Wave

Idea by Wave. Wave can be found under Filters-Distort-Wave.

The making is applying artful Wave readings to shapes. Overlapping filtered (Wave) shapes on to subjects. Below are some readings that I had used to create the 'designs'. It's like doing positive-negative or black and white graphics and compose into a design. Since the designs are white like the background, remember to do Select Objects to throw out the 'excess' around the subject. Merge them from layers and do colour change by Gradient Map. Could this be the next Paper Cut style ?

Some Wave Results and Readings from two columns ie. Minimum and Maximum and for Scale, Horizontal and Vertical.

Layer Style - Drop Shadow

The Idea by Drop Shadow.





Some Closeups.



Oval shapes as Hillscape and add Clouds - turn down by Opacity.



Bend some lines inbetween leaves by Warping. Keep in Layers !



Throw in more leaves but keep balance with space. Keep some of the leaves shadows incontrast by adjusting only of Opacity in the Drop Shadow reading guide as below.



The Drop Shadow reading to all layers as this ; Blend Mode - Multiply, Opacity - 28, Angle 138 use Global Light, Distance - 123, Spread - 11 and Size maximum at 250. Keep Noise - 0. The leaves is done straight and symmetrical ; draw, cut and arrange with Grid reference.



... and add a subject - Bee, bug, butterfly etc and the Closeup below.

Greetings

Deepavali Greetings if you had come this way ... and the art is ;




In Illustrator, draw with the Pen Tool with Stroke at 10 point line thickness. Select the drawing lines and click for Artistic Scroll Pen in Brushes, choose Scroll No 6. Draw shapes to fill in colours and delete the outlines. Click into Colour Swatches for immediate Colour Change.



Arrange the linework over the other for background. Copy the background and Click Object-Rasterise and hit Opacity. Slide down the Opacity reading to 28. Typeface - Curlz MT, Warp and Distort in the first image.

Camouflage

Three part CloseUps.




Begin with dividing into Sections. Draw or Cut shapes with Polygonal Lasso Tool.



Darken either with Brightness/Contrast or use a Burn Tool. Remember to do repeats of Select Objects to every layer.



Add leaves and shadow. Do a 'flat leaf' and Warp - bend it and Dodge and Burn for tones.



Add Base. Burn sections for Contrast. Bright on Dark and reverse.



Throw out the background by applying Median. Click Filters-Noise-Median.

The Backgrounds. Sections and the Median Filter effect.

The Convertion from Scanned Newspaper and Colour Change by Gradient Map.




The sequence ;

Section A

Open up the Black and White Newspaper Jpeg File.

Click A1 for Image-Adjustments-Gradient Map.

Section B /Gradient Map
Click B1 for Reverse.
Click B2 for Gradient Editor.

Section C /Gradient Editor
Click C1 for Presets.
Click C2 for Stops.
Click C3 for Colour Selection.

Section D /Select stop colour
Click on D1 to choose colour within square.
D2 is the colour choosen and the immediate colour change at the back - shown with arrow.

Notice

A simple Notice on Flash done in two hours. Converts into Quicktime by Export as .mov file.

I encounter a problem in uploading my photos - especially into photo spacings and some photos repeatedly make copies when moved. Took some time to remove in Picasa before repost. 'Camouflage' took me about 5 uploading sessions and deleting one after the other in Edit Posts.



Some html editing about spacings and I should be able to upload a few more, soon.




These are timelines - duration set up for the animations and the lower image is the break apart method applied in darker lines ; an alphabet in each layer set in timeline intervals so that the text appears one at a time for the word - problem and photos.

I found out ; The animation for .mov as above does not run smoothly as .gif .gif file will remain a blank rectangle when published. Click on it ... .gif animation plays 2x larger in a new window.

Syawal Coming !

Wishing Malaysians
Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri
Maaf Zahir Batin 1430 Hijrah

Have a Save Journey this Holidays.


The making ;

Design a Shape, Fill Colour, Copy and Paste, Compose, Work in Layers, Change Colour fast by Hue Saturation, Group and Duplicate Group, Merge Duplicate Group as Master (last image) and start colour change by Hue Saturation.

The following are results from hue saturation.






Or use Colour Balance. Either individual or combination shades of RGB ; Reddish, Greenish or Bluish colours are seen more prominent when apply.










As usual I like to do the Calligraphy part in Illustrator, freehand only with a mouse. I drew it slightly bigger than the Canvas size in Photoshop, this should be sharp when reduced.

I had used the Paint Brush Tool to run the lines. Enlarged lines under Stroke about 10 pt. Save a copy as Ai. and export another as Psd (Photoshop File).
Open up Photoshop ; Group the Layers, Duplicate Group and Merge ; Drag the Calligraphy over the Working File and do Transform-Distort.

