Transcripts
1. Analog to Digital || Introduction: Are you a designer getting tired of the digital grind? Or are you a fine artist who's looking to dabble with the digital a little bit more in this class? We're going to explore how the analog world that's the traditional arts can be integrated into our design world. To give a fresh new approach to your work, we're going to see how different media can interact, how to then output it to your computer and we're going to create a project. It takes our analog and turns it into our digital world. This could be brought into any of your work projects to sort of spice things up a bit and makes a little bit more unique and interesting and more you. So what's your style? This is things were going to be exploring in analog and digital designs.
2. Analog to Digital || Supplies: All right, let's go ahead and get started with our supplies. You're gonna eat something to work on. So any type of paper that you like to explore with, go ahead and use it. Same thing with the supplies. What do you like to work with to Maybe you like markers. Or maybe you like sharpies and my Cron's try and see what happens. Watercolors can work great if you've been wanted to dabble with water colors and you can also just use the cheapest of the cheap. These were just on the bargain. Bennett target. Ah, cheap markers and cheap colored pencils. Anything does the job anything does? The job is perfect for just the plain old pencil said this would work. Great. If you like charcoal, try that. Or just any sort of material that you've been, you know, sort of itching to try. ANC can create really awesome effects with this, And if you're more painterly, go ahead and pain
3. Analog to Digital || Supplies Round 2 (Digital): and, of course, as well as our analog, we're also gonna need some digital supplies. I will be using photo shop. So you're going to be access to photo shop or even gimp if you use that.
4. Analog to Digital || Hands On Techniques (Analog): right, Let's go ahead and get started. We'll start by just experimenting and having fun with traditional materials. I have some marker, some water colors. You know anything that you're interested in working on, grab it, grab some paper and then let's just see how we can create different shapes, objects, textures, type and create something that's a little bit more unique that could be brought into our designs. And it's house a nice watercolor paper. I'm gonna I'll start with the markers. One thing that I have found a lot in the field is you'll have things that you need a burst or call to attention, and we know you. Let's do a search. Let's do a search on Istock for how many arrows can we find? And none of them seem to be quite right. So what if instead of trying to find that perfect stock him and you go ahead and just grab a marker and make exactly what you want? All right. So for this I'm going to use the brush side of things and let's just make some arrows. Do I want it pointing one direction versus the other? Do I want a really thick to thin. Just make Ah, whole slew of these. Maybe this is gonna arch around page after page after page and remember, were working digitally. So you don't have to necessarily worry about the color because you can always adjust that in photo shop. So just gonna make Maybe this one's gonna have dot little dot it lines or this is going to be a little swirly looking one that gets you sort of to that point figure dashes, etcetera. So is there something in your design work that you're always using? Why not just integrate? You know your own pieces into it and make it a little bit more unique? Maybe the Sharpie. Maybe we would want something as bolder, a little bit more aggressive. And what I always recommend with this, you know, make a couple different ones. Don't just make one or two fill a couple pages. I usually shoot for around 5 to 10 because sometimes I like certain arrowheads, you know, a little bit more than the other, or, like the bottom bits a little bit more. Maybe I want to look more dainty like that. Um, the more the merrier because it's going to give you your own stock pile to sort of call through and use. So the more you have, the more it can help you in the end. Ultimately, watercolor, let's just pull these out. Same dealio. I'll switch to more like words. Maybe there's, you know, a sort of header that you want. So maybe that is a hello or hi, etcetera. Maybe we have the exclamations, So same thing, What do you need and how can you replicate it? And what materials can you use for it? Um, in the more than marry her so again, just build billed as many of these as you want just to mix it up a bit. Maybe you need brackets. Let's just make our brackets. So what's the watercolor bracket like? What's the marker like? Um, maybe you just want solid shapes, and then you can bring those, and also anything anything that you can think of you're going to be able to create. So I would view this as a sort of material exploration. I have these got these years ago, the water soluble crayons and I never quite knew what to do with them. So why not play an explorer maybe I need a burst. So here's our burst. All right. Maybe one of ours is gonna go this way. I don't know. Let's just scribble and make marks. If you've taken my drawling class here on skill share the same elements with the mark making could be just copy and paste it here. How many marks can you think