Embedded Files
Quarter 3 - Second project: Pattern design
For this project, you'll create a repeat pattern: a pattern that could be extended in any direction indefinitely (e.g., as far as you might wish!). To get going, first look through the file just below, which shows steps in the development of a repeat pattern. This is a pattern I started making using traditional drawing materials many years ago. I never finished it, but had scanned in the partial drawing, and decided to recreate and complete the pattern using digital tools (Adobe Photoshop, to be specific). One thing to note is how one can build up orderly complexity and create a sense of depth and space by overlapping fairly simple elements. Another thing I hope you notice is how you can build more complex shapes out of simple shapes, and how symmetry can help in this process.
stages of development of a pattern - diamonds and ogees etc copy.pdfQuarter 3 - First project:
Book cover design:
For this project, you'll design an original book cover for a book of your own choice. This project will involve, of course, combining text with imagery in creative ways. You'll also try to create imagery and a "look" that provides the potential reader with an appealing invitation to the book — perhaps an invitation that involves providing some clues at to what is inside.
You must choose a book that has been widely published, and that has a long enough publishing history that you can find (via web searching) at least three distinctly different cover designs. Before you set forth on your own design work, you'll be writing an analysis, involving contrast and comparison (finding and pointing out differences and similarities) of these three designs. (You can do this in a Google Doc.) Doing this analysis should help get you thinking about wide range of choices and decisions that any designer of a book cover must seriously consider.
Note that the dimensions for your book cover will be 7 inches (wide) by 10 inches (tall). This is a bit narrower/taller than our usual project options, which are often 7.5 x 10 or 8 x 10. The reason for this is that many actual books are close to this (7 x 10) proportion. Please use 300 ppi as your file resolution in Photoshop, and use RGB mode.
Once you have finished your own book cover design, you'll add your own design to your Google Doc. and will complete the circle by comparing and contrasting your design with the other three, pointing out some of the things you've done that may be similar to and different from these others, and explaining your choices both in terms of the design itself, and in relation to your ideas about how best to represent the book with which you have worked.
To help you to get started, I'm sharing the following file (see just below) presenting a few single book covers, but many pairs (and perhaps a few trios) of book covers.
Book cover comparisons and some singles copy 2.pdfHigh contrast montage - updated 3 22 19.pdfHybrid creature - overview with writing component and broad criteria - updated fall 2018.docHybrid creature - overview with writing component and broad criteria - updated fall 2018.pdfHybrid Creature - with examples of writing - five recent student examples.pdfThe two files just below provide visual examples of and instructions for our current project, the letter grid. The first file, with the name of the project clearly visible, is the detailed instruction handout with just two student examples. The second file, just below the first, presents many student examples, but no instructions.
Letter Grid Project - updated 9 20 19.pdfLetter grid - various student examples from many years - with and without photos.pdfDigital Art I - Name Project.pdfQuarter four - after high contrast montage: The next major project after your high contrast montage is an editorial illustration. For this project, you'll first choose a topic that you feel is important and interesting, and will also find an existing article or editorial relating to that topic. Ideally, this will be a fairly short piece of writing, since the plan is, eventually, to display your editorial illustration next to the text, so that each enhances the other.
Note: If you cannot find a single existing text that you feel is appropriate, you can piece together a text based on two or more sources. In addition, if you've found a text but it's quite long, you can/should create an edited version that gets across the main points to which your illustration will be referring.
The basic premise of this project is that one can use imagery and text together for mutual reinforcement. This project is related to the book cover design in that both make connections between a text and some imagery. However, we are here dealing with more focused topics, so the challenge in terms of conveying meaning is significantly different. In addition, your editorial illustration, unlike your book cover design, will NOT itself incorporate text.
You will be allowed to use source imagery (as always, save the original source files), but must do so with imagination, creativity, and with attention to how you're using source imagery to create an illustration that really "goes with" the text with which you're working. Any and all techniques you've used up to this point in the year are at your disposal, and I expect that some/many of you may find it helpful or necessary to use some new techniques and visual strategies: I'll support you along the way, and will share any such new procedures/working methods one student may need with all of you, so that you will, in effect, learn from what all your classmates are doing. Also, you don't need to limit yourself to using source imagery. I certainly encourage you to incorporate any artwork, such as drawing or painting (including both digital or non-digital) or photography of your own that you feel you can use in your illustration.
