Digital Painting

Purpose:

• To explore a variety of mark-making with the brush tool, along with a variety of techniques to create a digital landscape painting;

• To practice using the tablet and stylus with Adobe Photoshop;

• To create works of art that use different subjects, themes, symbols, and images;

• Demonstrate increasing level of competence in use in the elements of art and principle of design to create a digital landscape (line, color, shape, form, texture; unity, variety, contrast, movement, emphasis, and balance).

The first step was finding a picture I liked. I think that I wasn’t really thinking about the level of hardness the picture would be to paint when I was searching for a photo. I chose the ranch one because it had a clear foreground, middle ground and background. It also had a small palette of colors used in it. It felt like the right one. Then I started sketching in my sketchbook. This step was pretty hard because there wasn’t any tools or anything I could use to make it easier. I just had to freehand. After I finished that I copied and pasted the sketch into photoshop. Then I started blocking out the big spaces with the background color. After that then I really started working on the details. This was definitely the hardest part. I struggled to find the balance between too many details and not enough details. In a picture there is infinite details but I had to find just enough detail that I could do. At first this step was really slow. I struggled with doing a good job and making my details clean. Then I got the hang of things the last couple classes and parts of the my painting started coming together.

I learned that it is pretty hard but if you take some time and work on it step by step it can get completed. I also learned I should spend more time finding the right picture to paint because I don’t think I chose the right picture. I got very comfortable with photoshop during this project.