Tag Brush

Welcome all who come to this happy place!

A few weeks ago in Photoshop we were able to turn our own personal logo into a tag brush! What this means is that we made our logo into a brush for Photoshop allowing us to brush it onto any assignment that would precede this assignment. For this in-class assignment we took out logo and used some other brushes to create almost a graffiti-like effect of our logo. Then we added it to our palette of brushes. Adding to the palette of brushes allows us to grab our logo at anytime on Illustrator or Photoshop. What is wonderful about our logo being a brush now is that we can change it to be any color we desire. In addition we can make it as prominent or discreet as we want it to depending on how many times we use the brush it one setting. For example, below I have attached a turquoise version of my brush. I chose to use the color turquoise for my example because it is my favorite color and reminds me of the ocean. To extenuate the idea of the ocean I made my brush color yellow in between one of my many clicks of turquoise. By clicking my brush repeatedly on the document, I was able to make my logo very dark and defined.

Thank you for reading!
See ya real soon,
Carley Heskett

Becoming Toy

Welcome all who come to this happy place,

This week we have learned to master the warp and brush tools in Photoshop. Using these tools we were able to transform a photo of ourself into a doll and locate the doll version of us into a location we have never been before.

Because the holiday's are coming up, I was inspired to get festive for this project! I decided to make myself into a porcelain doll ornament. Christmas is an extremely big deal to my family. It is something that brings us together. We have several holiday traditions that we hold very close to my heart. My favorite has always been about our Christmas tree. Every year we would travel far away to cut down our own Christmas tree. We would bring our beautiful new healthy tree into our home, play some holiday music AND a Christmas movie -usually the Santa Claus- and then we would dress it in beautiful lights and ornaments. To be honest, my mom would do the light decorating. Once all the lights were on my sister, mom and I would all grab one ornament at a time out of our giant box of unique ornaments my mom had collected over the years. Every ornament has a story or memory. My mom had a porcelain ornament from the years my sister and I were born. I decided to honor those beautiful ornaments and make a porcelain doll version of myself. Given that this ornament is a little creepy for Christmas, it was the best way I could achieve the porcelain doll effect.

To do this I used a brush and refine edge tool to erase the background of my chosen photo. Then I used the direct selection tool to locate just the skin of my photo. I then I added a new adjustment layer and changed the vibrance of my skin to negative 80. Then I created another adjustment layer using curves that allowed me to contrast the black and white tones of the photo. The final and third layer adjustment I made was with sold color. I used solid white under soft light to truly create the porcelain doll effect. Then I combines all my layers to create a smart object and liquified them. Once all my layers were under one smart object I was able to actually manipulate my face to truly make it look like a doll. So I started with the bloat tool to make my eyes and lips appear much larger as a doll's eyes would look. Then I used the pucker tool to make my nose appear much smaller and reminiscent of a doll. To conclude my project I put my tag brush on the image. I tried to make it blend in so it would not stand out too much because I did not want it to take away from my picture. So I placed my tag brush on the gold ornament in the top right corner. Below you can find the final image of my project.

Overall, it is a creepy image of an ornament that I probably would not put on my tree. But it accomplishes what was asked of the assignment and it was quite fun to do! Thank you for reading

See ya real soon!

Carley Heskett

B/W to Color Portraits

Welcome to all who come to this happy place!

In my digital media class we have been working in photoshop for about a week and a half now. We are mastering and manipulating the power of color! For our assignment this week, we were tasked with picking a photo of ourselves that we would add new colors to that would change the image! I decided to pick a color with a simple two colored background that had fun shapes. I thought this would best highlight and emphasize the color changes. Once I decided on my photo, I had to put it into photoshop and make it black and white. Once the photo was adapted to black and white, I went to color.adobe.com and picked my favorite color: a nice light turquoise. After I decided on my main color, the website offered me the varying color palettes. The color palettes were in Analogous, Monochromatic, Triad, Complementary, Complex, and Shades. I made the analogous version of my photo first. I used the brush tool to add and remove the colors. Once it was complete I made 5 more copies of it. In the other copies I was able to simply adjust the colors to fit the proper color palette they were in. Below you will find my six different versions of my photo! I hope you enjoy!

Thank you for catching up with me!

See ya real soon!

Carley

How to: Photoshop

Welcome back to all who come to this happy place!