In order to get you going, I'm including a collection of some non-student AND some student examples of editorial illustration in the file just below. We'll spend a bit of time reviewing these in class together, but, if you find yourself ready to start before we get there, please look at these on your own, then call me over for some discussion. One of the non-student examples includes (part of) the article which the artwork accompanied, and a few of the student examples (the last ones in the slide show) also include enough text to confirm what the topic was. In the other cases, since the text is not shared here, I think it will be interesting for you to see if you can figure out what the topic of the text was: i.e., what is the editorial illustration about?
Editorial Illustrations - some published and some student examples copy.pdfYour next project, upon completion of your surreal montage, will be a high contrast montage. An assignment file with requirements, instructions, and many student examples is just below:
Instructions for 3/14 in the teacher's absence:
If you are able to work in the Art Lab as usual, please continue your work on the surreal montage assignment. If you are placed in another space, please use your iPad to do one or both of the following:
- Referring to materials just below as necessary, resume work with the app Brushes Redux, but this time, use the app to work on a photomontage (surreal, preferably). If you've already made some good progress with this project on the computer, you could try out a variant of your main idea, or could work on a very different alternative. Think of this as an opportunity to do some additional "playing" with ideas and images. Please save any work to your Digital Art I Google Drive folder.
- Search for and look at/think about some works by surrealist painters. These will be works that are not photomontages, but that ARE surrealist. Here's a very brief list of artists whose work I think you might find of interest and relevance: Rene Magritte; Salvador Dali; Max Ernst; Joan Miro; Jacek Yerka; Yves Tanguy; Joan Miro; Leonora Carrington; Giorgio de Chirico. Note that not all these artists always worked in a "surrealist" mode, and at least one (de Chirico) rejected the label. Still, I think that any any all would be worth exploring. Ideally, you'll save images you find particularly intriguing and inspiring into a Google Slide Show or a Notability file and share a few thoughts in the form of notes: then share the entire file with me.
Instructions for 2/12/2019 and 2/13/2019 in the teacher's absence:
(See further below for an UPDATE with additional information and a new option/possibility regarding pattern work 2/13/2019)
If you are in A-109 (the Art Lab) for class today, you can disregard the following instructions and can instead proceed with your ongoing work with patterns on the computer, though I would like you to read the note in bold below the following instructions: I've put this additional note in bold type, and it starts off: IF YOU ARE WORKING ON THE COMPUTERS . . . . The box with this note is BELOW the three files relating to Brushes Redux, and BELOW the box with the note is a demo piece (and a screen shot showing most of its Layers palette) I just made that will make visually clear (I hope!) what the note is about.
If you are NOT in the lab, please read and use the following instructions.
There is a file below (quite a bit below) labeled "Creating a Photomontage Using Brushes Redux: it provides instructions for using an iPad app called Brushes Redux to make photomontages. You have already done some photomontage work, with the hybrid creature project (and we'll be doing a project very soon involving much more photomontage), and these instructions for doing such work on the iPad using Brushes Redux do relate to such work. However, at the moment, you're working on pattern design, and the instructions do not specifically address working with pattern design when using Brushes Redux, since I didn't put the instructions together with such work in mind. But it IS possible to use Brushes Redux to experiment with some pattern ideas, and the instructions in the file provided here WILL translate into this work and WILL be of use to you. Here are a couple of brief suggestions:
- Use the tools in Brushes Redux, which allow you to choose between several different brushes (of differing textures) and to modify those brushes quite a lot (in terms of size, opacity, and several other characteristics), and which also lets you be very specific in color choices), to create loose freehand patterns, such as patterns of dots and stripes.
- Having created several different layers in your Brushes Redux file (see instructions), each with a somewhat different pattern, try combining those patterns by either lowering the opacity of the upper layers somewhat (to allow them to combine visually with the underlying lower layers and/or by experimenting with the layer blending modes (which are simpler and far fewer in number in Brushes Redux compared to the situation in Photoshop).
- You could also, or alternatively, search for and save a number of patterns from web searching, then insert them into a Brushes Redux file and combine them using some of the same methods described just above. You can also try partially erasing various patterns on various layers. This is something the accompanying file on using the app to make photomontages goes into and explains.
