. I have a 9x12 Intuos 2, which is a bit dated, but I love it. I would love to have one of the new ones and have long been drooling over a Cintiq 21ux. A tablet completely transforms Photoshop especially, since you can use the pressure sensitivity with brushes and angle sensitivity to alter brush orientation and whatnot. A tablet is nice in Illustrator as well, but the difference isn't quite as dramatic, as you can tweak bezier curve points and handles with a mouse just as well. But some tools utilize the features of the tablet somewhat.

[Jah PM]

Thanks hermes. I used to have a cheap Wacom graphire, but I lost the stylus in my last move. I'm planning on getting another one, but first on my to-buy list is a DSLR so I can do HDR stuff, and capture better stock.

I used my old tablet a fair bit with Photoshop, but I never tried it in Illustrator. I'm looking forward to it. It will be nice to use that pencil tool a little more to save time. But for now I do have a scanner, so I can just do sketches by hand before importing them as Illustrator templates (or usually just LiveTracing them).

And yes, I'm planning this as a CMYK full color project. All the promotional material in my area is printed in full color, except for the outdoor posted flyers, but that appeals more to an underground scene, which isn't really this bar's market.

One other thing I've worked on recently and found really interesting is using foamcore board models and then photoshopping pictures of them. I'm fairly interested in interior design, so this is a great way to evaluate wall and floor treatments, or just quickly flesh out design ideas.

Here's a couple examples.