Table Focus - Still Life

Finished Sketch with two colors layered in with the color filter to absorb the shading. Outside of the white, which is the background color, I picked a single orange to make the focus and added its inverse to shade everything else.

Original.

Regulars

Simple is beautiful.

M C Escher used these concepts to drive his many works.

Apple Slices

Clay Earth

Hermit Crab

Thinking about yesterday's picture, I realized that I missed a few distinctive element distinctive of Eric Carle's Work.

1. All complicated shapes should be constructed using very simple shapes.
2. No plain colors, everything is cut from a painted section including black and white pieces.

Each piece of the picture above was taken from a full background drawing as shown below.  Node how the spiral was constructed using lines of different sizes cut from the black cloth, etc.

HOW-TO Organic Series

Series of different sized polka dots blurred stretched and resized.

Copied original layer altered size used a difference filter, offset layers.

Repeat previous step.

Repeat previous step and add in a cool blue layer to absorb the additional red hues

Mirrored Variation I

Mirrored Variation II

Mirrored Variation III

Mirrored Variation IV

Add complementary color swirls with slightly different transparency.

Blend Variations and combine with the color swirl for added tones.

Organic I & II

Organic III

Organic IV

Manhattan Reflections

 I had fun making this shot from a single picture as we were crossing the Throgs Neck Bridge

Straightened and cropped with the bridge blacked out.

Original

HOWTO: Hyperreal Suburbia

No camera can take this picture. This is a merger of a single photo that was shifted across the spectrum to emphasize the contrasts that we normally do not see in the upper and lower ranges of light.

Enjoy!

Final Product

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Steps to recreate...

(1) Original

(2) Use the Levels tool to focus on the lower end of the spectrum at the cost of washing out the sky.

(3) Use the Levels tool to focus on the higher end of the spectrum such that the normal visible range is quite dark.

(4) A gradual transparent erasure of the sky region from the over-exposed ground picture. Layer that on top of the understated sky picture for the final result.

Flight of the Dandelion - HOWTO

Finished Version
Lighting to highlight the seed's parachute along with some detail work on the fan.

Rough Plan and Color Selection

Sky and clouds blended in.
The middles of the hills are shadowed for depth.

 

Still Life - HOWTO

Finished Version (Lighting and Borders)




Initial Plan + Color Scales

Flat Shaded version

Turn at Dusk - HOWTO

The Plan:

After watching half of an online tutorial, this work came through.

Instead of picking colors and blending between them, I chose to take several gradient strips of colors to be used in the picture as a basis for the palette.

Rotated Tiles

I) Endpoints for a single side
II) Square arrangement of (I)
III) Overlapping pattern that uses the endpoints
IV) Four 90 degree rotations of (III)
V) Four 90 degree rotations of (IV)
VI) Two radial gradients (Green to White, Blue to White) layered on top at 70% opacity

Twirl: HOW-TO

Start with a flat brush and a high contrast background.
Draw a few scribbles with plenty of room.
Find an edge of each of the scribbles and pull it out with the smudge tool with a single stroke.

Using the edges of each of those smudge the strokes further.
Overlapping has wonderful side-effects.


From each of your contours start picking an overall direction for each shape.
What space should it occupy?
Should it be compact or sprawling?

Final Product with overlapping for extra depth

Moonlight - Gradient and Opposites

Looking at the background of Think Geek one evening I noticed something really interesting with the background. First look at the top of the page then scroll to the bottom and you will see a different image based on where you were in the page. Initially I was confounded, then after studying the colors involved, I found the technique. The following is a very quick reproduction of it.

Basic ingredients
1) Two Colors for a Gradient (Black and White in this case)
2) Gradient from One to the other. If you reverse the gradient as seen below you will see the highest amount of contrast.
3) A massive amount of transparency prior to applying the gradient.


The triangular mountainside is black on a transparent background, as seen below in white.

The stars were the exact opposite.
Example of showing a close to full gradient from White to Black

Off-angle gradient for dramatic effect

Glow

Enhanced





The Original

Fractal Snowflake

Four hand-positioned Generations

Plasma

Plasma, how to make an interesting pattern in around 15 minutes...

Step 1 (2 layers, black + yellow smear)

Step 2 (3 layers 2 yellow, 1 black)

Step 3 (3 yellow layers + background)

Result