Process..

1. Create a new layer and paint the whole background black.


2. Type the word, SMOKE in 'Small Fonts' font, 144 pt.



3. Set the background layer as gradient overlay. It's under layer, layer style.





4. Go to blur, motion blur and set the angle to 90 degrees and the pixel distance to 40.

5. go to filter, distort and wave and set 3 for the Number of Generators, 10 and 346 for the Wavelength, and 5 and 35 for the Amplitude

6. Gaussian blur, set it to 10 degree. and group the text and background layer.

7. Create a new layer and put it on top of all the layers and choose the clouds effect that is under filter, render.

8. Change the blend mode to color dodge.

9. Go to layer, layer mask, and reveal all.

10. Use a soft brush to cover up some parts of the clouds. Lower the brush opacity first.

11. I downloaded the brush set from http://qbrushes.com/photoshop-abstract-brushes/smoke-brushes/ and created a new layer with the color setting to color dodge. And using the brushes I downloaded, I decorated the word to make it look like the word is smoking.

12.Add a new layer, put it behind all the layers except the background layer, and paint the new layer black. And go to filter, texture, texturizer and set the scaling 100% and 4 for the Relief. For the Texture use Canvas and for the light, use Top. And set the opacity to 10%.


I like how the image looks at this point, but to finish the tutorial,

13. Choose invert from Layer, New Adjustment Layer.

Final interpretation

Final study

These are two versions of a study I did for the final. First I wrote the word, smoke, used gaussian blur to blur the word and the motion blur to make the letters look distorted. And I downloaded the set of smoke brush tools like the tutorial said to and used it to create the smoke effect above the word, then I rendered the cloud in the background and covered up some parts of the cloud with soft black brush. For the white version of this, I inverted the whole image. I really like the smoke brush tools.

I thought I could do more than one study, but I have some visitors from Korea at home, so I didn't do as much as I thought I could.

But I'm very satisfied with my final interpretaion.

Ice cream_better

I added a wood grain texture in front of it. I like it better than the noise effect.

Final week

Before this course, I would have a design in mind, but couldn't figure out how to create it in Photoshop or Illustrator, so often times they would turn out completely different from what I had in mind in the beginning, like the baby image. Now I feel a little more comfortable with some tools in Photoshop.
I've only watched some tutorials on Blackboard, so I need to continue to watch them, do studies and interpretations on my own and post them. I'll probably use the same blog account..But for this week, I found a website that has Photoshop tutorials that could be useful if I learned for some classes I am taking next this year. I'm especially interested in the text effect tutorials.

http://abduzeedo.com/

Interpretation 4

Master study 4

Interp 3

I tried to add more textu

re to it.

study 3

withe more texture.

baby with color

I was going to color just the bow and leave the face grayscale but I added color to it anyway.

Interpretation3

This is not a drawing of a face like Agura's illustration I studied but i wanted to do a design this time.
and this is not supposed to be blue either.

Master study 3

I wanted to study one of Agura's illustrations.


The wet wedges option didn't work for the overlapping parts so i just went over with slightly darker tones. The lines were very hard to mimic..I tried to add texture but mine is still a lot smoother looking.

Interpretation2

The first one is a part of a poster I designed for a class and I wasn't so proud of it. I didn't know how to use the brush tools and add values on Photoshop that well, so there is almost no depth do it. So now that I kind of understand how and what Photoshop tools to use to create certain effects, I redrew the baby. I used photo below as a reference.

Master study 2

This is a digital portrait of Barak Obama done by Andrew Hay.

On top is the original.

I first did the values in Photoshop and then painted the whole page on another layer and set the layer option to color. But then everything was skin toned, including the eye and the brow. I couldn't figure out how to change the color of just the eyebrow and the eye. So I erased those parts, made two more layers, painted the erased parts black and brown and changed the opacity and blurred.

Interpretation 1

I tried to mimic the technique I learned from studying the Archie comic illustration for this.
I didn't like it how i had to keep going back and forth from Photoshop to Illustrator every time I wanted to add or change some line details. Everything else but the baby in the sun was drawn and colored by me. I just found a photo of a crying baby off the internet and manipulated it in Photoshop. I like the grainy textured background.

Master study 1

This is an illustration from a cover of one of the Archie comic book series.

I first completed the basic outline on Illustrator with various brush tools I used before for the previous practices and then I took it to Photoshop and added values and colors. I encountered some problems when doing the detailed parts of the values on the crown and his hair highlights because I used a mouse which disabled me from controlling the pressure of the brush strokes. So I had to keep changing the size of the brush manually which was time consuming and uncomfortable. That's why the shadows on the crown look a little blurry and not have as much detail.

fun stuff

I followed one of the tutorials on Youtube by Stephanie Valentin. She does tutorials on how do realistic illustrations on photoshop.

I don't own a stylus pen, so it was quite difficult but this practice helped me get used to using the brush tool and understand how important it is to have as many layers as possible. For this one, there are 26 layers.

And the link to the tutorial is,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5p1B2Z9hKQ&feature=channel

Practice

On left is an illustration by Brett Helquist. It is from a children's novel, A Series of Unfortunate Events.




And on right is my attempt on using the brush tool, pen tool, and pencil tool in illustrator. I liked the art brush tool which was the easiest to control of them.

chocolatier