What's That?
Step away from your work for at least a day. After coming back, look at what you have created and if you see anything that makes you say, "what's that?", get rid of it. If you say, "what's that?", you can almost guarantee your viewer will say, "what's that?", as well.
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Transforming a Photo into a Painting with Photoshop CS6 with John Derry
Learn to think like a painter and render images that look like they were created with oils or acrylics, using the latest digital artist's tools. Author and artist John Derry introduces the process of interpreting a photograph into a painted work of art. He begins by explaining his system of visual vocabularies, which describe how to replace the visual characteristics of a photograph with that of expressive painting, and also shares the custom brush sets and actions he uses to achieve these results in Adobe Photoshop. The course also covers working with filters, layers, effects, and more to add further detail and texture.
Topics include:
- Setting up a Wacom tablet
- Removing lens distortions
- Correcting distracting image elements
- Making shadow and highlight adjustments
- Simplifying details with filters and Smart Blur
- Modifying color
- Cloning layers
- Using a traditional paint color swatch set
- Using custom actions
- Working with canvas texture
- Creating physical surface texture effects
- Painting with custom brushes
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Removing lens distortion with the Adaptive Wide Angle filter
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Content the 'Why"
The emotional or intellectual message of art is its content
Content is idea-based and means:
- What the artist meant to portray,
- what the artist actually did portray and
- how we react, as individuals, to both the intended and actual messages.
Additionally, content includes ways in which a work was influenced--by religion, or politics, or society in general, or even the artist's use of hallucinogenic substances--at the time it was created. All of these factors, together, make up the content side of art.
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Subject the 'What"
The subject of visual art can be a person, an object, a theme, or an idea.
Subject matter:
Images or topics which comprise the subject matter of a work of art include but are not limited to:
- dreams, emotions, fantasies, figures (allegorical, mythological, nudes, single and group portraits), historical and/or political events, landscapes, religious events, still-life (flowers, interiors, tables of fruit).
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Form the "How"
As a component of art, the word form refers to the total overall arrangement or organization of an artwork
Definition:
(noun) - Form is an element of art. At its most basic, a form is a three-dimensional geometrical figure (i.e.: sphere, cube, cylinder, cone, etc.), as opposed to a shape, which is two-dimensional, or flat.
In a broader sense, form, in art, means the whole of a piece's visible elements and the way those elements are united. In this context, form allows us as viewers to mentally capture the work and understand it.
Finally, form refers to the visible elements of a piece, independent of their meaning. For example, when viewing Leonardo's Mona Lisa, the formal elements therein are: color, dimension, lines, mass, shape, etc., while the feelings of mystery and intrigue the piece evokes are informal products of the viewer's imagination.
Pronunciation: fôrm
Examples:
"Sculpture is not the mere cutting of the form of anything in stone; it is the cutting of the effect of it." - John Ruskin
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Organic Unity = Art?
If an artist is successfully in welding all three of these components (subject, form, and content) in a work, they become inseparable, mutually interactive, and interrelated - as if they were a living organism, When this is achieved, we can say the work has organic unity, containing nothing that is unnecessary or distracting, with relationships that seem inevitable.
Organic Unity
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Leading Lines
Composing a rendering with leading lines is a traditional technique that has long captured the attention of painters, photographers, and architectural illustrators.
Like a tour guide, you'll be leading viewers where you want them to go - by giving direction to the eye. Whether the lines are straight, zigzagging, or softly curving through the composition, viewers will have a sense of the composition, viewers will have a sense of satisfaction after traveling along the line that you, the architectural illustrator, provided. Most often, a leading line starts in the near foreground and then draws your viewer into the heart of your rendering. It's an extremely effective way to direct viewers on a visual journey through your rendering.
Once you start to recognize the potential for leading lines, you'll jump at opportunities to exploit them. They can be see in in landscaping, buildings, shorelines, streets, fences, and more. They can be colorful streaks of moving taillights at night, or they can be the long shadows of a column or tree that extends from the camera to subject.
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Exceptions Can Sometimes Be The Rule
You'll rarely go wrong in choosing a renderings composition that follow the rules. However, for stepping up the creativity at times, don't get locked into the Rule of Thirds as a hard-and-fast policy. At times, it can be restrictive for those 3D scenes that just don't fit onto a Thirds settings. While the perfect spot fir the subject may be somewhere off-center, for example, it might not necessarily be in one of the power points.
In fact, there are times when a dead-center composition is dead-on. This can be a subject with strong symmetry, such as a wheel, in which the hub is in the middle while the spokes spread out in all directions. When rendering close up, work, too, as does symmetry in most of my architectural renderings. Likewise, some renderings don't even have a specific subject; rather, the entire rendering is the subject, such as a pattern or repetition scenes.
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I've completed the Twitter for Business course on lynda.com
Join author Anne-Marie Concepción as she shows you how to leverage the power of tweeting for business promotion and customer engagement. This course reviews the basics of tweeting for business and shares smart ways to set up an account that reflects your brand. It explains how to tweet strategically in order to engage customers and attract followers. Anne-Marie also offers suggestions for creating a richer Twitter experience, managing your feed and activity using third-party apps and utilities, and integrating Twitter with other marketing endeavors.
Topics include:
- Understanding the role of social media marketing vs. traditional marketing
- Specifying business goals for Twitter
- Choosing a strong username and creating a strong profile
- Creating a Twitter landing page
- Following the people who matter most
- Using mentions, replies, and conversations
- Finding potential clients
- Providing support to customers and prospects
- Using hashtags for events and promotions
- Sharing photos and video with Flickr and YouTube
- Automating and archiving tweets
- Integrating Twitter with your blog, Facebook, and LinkedIn
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