Black and White + 1 - Art Show Assignment

        In this weeks assignment, we had to theme our photos to "Black and White + 1". This is the theme for the Art Show coming up and the purpose was to have the best one and be chosen for the show. For Black and White + 1, you have to have a photo that is black and white, plus one additional feature. For example, one effect added in one part of the photo, or some colour added in (the colour and effect being the additional feature). So for mine, I added colour to certain parts. 

The first half has the original colour as the background, and black and white stems and flowers. The second half has black and white as the background, but the original colour for the stems, and flowers. How I did this was I made the whole photo black and white which made a mask over the photo. Then I took the eraser tool and slowly erased parts of the mask, unveiling the original colour underneath.  Meaning the first half was me erasing the black and white mask around the flowers with the eraser, and the second part was me erasing over the flowers and stems.

That's all I did! It wasn't too complicated.
Post again soon!

Black and White Assignment

      This week we had to change ONE of our best Garden Photos from a while back, into Black and White on Photoshop. However, we had to change it into black and white 3 DIFFERENT ways. This is for an Art show that is themed Black and White + 1 that is coming up.

     In this black and white version, I used the Adjustment Layer Black and White. In that, I just adjusted the amount of each colour (Reds, Yellows, Greens, Cyans, Blues and Magentas) involved in the photo. Some I changed to make a little bit more and some I made sure there was a little bit less. If I turn up a colour, areas of the photo that are that colour become brighter. If I turn down a colour, the opposite happens. I emphasized more of the reds than the other colours for this photo. This photo was complete.

    In this black and white version I used the Channel Mixer Adjustment Layer. This changes only the Reds, Greens and Blues in the photo. I made the blues stay at 0% meaning the blue that was involved in the original photo is just normal. No making it lighter, or darker than what it started at in Monochrome (which I had turned on). I then made the reds a higher number. I brought it to 70% because I really liked the effects and the shades that the photo developed from it. Then to balance the picture as a whole I made the greens be at 30%. This made the actual plant a little bit lighter which I like as well. That was all I did for this one.

 

 Finally, in my last black and white version I used the Adjustment Layer Gradient Map. This is a little window that pops up with a gray scale on it. If you click that gray scale it gives you the opportunity to create a custom one. This means you can actually save it as well and use YOUR version of the grayscale on other photos in the future. When I created my custom scale, all I did was move a little bit of the brightness notch and darkness notch towards the middle. That made the plant stand out lighter, and the background a little bit lighter too, but with some dark spots. I saved it and named it, and now I can use that again another time! 

Out of the three pieces, this one is my favourite. 

Thanks for reading! 

(And sorry if my explanations weren't perfect..It's hard when I can't just show you)

Chess Piece

      In the Visual side of CyberARTS, we have been working on a realistic chess piece. This was our 'realistic' part for the semester. Mine shows movement, Pattern, and Rhythm throughout the background.You see it through the bigger lines on the outside leading into the middle of the chess piece. Each line is intertwined with each other and creates a path through the whole piece. The intertwining also creates pattern since it happens consistently all throughout the whole thing.  My background I wanted to be more rough so that there was contrast between it and the chess piece. That is all for this piece, just short and sweet.

P.S. I am sorry if this statement does not make sense. I am sick and my mind is not working properly!

T-Shirt Design Competition

        For the past two weeks, Year 1 CyberArts' assignment was to actually participate in a competition. This competition was to design a t-shirt for the Technological Skills Challenge that is coming up. 

         This may look simple, but was a long process. First, we had to understand our goal (which was to create an awesome looking shirt, getting across that our school has the best tech programs. Also a shirt that will make the students feel proud that they got to participate.) We also had to make sure we knew all the tech programs in our school that we could possibly include on our shirt. Then we had to scroll through Pinterest, to get some ideas on how we could create our own unique designs - I don't have many photos pinned, but if you would like, you can check my board out. The link is on the sidebar. Once we had a couple ideas, we had to brainstorm. Meaning making a mind map and different thumbnails. I had come up with 15-20 different designs. The logo below is the one that was chosen to continue to work on. Finally, we kept tweaking and working on the chosen logo, until we thought it was great, and then we submitted 3 different versions. The original (just black on white), the colour version (the logo in six different colours), and the logo on a shirt. Just to get this visual of what it would look like when it is actually produced. Check them out below..

