Photoshop Painting

Artist Statement

The main idea that guided this artwork was taking a photo from my camera roll and using photoshop to make it digital. With this work, I was trying to figure out how detailed I should make it and how to use photoshop. I was trying to figure out how many different colors existed in the original photo and how I could use those to show depth and shadows. For this work, I was inspired by a lot of the 2D digital paintings that the students from last year's 2D art did. I remember a lot of my friends did this project so I was inspired by how they used colors and how they incorporated all the different elements of a normal painting.

This work was made with photoshop. I started by using the original photo (the one on the left) as the background layer. I then created a second layer where I could draw on top of it. I made my paintbrush size 11 which is pretty small so I could draw more intricate details. Along with the paintbrush tool, I used the eyedropper and paint bucket tools to create these works. These tools work by picking up specific colors from the photo (eyedropper tool) and then filling in spaces with only that color (paint bucket tool). I also used the layers to look at what the photoshop painting looked like without the background behind it to see the progress I had made or spaces I had missed.

For this photoshop painting, I decided to take a more detailed realistic approach instead of a more cartoonish style, something which was something I don't normally choose to do. I chose to do this because I wanted it to look realistic so that when my friends see it they can tell which one is them. To do this, I would zoom in really close and then draw little shapes of colors. I did this for every part of the painting except the background to make the people in the painting stick out. For smaller details like the eyes or single strands of hair, I made my paint brush smaller to draw normally like I would on a normal drawing or painting. I had to redo parts of the faces a lot of times because when I zoomed out they would look incorrect or off to me.