Others - Apply for background




‘Wipe‘ at one side or corner of a selected background with an Eraser Tool to create the ‘high and low’ part. Use a bigger Master Diameter but set low on Hardness.



And the lights …pelita !

The method are Draw with Rectangular and Elliptical Marquee Tool. Fill with any colour and bring down the shades by Opacity. Throw out the overlapping layers by doing Selected Objects. This would be the Pelita on the left. Group and Duplicate Group. Move the Duplicate Group in the centre. The Pelita in the centre is a result from Gradient Overlay. Apply gradient colour to every layer and repeat Group and Duplicate Group. Merged the Duplicate Group and move it to the right as one layer. Duplicate more of this single layer and apply Hue Saturation for colour change.

Illustrator Brush Strokes

Doesn’t matter if you can’t read this. I wanted to show some Artistic Scroll Pen under Brush Lines found in Illustrator which is quite interesting when apply to Calligraphy and perhaps imagine a face, tree, simple landscape etc created from these brushes in Illustrator. I need to work on it.

Science Art – Bacteriology

From imagination I illustrate a bloating virus.

To create this shape I had used the Bloat Tool in Liquify. Turn on Brush Density, Brush Pressure and Brush Rate at 100. Hit any brush size over as shown in the diagram above. Change brush sizes and apply all around.

Create Composition. Save as Jpeg File and apply Lens Flare and Lighting Effect on it.

Lens Flare is not applicable to Psd Files so work in Jpeg.


The Background.



Merged 2 layers of Brush Stroke – Dark Strokes for the Lines and Extrude, Liquify – Turbulance.



Apply Artistic Filter - Paint Daubs.



Apply Pixelate - Pointilize.

Apply Stylize - Extrude again at 30 Pyramids, select a portion of the image, apply wind 7 times, transform; pull the handles to elongate and warp for curves. Open up some layers in the Layer Pallette as it helps to visualise the curves when warping.

Science Art – Bacteriology. Love to create a few more.

Logo or watermark

A watermark over a photo for my other photo blog. Turn down by layerblend - Opacity. Click Arrow Tool and Press 2 for 20 % or 4 for 40 % etc.

Here's the sequence ;

I had done some thinking and finalised with typing sunfish2312, break the lines into three and search for a typeface or font. I chose Agency FB, flush left and right for this font layout. Click the cursor into the text and use the left and right arrows of the keyboard to space them out. Press Alt - right arrow or left.

Next, I draw the mola or sunfish - some infos of the fish right below.

I placed the graphic mola on top of the text and embedded it in a square or rectangle. I provide a little breathing area for the design within.

As usual remember to group the working layers. Duplicate Group and merge the Duplicate Group. That would be in one piece. Duplicate another to work on effect.

With that complete, I had done a simple Wave effect to the whole watermark and the reading as above.

For visualisation after reduction ; I copied and reduced at 33 %. This is 'white' on dark Photos.



Here's another way of changing 'white' to 'black'. Work on Hue Saturation and change its intensity and this is whenever the watermark needs to go on light or bright photos.

Infos of Sunfish Current Record

The current record for the heaviest sunfish in The Guinness Book of Animal Records belongs to a Mola mola that was struck on September 18, 1908 by the Australian steamship SS Fiona about 40 miles (65 kilometers) from Sydney. The fish was towed to port where it was measured and apparently weighed.

According to accounts of the incident published in the March 1928 issue of scientific Monthly and the December 10, 1910 issue of The Wide World Magazine, the fish measured 3.1 meters (10 feet) in horizontal length, 4.26 meters (14 feet) in vertical length, and weighed 2 tons 4 hundredweight, which converts to 4,927 pounds.

NationalGeography.com news

Idea !

In Photoshop, I began with an image, filtered and formed by distortions. I apply the usual Artistic Filters like Cut Out, Dry Brush, Sponge and Paint Daubs - Sparkle.

In Distort, I used Wave and Twirl ... so I could get a circle from a square !




These are the readings for Wave and Twirl and the enlargements.

Next, prepare a shape and do composition.

Copy and Paste. Arrange in layers. Group. Duplicate Group and merge layers in Duplicate Group into a single layer. With that single layer, for size, I make it look bigger at one end and smaller on the other from distortion. Any excessive of those patterns are trimmed as shown below.



Distort - of a merged layer/one piece.



The trimming part, Click outside with the Magic Wand Tool and Do Invert (Ctrl -Shift- I) and press delete. Reminder - this apply to the merged layer.



Still on that layer, click inside the circle with a Magic Wand tool and delete the inner excessive design. Remember to do Select Object.

For the 'fruits' ; Group the layers within the highlighted red lines. Duplicate the Group and merge the layers in it. The merged layer is indicated in black line.