This week we are starting a brand new adobe application: Photoshop! Although I am sad our Illustrator days are over, I am excited to learn how to operate Photoshop. To help me get an idea I looked up a few tutorials on how to work in this application. I have attached the three links below if you are interested!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvFq1eGKUTY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVzKvfqKIEA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05U5iUVd4M4

I hope you enjoyed those tutorials, and that they may help you if you decide to one day tackle Photoshop. Thank you for reading!

See ya real soon!
Carley Heskett

Self Portrait

Welcome back to all who come to this happy place.

For our final project in Illustrator we had to create a self portrait. Using the pen tool, gradient mesh, and shape builder tool. To start I pasted a headshot of myself into a layer, and in a new layers I used the pen tool to outlined my hair, face, and facial features: eyes, mouth, nose. After these shapes were created and each in their individual layer, I filled them using the eye dropper tool to match the real color from the photo. After the shapes were colored I went grabbed the gradient mesh tool. I added a gradient mesh to my hair to replicate the different highlights in my hair, to my lips to replicate the coloring of my slightly worn lipstick, and to my face to replicate the shading happening in the photo from the light. I used a radial gradient on my eyes to illustrate the different shades in my eyes. After my face was filled and had different gradients, I then added lines to create more depth. I added lines with a 50% opacity to my hair as well as lines with 50% opacity to the outside of my smile. This helped emphasize my natural smile and cheeks. Once I finished the image of myself I then moved to my background. I created dozens of sunflowers to surround myself. I try to live my life in bloom. Constantly growing and thrive when I am learning and growing as a person. In addition, sunflowers are very positive symbols. I believe it is much easier to like a life as a Positive Polly versus Negative Nelly. I constantly surround myself with flowers. They are natural beauties that are all unique and come from the earth simply to grow, help species survive, and bring joy. I have always loved the quote "Be Honest. Be Nice. Be a flower not a weed." I try to live by this quote. It makes life a lot more enjoyable when you're nice, honest, kind, thoughtful, etc. and this will bring life to yourself and the world around you. Below you can see the final product of my self portrait.

I had a blast creating this self portrait! This is by far my favorite assignment we have done. I can't wait to make several other portraits of my friends, family, and dog. Thank you for visiting my blog! I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did.

See ya real soon!

Carley

Gradient Mesh Tool Projects

Hello to all who come to this happy place!

This week we discovered the wonderful Gradient Mesh tool in Illustrator! We practiced in class with creating a pear! We started using a pen tool to outline a basic pear shape. The first pear was simple because they were filled with solid colors! Then we copy and pasted the same shape but used gradient mesh! It allowed s to add more depth to our fruit! Creating natural color shading and highlighting enabled us to create a more realistic fruit!

For homework we were asked to create our own gradient mesh illustration based on any object we could find at home! I was inspired by our pear assignment and went to my kitchen and utilized my fruit and veggie drawer! I decided to take a photo of my green bell pepper! And then went to work in Illustrator! I uploaded the photo into the application and locked the layer so I could easily trace on top of the picture! Then I went to the gradient mesh tool to create the different shades of color that can be seen on the natural (and slightly old) pepper! Below you can find my pears, the original pepper photo, and the gradient mesh pepper!

 

Thank you so much for visiting!
See you real soon,

Carley Heskett

LOGO

Welcome back to all who come to this happy place!

The past few weeks we have been working in Illustrator! This last week we drew 10 different logos that we believe represented ourself in our sketch book! After picking the top 3 out of the 10, we put our logo ideas into illustrator using the pathfinder and shape builder tool! I used the shape builder tool to create two circles next to each other essentially creating a shape reminiscent of a Venn Diagram! I took the center section where the two circles overlapped to create the petal shape of my sunflower! Then I copied and pasted the single petal 8 times to create the many petals a sunflower would halve. Then I used the shape builder tool to create a rounded rectangle and a long thin rectangle to look like a mic! I chose the colors yellow and purple not only because they compliment each other but because they represent me! I try to be as optimistic and uplifting as possible in my every day life! It is important to me to try to leave people feeling better than when I met them! The purple represents my creative side! I live a creative life and lead with my love for performance and creating! Albert Einstein once said "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution." Whether it is acting, singing, dancing, drawing, baking, etc. I try to follow my passions in life that are deeply rooted from my love of creating, 


Thank you for reading!
See ya real soon!
Carley