Brushes Redux files save automatically. To get them off the iPad, though, you must send them (see arrow icon near top right of the screen when you've got your file open) to Photos, and from there you can email them to me at: larry_sheinfeld@bedfordps.org. You can also send them to yourself and then open and save them to your Digital Art class folder.
UPDATE for 2/13/19: Since yesterday, I've made a quick pattern using the Brushes Redux app along the lines of what I have in mind for you to try, in terms of process and in terms of generating a repeat pattern, such as we've been making. Note that Brushes Redux doesn't have any sort of grid features. However, by duplicating layers, moving aone or more elements carefully into a new position on the duplicate layer, then merging down those two layers, duplicating, and repeating those steps, you can get something pretty pattern-like and regular going: something that almost seems to have been created by a grid, even if somewhat sloppily so. One of the neat features of Brushes Redux is that it automatically creates a video of the making of your image: it records your actions as you go, and then recreates those steps when you play the video. However, unlike the original app Brushes 3, this "Redux" version doesn't allow for proper export of the movie off the iPad. I resorted to shooting the movie off my iPad screen using Photo Booth on my MacBook: the quality is fair, not great, but I think (if the video plays, which it SHOULD -- but you never know) you can get some idea of how the process went by watching it. (See below.) I'm more confident that you'll be able to see the actual pattern file that you'll also find just below.
Pattern made using Brushes Redux on iPad, with a movie of the process just below:
Making a pattern on the iPad using Brushes Redux - a demo.m4vPhotomontage using Brushes Redux - updated 2 12 19.pdfNote: I just succeeded in getting my Brushes Redux file in .psd form from the iPad to my computer by placing it in Drive while on the iPad. This means that you could start a project on the iPad and then continue working with it on the computer, using Photoshop, and having access to work with the original layers you made in Brushes Redux
IF YOU ARE WORKING ON THE COMPUTERS . . . Further update for 2/13/19: I suggest taking a look at the following additional demonstration piece I made, which presents a further option for you as you work with patterns. (This could be for Digital Art students at any level, I, II, or III, since it is definitely something I haven't presented before in any of these classes.) The basic idea is to create a collage of patterns that truly looks like a cut -- or rather a torn -- and pasted collage. I might have gone a bit overboard with the drop shadow option (in Layer Styles: you get there by double clicking in a layer, but not directly on the name of the layer). I made quite a few new patterns, but did so mostly by recycling a few simple components and combining and recombining them in different ways. One set of patterns derived from my follow-up demo work to make sure that an approach I suggested to a particular student to get an interweaving effect off vertical and horizontal elements would actually work. (It sort of does.) This involved making strips with gradients going from dark to light to dark to light etc. (!!) and using these gradients on layer masks: the effect can be to hide a strip in the spots where you want it to appear to be overlapped by another layer that is, actually, in a lower layer in your Layers palette. Another set of patterns derive from my work to create a hexagon-based pattern. (Hexagons are, like squares/rectangles, one of very few shapes that interlock perfectly.) I'd done a bit of work with hexagons in the past, but never with great success. But I found a suggestion on-line to use the shape tool (perhaps about 3/4 of the way down on your tool bar), selecting the polygon tool and then specifying six sides. Orienting the hexagons was still a somewhat imperfect process for me, involving lots of zooming in and careful nudging with the arrow keys (while on the Move tool, of course) to get the hexagons to fit together well. In any case, the patterns you'll see in this "collage" demo piece all derive either from the gradient/strips/layer mask work, the hexagon work, or the pattern-made-using-photographic-imagery work that I demonstrated/shared just a class or two ago. I used layer masks to "cut out" pieces of each pattern: the lasso and polygonal lasso tools are what I used to select the areas that I would allow to show, while masking the remainder of the particular pattern I was dealing with. Below, you'll find a screenshot of most of my layer palette that may help give an idea of how the layers and other aspects of this file (e.g., the layer effects) were set up.
stages of development of a pattern - diamonds and ogees etc copy.pdfAfter completing your letter grid project, and before (and as preparation for) the book cover design, you're going to create (and write a brief biography/naturalist's profile of) a hybrid creature. Please look at the following two files (each in two different file formats) for information and inspiration:
Quarter 4: After completing your editorial illustration, you will turn your attention to creating a logo (for any organization or entity, real or imaginary!), incorporating the visual concept of an implied shape. See examples in the file just below:
logos with implied shapes.pdfReport abuse