          This one is clearly the original black on white. Making this, I just used the pen tool to outline a phoenix. The automatic colour is black, so I kept it. Once I took the photo that I traced away, I filled in the phoenix with unique triangles to represent the links of technology. Then I made the letters "LCI" around the side of the wings. Obviously I had to write what the shirt was for, so I placed "Technological Skills Challenge" underneath the whole main part of the logo. Once finished with all of that , I made one thick outline boxing the whole image. My whole piece included line, and shape. Also emphasis because the phoenix had parts coloured in and it was quite big. 

            This is the Colour page. All I did was highlight everything a couple times and changed the colour.   This is the part where all of the element 'colour' comes in. These colours are pretty nice to me, so I decided I would test them. By doing this, I got to my last stage of the assignment...

         Finally, I present my completed design on an actual t-shirt. I just pasted it onto an image of a black t-shirt. I chose the teal-ish colour from my Colour page and I tweaked it to look nice on the black. Then I  took a step back to really look at it...

            Overall, I don't mind my logo. I think in ways it could of worked better, but I'm not quite sure on how or what I would do. If I had this shirt though, I would want to show it off, but I think I am biased. Hahaha. Anyways, I ended up getting second place so that makes me proud. I am done for now! Thanks for reading.

Photography Assignment - Garden

 ~In CyberARTS we have started photography. Our assignment was to take photos in our LCI Garden and edit them very slightly to add a boldness to them. Our teacher did not tell us what compositions really were until after we had taken the photos, so everything you see was honestly just how it happened. Personally, if you take a look at everyone's photos (on each blog) , you can see they all turned out really well!~

   I really like this photo of mine. Something about it just really stands out to me. This photo incorporates some compositional features. It somewhat has rule of thirds, and it has a good background with nothing that's too distracting from the main subject. It has selective focus, and it has a little bit of movement through the lines on the leaves. I think the last thing that this photo has is depth. Because of the selective focus, it makes it seem like the leaves behind it are so much father away than they really are. 

        This photo is one of my favourites that I took. It shows selective focus (which shows emphasis), depth once again in the same way, and a little bit of movement as well through the curls on the inside of the flower. This flower just makes me feel peace, and that's why I took a shot of it.

         I saw the lettuce, and really wanted to take a photo. I thought if I bent down and took it, it would add a cool effect. I believe I made my goal. This photo creates movement through the edges of the leaves. Because the lettuce is directly going down the middle, it shows emphasis on the leaves, making the leaves the first, and basically the only thing you look at. 

         I'm not quite sure why this photo appeals to me, but it just does. It incorporates line in two different ways. The first way is the actual flower growth. It is in a straight line going up on the right. The second way is throughout the background. Because the background is brick, when you look at it you follow the white lines. The bricks are a little bit softer than the flowers because of selective focus. And since the background is all one object, it creates a less distracting view. This is what I have noticed from the photo above.

           As soon as I saw this small snail, I snapped a shot of it. I thought it would be 'picture perfect' since it was the only one around in that area, and it was on a perfect position on the leaf. The shell is basically in the middle of the whole photo, but it is on the last third of the leaf, which gives it that edge in my opinion. I tried to use selective focus on that single leaf, and I believe it worked. The snail's shell creates movement as well, and you see depth from the distance from the leaf and the background leaves. I am proud of this photo and how I edited it (even if the background is a wee bit distracting).

         This photo is unique. I took this one right after I took the other lettuce one. I hadn't even noticed the leaf on the lettuce leaf until after I had moved, and thought that it would create great emphasis in a photo. Especially with the colour changing. This photo is mainly all in focus except for the very little bit of the background. It has a great, vibrant green that really stands out and adds to the emphasis as well. I shot this photo feeling confident that it would turn out nice, and I hope you agree that it did.

         This photo of mushrooms personally isn't my favourite, but is nice. They were just standing together with a whole bunch of other flowers surrounding, so I snapped it. It shows selective focus bringing emphasis to the middle of the mushroom that is forward, and depth/distance from the front mushroom to the back one. It shows movement all throughout the top of the mushroom going from the middle, out, and also doesn't have a distracting background. Not too bad of a photo, I think.