of? And how can you bring this in this case into your final project? Eso just gonna make more shapes? Maybe I'll make a speech bubble because those you get a lot in the field also. So instead of again, you know, don't you don't go to the Google Google. That's not copyright. Good. So if you're ice talking all the time or if you want to make things and start to sell them on your own as sort of digital delivery, ALS or deliverables, makeup may come and see what happens of. So these air watercolor pencils or crayons. Let's see what they look like. All right, let's just go with this one. Maybe it's gonna work great. Maybe it's not. Who knows until you try, I'm a firm believer in the Fail and try again system. So if you don't like it, just do another one. If you don't like that one, try it again in a different version. Uh, so these are actually kind of cool. I'm not going to go the whole way owned that This one? Maybe. I just want a little sort of blush with that one. Same thing with the speech bubbles, Uh, just to soften it a little bit, give it a little sort of ethereal effect to it. Maybe just fill in a little bit there and lift it out. But are you a painter? You know, do you like acrylics or watercolor or are you a drawl? Er, you know, grab your charcoal is grab your pencils, grab your markers and see what kind of shapes you can make. And let's build a giant pile of these. So by a giant pile, let's say around 10 sheets of whatever paper you've decided to use, fill it with little bits and bobs, and then we're going to take these and turn it into something else on the computer. All right. To take a break, grab some of your materials, grab your paper and make asses many sort of objects, shapes, forms that you want. Fill those pages with marks and I'll see in the next section
5. Analog to Digital || Scan Time: All right, So now you've created all the bits and bobs that you're looking for, and we need to get it into our computer because we're going to be playing around with ease and photo shop. So whether they just be all collaged together, uh oh. Are off of photos. You know, add to your photos or, you know, adding it to your design project again to give you that sort of extra sizzle that you're looking for. That wasn't existing in your project, but we need to get it from her paper to the computer. Now, if you have a scanner, great. Use that. Just make sure it's on the highest resolution. Like around 3 to 600 is usually good. Like a good midrange to high s so that you can get a really nice good quality scan from it . Now, if you don't have a scanner, we have one with us at all times, assuming you have a cell phone. So go ahead, open your camera. Um, I like to work with the indirect light from the windows are gonna take it outside, but let's just go for it. Uh, and take some of our photos because again, we can adjust it and photo shop. If we need Teoh, I'm going to grab a couple of my arrows as well. And I'm just just hold study of the trick with your cameras. If you're trying, told study is to just, you know, inhale while you're setting up. And then do your exhale as you release the shutter because it will be less shaky. And then let's get I liked the speech bubble. So let's grab that also. All right, so I'm just going to email these to myself, or you can use Dropbox if you have your phone set up to that, um or, you know, just go ahead and download them in any way that you have so scan photograph. Great that we can get it onto the computer. All right, so here's the goal for our project. You're going to be using what we've just made. I'm calling at the Anna Logs. We're going old school. So our analog art and design, and we're going to take it into our digital realm, and we're going to create a sort of self portrait collage. And I'm always when I do this project in class, I'm the most reticent to use the word self portrait because I feel like whenever anyone hears the word self portrait, panic ensues. If you wish to use a photo of yourself, go for it. If you are uncomfortable, there are other ways to do Self Portrait's and this is the objects that could represent you . The concepts that represent you in your belief systems. Eso you can think of it more is a pictorial representation of yourself, using objects and things slash photographs that you know you relate to. You love etcetera s O. I always drink my tea voraciously every morning, and it's almost a joke at work. So I would probably from mine have my, you know, cup of tea in there somewhere because this is an object that represents me. So if I didn't want to use myself, i e my face etcetera. If I don't wanna work figuratively, maybe for me, one of my images that I use will be the coffee. Sorry, The teacup. Um, So what we're looking for we're going to assemble some photos so you can go out and take these photos. If I want to take a photo of my teacup, I'll take a photo of my teacup as well as what we just did here. And we're going to open all of them in the photo shop, and we're going to make a picture that represents us. So I am calling it a self portrait, but it's not necessarily figurative. What I am interested in for you all is to experiment with the selections, the layer styles you know, and incorporating that which you can create by hand into the digital realm. So after you have everything photographed and go ahead and get set up at your computer and let's start making our collage.
