How Low Can You Go?

Looking for a good way to raise the rendering bar? If possible, get down low, it's often just that simple. Rendering from a near-to-the-ground perspective is a surprisingly quick and effective method for making your rendering jump out from everyone else's

For example, most children are rendered from a typical grown-up height. For more emotionally engaging rendering, bring your camera to a kneeling height, to catch kids at their eye level. 

All this goes for pets, too, as well as flowers and any other short subjects that can be captured low to the ground, For some subjects, you can combine a low perspective with getting close. This can further heighten the importance of small subjects by making them appear large in relation to their surroundings.

Outside on a sunny day include a bold blue sky as the background. For instance, get as low as you can go and then aim up at a subject such as a flower. This will let you include the sky as a colorful backdrop while treating your viewers to something new. I guarantee your viewers will appreciate your fresh take on things.

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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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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

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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