         This photo incorporates movement through each 'branch' and through each little flower. The colour scheme is interesting because they are both colours that are so opposite, which allow them to look nice when together. It has a little bit of a distracting background, but does does still have main emphasis on the subject all throughout the photo (created by selective focus). This lovely photo was taken by my partner Basma ( missawesomelovesart.blogspot.ca ) who has more of our photos on her blog.

         This tomato is called a Zebra Tomato. This one was sitting by itself and I took a photo. In this photo there is emphasis on the tomato because of the selective focus. There is movement through the branch, however the line right through the tomato is distracting, unfortunately. The background isn't too bad, because it's got a fairly balanced background with some leaves and some soil. I think lighting worked out well for this photo too.  Depth is incorporated in the same way as all the other photos.

Finally, I was walking through the trees and I looked up at this tree. Taking a photo of this spotted leaf seemed like a good idea. I used selective focus, which created emphasis not only on the whole leaf, but mainly on the spots. This also made the background softer creating depth. I see movement in this photo through the leave's veins, and the lighting is really nice and natural.

Because I am a beginner, and am not so great at giving artist statements on photography, I apologize. However, since you stuck to the end of this long post, I am hoping you at least found my photos nice as well! Thank you for reading this, and there will probably be another post coming up in a week or so...So see you then!

"The Third Class Carriage"

By: Honore Daumier

"The Third Class Carriage"

Remake By: LCI CyberARTS Year 1

     Our assignment from last week and the beginning of this week was to remake this famous painting using charcoal as a medium. However, we didn't know what painting we were really doing at the time. Our teacher had cut up different pieces of the painting, handed them to us and simply told us to look at it and remake our portion of the original on our paper. She told us to draw the lines, and value, based on what we did see, instead of what we thought we saw. So that is what we did. Our goal was to put it all together and see it all fit, re-making the painting as a class with our individual pieces. When it all came together, we were shocked. It's not too bad at first glance considering how we had to do it!

        Although I am fond of ours, in my opinion, once you really look at it, it doesn't look real. Some parts do because they have very precise details and nice contour lines, which adds a realistic look. However, other than that, you can tell it is drawn and the faces don't look too much like faces. Now when you look at the original, it has the 'real' effect. All of it! The lines are confident, the shadows are so believable and the people aren't actually 3-D, but are just 3-D enough to seem like the people are alive. It has great value and gives a human appearance.

      I'm not sure I would say ours has that much 'unity', because of the way we had to make this piece. Not many of the lines add up which doesn't create the look of movement, not much of the shading matches, so it doesn't have a lot of emphasis on anything, and therefore does not appear as a clear picture. The original on the other hand has clear unity. It has emphasis on what it needs to have emphasis on, it has nice shading that looks like confident shading, it has nice movement, and looks like a complete painting/picture. There is a definite difference between the two pieces.

When I look at our piece of art I don't feel as much as I feel for the original. The original makes me feel depression, because I can see that these people are silenced as they sit in the last carriage, where the smoke comes in. I feel like they are noble, because even though they are in the last carriage, they are sitting up fairly tall and seem like each personality is strong. I also feel very separated and as if I am my own person. Since everyone looks so serious and physically isolated it makes me feel as though I am, and if I were in the carriage I wouldn't attempt to talk to anyone. Our version just makes me feel disoriented, and I don't know where to look. So I really notice the difference.

Anyway, even though it seems like I don't like Year One's version at all, I do. I just look at the original and ours in two different ways. If you had asked if I was proud, I am. This assignment was challenging, but a good assignment either way. I am happy that we pulled it off. So good job classmates (if you are reading this), and goodbye for now!
       

*Below is the second one we had to do, and we were told to distort it. It clearly just....didn't work.* 

"The Mona Lisa"
Weird Distorted Version By: LCI CyberARTS Year 1

Illustrator Tracing Assignment - Logo

       For this assignment I chose to do a violin. I chose the violin because in middle school I played it. I really love the sound of the violin, and later I found out that my great grandfather played it too. This makes playing the violin more important to me.