6. Analog to Digital || Hands On Techniques (Digital): All right, let's go ahead and get started. I came into I photo and I downloaded my photos and I grabbed a couple others that I thought maybe it would be fun to work with for this project. And I just split everything onto my desktop. I click drive on all of them, and I'm gonna go ahead and open them into photo shop. Um, clip through and we're gonna go ahead and start working. Now, The basic guidelines for your class project is a 10 by 10 self portrait that's basically using collaged elements to tell your story the recommendations. And of course, this is your project, you know, if you want to have more or less go for it. But I'll say the base recommendation, I'm gonna call it three scans now scan. I use loosely because we did use our cell phone camera for it s so I'm gonna say three items that you've created by hand using any of your art techniques two layers of text, whether that be actual typography or also again hand laddering etcetera that you've scanned and brought in Ah, photo and four more images. So whether they be more of those textures or more photos that you've taken. Just explore, play and have fun with this. I was gonna use this image as the backdrop because we're working with a 10 by 10 inch square. So let's go ahead. Check our image size. I am gonna take it 10 to 10. And since I've downsized, I do want to take up the resolution of 300 because I do want to eventually print this. If you aren't printing it, you can go ahead and leave it at the 72 which is our screen dp I So I'm going to consider this one sort of ground zero for our project command. Negative will zoom you out. I do like to see a little bit of that paste board around it and just sort of helps me have a figure ground relationship right off the bat so I can see everything. And then I zoom in and out as needed. So let's just clip through. Here's some of the essay image parts, so this one is so boss from the same day as I took the other photo, the Pennsylvania Monument. These were taken at Gettysburg on the field trips that that was nice and fun, and I hadn't gotten a chance to actually work with it. And another image. Maybe I could bring that in somehow. Ah, some ink experiments, some more ink experiments that's actually ended up being the table we were all working on and class one of my paintings because I want to see what those colors could do with the photo. And this is what we just did in our video. There's our little bursts that we've made Ah, and some of our arrows. And I also wrote some words and I had some heart as well. So let's just sort of let's go crazy. And, you know, content and composition is always key. But maybe for this first part just experiment and have fun. Just get used to selecting. So maybe four. You know this. I just like this weird little heart thing. I grant my last so apple C or copy and then take it in. Teoh your file and go ahead and paste. You have a couple options with this, you can clean it up. Um, I am going Teoh, you know, brighten it a little bit with the curbs, that is, command em click on the highlight. So then that way we're getting the brightest possible again. It was the far right eye dropper. Click on the white of the page and go ahead and hit OK, And I actually like to work with the magic wand where some people duper for the quick select. You know, it's your preference. Take your pick. You know, that's fine. Um, so I'm going to go ahead and just get rid of that background by selecting the background in hitting delete. Maybe, You know, we just want a row of hearts. I'm gonna hold down my option key, and maybe I just put hearts everywhere. If this is what I'm looking for and I am going to trash them, it's going to depend on what you're looking for with your design. So I'm just gonna pop it down here so we can sort of see what's going on and, um, play around with layer styles and in my classes, if you ever have me in class, you here. We talk a lot about layer styles because we're defaulted to normal. And, as you know, in design, default necessarily isn't the best thing. So what happens if you dissolve or darken or multiply our color burn, etcetera. Each one of these just pop their each of them and see what they do. And I'm gonna go down to the you know, the crazier ones where you get much more interesting effects. So some we're going to start to blur together like two negatives that's are dark and a normal to apply in our overlay. Um, and then some of them will create really interesting effects. And I'm going to apple m per the second copy, because for this one, I'm actually not going to delete the background of it. And I'm gonna play around with just the layer styles so you can see, you know, some of these you are going to see the pain or, you know, the paper color. But some of them you aren't so, you know, select if you need to. But if you just want to sort of see what it does, just pop in and see what happens. So obviously, with lightning, we have our background screen. We have our background dodge. We're gonna have it so some are going to be visible. Some are not going to be visible, so this is again gonna be completely dependent on what are you going for with your collage and how you know, experimental. You want to be with that, and I'm just gonna go ahead and delete that one. And let's just merge another one going to last. So this guy All right, There we go. Copy it. That's command C Command V. Same thing. So go through each of them, see what they do. Would you like, you know, certain facts, etcetera. W for our magic wand. Maybe you don't want that background. That's fine. And then again, just pop their each of them. Um, another option. Let's take it back to the normal. You do have your capacity also. So if you have