Click on the merged layer in the layer pallette and apply colour change - glide the slider with arrow shown above for hue saturation - this one is purplish.

I chose red - like red fruits on a green tree !

Up to this stage, I had saved this as Jpeg file in Photoshop . Copy, then paste into Illustrator. Work over the little curve text ; then save back and view in Photoshop.



Hope you have an idea, Marvic !

Marvic Backgrounds

Background by Gradient Overlay. Do the following :
1 Click Gradient Tool
2 Button to open up Presets
3 Make a selection
4 Button to move to other presets. Click Ok in there.
These steps are repeated in Method.


The Method as this ;



Get any shape.



This way (as diagram above) to Click Layer - Layer Style - Gradient Overlay or



with No 1 (Click Layer) and No 2 (Layer Style) done, move to Gradient Overlay No 3 which is select Noise Samples - Transparent Pastel. No 4 is the immediate result. End.

Note : Basic Presets found in Photoshop are such as Colour Harmonies, Noise Samples, Pastel, Metals, Special Effects etc. And in choosing Noise Samples there are Blues, Greens, Sunrise, Pastel, Purple, Deep Sea, Ultra Violet, Noisy Spectrum and Transparent Pastel.

Retain the selections as above and discover a big difference when applying gradient as shown in the diagram below. Imagine circulating, zig zagging and have your flow of lines and strokes for background.



With Transparent Pastel selected, click on the Gradient tool and click again and drag from outside into X as shown. The results are the ones around it.



Do more overlapping and a design is form.

From one, I had applied 6 more of Hue Saturation for Colour Change and the results as below ;

This one had been used earlier.

... or keep simple as you have done and add/play around with Decorative text to compensate space. And if those colourful visuals above would take up your printing colours - print slightly smaller - retain around 75% and cut down to Standard instead of High for Quality.

Thanks Marvic ! ... I discover some interesting ways working into Gradient Overlay ! I did not place any watermarks here for your references.

Ramadhan 09

Calligraphy with the Paintbrush Tool in Illustrator. No Tablet PC and special pen - direct mouse movements for this Calligraphy artwork. Do fine lines and enlarge by point size under Stroke !

Look into Export and Save as Jpeg or Photoshop Files. Open up in Photoshop and do Transform. Apply Gradient Overlay for Colour Effect and changes.

Selamat Berpuasa Ramadhan to all Muslim Visitors !

Unwind !

Going outdoor with friends this weekend. This time we are back to Sembilan Islands – 2 hours drive from KL and a few hundred meters to the south of Pangkor. There’ll be plenty of sun, wind, waves, sea sick and lack of sleep ; All for free !

Here, I illustrate a simple 6 seconds vid from Flash. Working from back to front. Text first – make it move. Then draw simple graphics of fish, line and splash.
Only the fish is motion path i.e making it go round a hidden line.

Colour change is easy with Stroke Colour or Fill Colour .

6 frames storyboard.


Be back next week !

Imaginative Art

I drew plenty of these alien figures the last six days somehow it did not blend much with the whole setting. Then, I sat for 2 hours this morning and this came by. No sketching as usual, I kept warping, transforming and altering in Photoshop. Since every post are recent - I let this go ... !

Many more to work on over time ; detail on the figures, the shadow part, the clouds, background, the blur palm edges, adjusting mood from dark clouds and lighting etc - that's playing with Omni light effects under Render in Photoshop.

This is the shot, sitting at a coffee table waiting for what I ordered and when filtered - that's Filter-Stylize-Extrude, Pyramids at 30 pixels and random.

A few of these kites keep changing with Perspective in Layout.

Warping in never easy without readings, work symmetries !

The Palms - wind indicators

Work a composition for the kites. Fade by Opacity or Dodge.

Fill up the areas with clouds and little background in the lower images.

Shadow Style. I like this way :

Mother and Child. Duplicate the Mother's right hand in the Layer Pallette.



Do Alt-I-A-H, shortcut for Hue, Saturation. Hue - 100, Saturation minus 100 and Lightness minus 100. It gets solid black.



Do Gaussian Blur at 28.0 pixels. Filter-Blur-Gaussian Blur.

Send to the back by dragging down the layer in the Layer Pallette. One Layer down.

Cut off the unwanted shadow marked in red. Do Opacity to the remaining shadow and Erase lightly at the edges.

Add background colour by Gradient Overlay ; I had two layers stacked over the other with Opacity at 50 each (i.e One layer at 50 and the other also at 50). The layers are 1.Purple Blue to Yellow and 2.Black, Green, Orange and White as shown in the diagram below. Try other combinations at 30/70 or 40/60.

Add text.

Any further infos, technical or anything you know best are welcome.