        For this version, I used the default line with the Pen Tool because I wanted it to stay thin. By keeping it thin, the colour becomes the main focus. In this part of the assignment, we were told to interchange the colours and experiment. I tried an orange based violin because sometimes I just like 'out there' colours. I tried a real coloured one (browns and blacks), because I wanted to try and make it look truly realistic. I used green which to be honest I didn't really like, but I thought I would try it anyway. On two of them I chose a gradient blue. At first the nice, sweet looking blue appealed but then I couldn't get the black and white colours to work well with it.I don't think many other combinations of colours would work well unless it was just black. I thought about doing just black, but changed my mind since I realized it would be too boring. The last three that I did are just different, darker colours that were pretty nice mash-ups and mix-ups. Now I wouldn't say that each violin had unity because each colour is quite bold in itself, but most of them can still pass. That is all I have to say about this part of my assignment.

        My favourite out of those mix-ups and mash-ups was the magenta/purple based one. So for my 'Good Colour' I just tweaked that one (with the Direct Selection Tool to help with lines and the Colour palette to make the perfect colour) a little more until I was really happy with it. However, I kept the thin line. I chose the darker plum purple on the body because it is a really unique, vibrant colour.  It is also a very rich colour. It just seemed like a great choice. To go along with the vibrant, rich body I used a soft pink to highlight the strings and chin piece. To me this is just a sweet, 'innocent' colour. It's bright and cute and balances the whole piece. The white as the bridge gives it emphasis to the middle of it all which is a nice touch. I really like this version of my violin.

        Part of our assignment was to make a black and white version as well as a grayscale.  As you can see above, this is what I have done. Those two versions highlight the highlights and shadows. Overall I liked this assignment, even though it had it's really frustrating periods. Anyways, hope you like my work as much as I do!
         Bye for now!

My Inside Identity

        This is my 'Inside Identity' and it is meant to represent me. I named my piece this because everyone has an inside thought or person. This describes mine. These are thoughts that I have when I'm sitting alone, am depressed, or even happy, and each sentence is true with a meaning behind it. I put in some funny sentences because that also describes me. I absolutely love joking around.

        To make my actual piece I used the watercolours to make a textured look through the brushstrokes. This just really appealed to me. I really liked how my design idea turned out. I wanted purple (my favourite colour) and red (my second favourite) to be incorporated in my piece so I decided to mix the two. Doing that, I created a deep colour that I loved and I chose to do the ombre look with it. I chose the ombre look because it had the dark shades and light shades. The dark part on the outside represents my mind. It's crazy and busy, tied up thinking about what I wish would happen, or what I know I have to make happen. Its all over the place and all crowded, just like the deep mix takes up the outer area and the strokes crowd it. It gets lighter leading to the fingerprint. This, I believe, shows that inside I am happy with who I am. I am not dark and pushy, I am really a light, sweeter person who doesn't like it when things go wrong or when I upset someone. I think it shows through, in the way that my words do. I am pleased with my whole piece, but mostly with the font. I struggled to make my font design perfect since I had to make it so small, but it turned out great in my opinion.
         I hope you like my piece as much as I do!

Typographic Identity

        This is my Typographic Identity. Everything that is in or apart of this artwork means something to me, and I'm here to explain it to you.. The words all have a meaning that connects to who I am. Some words have to do with my personality, and others have to do with me and my family. Some have to do with school and others also have to do with things I just prefer to do as habits. But every word has a reason to be there, and it's because they are things I am passionate about. Even the shape, font and colours mean something to me: The font is curvy and that is something that appeals to me. I dont like fonts that are 'blocky' or 'straight' all the time. It all looks the same to me, and doesn't have a lot of character. I feel like the font I chose does have a lot of character, because the curves change it up constantly. The shape of my artwork looks like a Speech bubble. This is because I seem to talk A LOT. Somewhere in the words you will find "Annoying". This tends to be why! And lastly the colours I chose are bright and dark. This is because sometimes I like to be outgoing, and out there in the world, just like the bright and bold colours.. But other times,I just want to blend in with everyone else because secretly, I am very shy. This is just like how the dark colours blend in with the background..
         Anyways, this is my artwork and my blog post for today, so goodbye for now!