a specific tone that you want, maybe it's just going to be in a pass ity shift. It's going to depend on what you're looking for, but again, experiment. It's going to be key in this one apple tea, which is if I say apple, it just means command. I've still old school, so command t is our free transform. It will become your best friend and photo shop. Eso If you want to scale up, rotate twist, etcetera. This is going to be where you do that. Um, apple, I is are inverse. Maybe we wanted to just be a little bit different. And then again, explore, experiment, etcetera. Um, let's bring my painting in. You get the idea. So maybe for this one, maybe you don't want all of it, and I'm gonna copy and paste it into here. But maybe this will just give, you know, a really interesting effect over it. Maybe it won't. Who knows? Let's find out. Let's just put over all of it. And I am going to rearrange the layers because I want. And I'm just to hide those two. I want layer three, This painting that we just brought in to interact with our background. You guessed it layer styles, popped through all of them and just sort of see which ones air working for your design and which ones aren't. Um, you could probably eventually memorize all of these, but maybe just put their each of them because I don't expect you in the early stages to remember. I'm usually the two you'll get comfortable with is the overlay and the multiply. But the rest with the weirder effects you might not remember. So don't worry about remembering these dist. Worry about having fun with it and seeing what each of them dio on. Just pop their each of them until you find one that you think you know works with whatever it is you're working on. Um, you know, if you don't like the colors of these, you can actually turn them into brushes. So this is an option. Also, let's go back. And I know this is a lot. So, you know, feel free to rewind all of these and just sort of see what each of them dio I'm just gonna copy this one again and make a new document. Paste it pervs. That's our apple m s. So we get rid of that background. I like it nice and crisp. Ah, and go ahead and select. And again, you know, used tools that you want the background selected. I don't want that. I want a inverse it because I just want, uh, the ink splatter itself. And under edit, there's one to save. Your there is defined brush preset. When we do this ink brush one. It's going to remember it in our brushes. So when we go back into this document will make a new layer. There is ah, when they hit B, which switches us to the brushes, you know it's going to show that one that we have just made. Let's make it a different color so we can see it. Ah, and now you can just paint with that brush if you so desire, or you can use it as a sort of stamper, which I do actually prefer, because then I can have what I call the fiddly stage with it and get it exactly how I want it. So I like to make a new layer for each of my brushes. Uh, and again, it's going to depend on your work style. But then I could use my free transform and make it a lot more individual and get really interesting layers, etcetera. But you know you can paint with it also, So your preference completely on this one. Let's just pop another weird color in there on the next layer. This is making a weird eighties vibe. Um, so play, you know, thes images. One of my favorite towns ever is Gettysburg, so this would actually uh, these self portrait because this is using my paintings in the town. That makes me the happiest, um, and the colors that are speaking to me, I'd go ahead and add Are you know, I had the hello here. So maybe I'm going to put the hello in there. I could put tight, etcetera. I'm not gonna see that. We don't care about that anymore. Dido, with this one, please it up. Clean up a bit. You can think really photographically with this. You can think really graphically with it. It's going to depend on your work style. But the key word, uh, make stuff by hand imported into your computer and create an explorer and experiment because, you know, yes, you could go forth and create or go out and buy these brushes. But why not just make them yourself from things that you've created? You're going tohave a lot more Ah, vested interest into your piece and it's going to help start speaking your style and people are going to be able to recognize it because it's you. You've created it with your own hands. So I find a lot of people while they love, you know, design on the computer. They always feel like something's missing. And maybe if you are one of these people, try bringing in something that you've made by hand and turn it into digital. So explore your layer styles, you know, make brushes, play around with the color. Relax, have fun. And I cannot wait to see what you create whenever you have. If you want, show us your process. You know, upload the photos of your brushes. Um, show us, you know, step one, Step two and share with the class what you're doing on. And that way we can chat about you know what you've done. It's a great way feedbacks A great way to expand your art so I can't wait to see what you have done.
7. Analog to Digital || Final Thoughts: I hope you've had a lot of fun figuring out how to integrate your traditional art techniques into the digital world. It is so much fun to be able to use what you create and put it into your design work, which gives that the stamp of you approval versus something from a stock site in the future . You can bring in any of your own hand created elements into your work or just have fun creating expressive pieces that their unique an individual to you. I hope you had a great time with this class, and I look forward to seeing what you create.
Cookie Redding, Artist, Designer, Teacher