Pixelate - Colour Halftone

While printers would correctly registered dots for printing, I find moiré effects in Photoshop ; arty, colour mixed and beautiful polka from changing angles and pixels under Pixelate - Color Halftone.



To do this –

Draw by Polygonal Lasso Tool. Fill or cut out from Solid colours. Do Opacity from Layer Blending for ‘screen’ effect as above. This would be the guide and the usual step to extract shapes.

In the Layer Pallette, form the layers into a Group and Duplicate Group to work with.



Working from the Duplicate Group (Guide Layers), cut each layers from different filtered images. Repeat Object selection to every layer, copy and paste into position for this process. To view overall of the filtered cut outs, shut off the Guide Layers in the Layer Pallette.

The above image is how it looks like from the cut outs OR skip this and simply get a photo, any shape, it works. Don't worry about you need to do calibration for your processor - unpredictable results are just amazing !


Apply Filter - Pixelate - Colour Halftone.




Set pixel to maximum 127 while
the other Channels set to
Channel 1, 105 for Cyan (C)
Channel 2, 90 for Magenta (M)
Channel 3, 75 for Yellow, and (Y)
Channel 4, 45 for Black (K).

This is at maximum 127, 4 is minimum !

This is at 38 pixels and enlarged.

While this is when all the Channels are at 45 Degrees and 127 pixels !

Filtered images in this case are images from photos, drawings etc that has undergone artistic effects such as dry brush, paint daubs, sponge etc. Look into Filters – Artistic - and the list of basic filters in there. Do a few or differences by colour.

Puzzle Run

A finishing line moment of simple jigsaw puzzle shapes from minimal distortion and warping. I work only with the first three, copy, do colour change and apply Gaussian Blur to the remaining shapes. Add shadow, text and numerals.

Select object and use brush tool to colour within the shapes and work in layers.

Change to Grey Scale at 100, -(minus)100 and -(minus)29 of Hue Saturation,



Or change into another by Hue, Saturation – readings at -(minus)38, 100 and 29.

Mix Match

Collage work from Green and Red Chillies, Brinjal, Tomatoes, Lemon, Kiwi, Corn, Watermelon and Durian. I found them in my neighbours kitchen, make some shots, do the edge outs in Photoshop, shuffled for combinations and composed.

The bending, twirling and waving are some distortion styles applied. Colour change by Hue, Saturation and also Colour Balance. Any title will do - Hair Styles, Fruit Face, Ready Smile, Friends, Mix Match etc.

Superimposed - Style 1

I like this method. It can be done to vehicles, people, trees etc. The method slowed down only from cutting out clean lines in layers. The cuts or edge outs is done with the Polygonal Lasso Tool. Three layers as this is okay with time. Change colour with Gradient Map, Gradient Overlay or do Colour Balance.

The method, work from back to front. Pic 3 from top is the real shot. As seen to the shots, read from 1 - 3.

3. Shoot the whole figure.

2. Shoot, Place down left hand.

1. Shoot, Place down right hand.

Remember avoid movement as it needs to be cut around - sharp. Then, Blur edges can be apply under Filter.

See the Opacity differences of the Hands - I have cut out into layers.

Here, I changed Opacity for the transparent effect and work on the hues enhancement.

... and here, I cropped tighter.

Superimposed - Style 2

Though procedures are alike - the effect is different. From identical shapes - Do scale for different sizes as above in black to grey (Group this layers - Group 1). Randomly stack these sizes for Composition. 3 - 4 layers is fine for this overlapping effect. Do this on a lighter base for guide.

Turn on the Base Opacity back to 100 percent. Do Object Selection to every layers - Copy and paste in place - over the Black to Grey guide or Group 1.

Do Opacity(above) or shut off the Base layer(below) in the layer pallette. Done.



Tired ? Here's a card - Happy Unwind !

Superimposed - Style 3

Stack several shots in Layers.
Group the Layers as Group 1.
Duplicate Group 1 and merge as Group 2.



Over Group 2 - Draw simple shapes in Layers - do Opacity for transparent effect.



Duplicate, Scale and Distort the Shapes

Do Object Selection to every layer and copy out Group 2. Layer Blend each Layer Opacities.( See Layers - Layer Style - Blending Options - Opacity )

Do colour Hue, Saturation and Lightness plus Brightness and Contrast.

I've change slightly for contrast at the antennas - two layers overlapping (black and white) and erasing the sides for gradient effect. Stop here, or ...

... add Base (Open up Group 2 in the Layer Pallette) work on Hues and Layer Blend - Do Opacity at 28.

This can be a banner for your blog. Do composition, add trees, insects, birds by simple shapes - Do Opacity or throw out the base or do invert or reverse of the above, Add text.