This
poster was designed to show 10 different "Modern and Post Modern" art
styles. Abstract, Color Field, Impressionism, De Stijl , Post
Impressionism, Ashcan Art, Fauvism, Graffiti, Surrealism, and Pop Art. I
created a simple, yet straight forward. I decided to make a simple,
light grey to dark grey radial gradient for the background. I then made
made a grid of masks revealing various images of each art style, along
with it's characteristics. Finally, a set sideline title to make up for
the negative space.
Friday, April 10, 2015
Thursday, April 2, 2015
This week, our CyberARTS class was assigned to create a digital self portrait. The art style I wanted to achieve was somewhere between at cross of Pop Art, and Graffiti. Throughout this piece, there are mainly three aspects, The sun burst background, splattered paint, and my face stylized in a way similar to Sgraffito.
Firstly, I used a sun burst background that had a paper-like texture, then I changed the hue to a light blue/cyan colour. Next I created a few colourized paint splatters bursting out of the center of the piece. Next, in Photoshop I used the "colour range" tool to select only the shadows of my face and copied it to a separate layer, I pasted the selection, then added a colourized gradient. After, I duplicated the selection then painted black. Finally, I used a mask on the black painted face and revealed the underlying colourized layer using a paintbrush with various sizes.
Some of the elements of design used in this self Portrait were: Direction, Size, Texture, Colour, and Value. The piece itself may seem very static, and may think your eyes are just looking all over the piece, but the more you observe, the more you realize where your eyes are leading. The first focal point begins around the bottom left corner where the yellows and reds are mostly found. Next up the green values of thick brush found on my cheek. Then the smaller brush strokes along the hair circle your eyes around the other side of the face, down past the eyes, and finally down to the other shoulder.
Friday, March 20, 2015
Recently I've been researching about various camera's and looked at which ones would be good to buy as a beginner photographer. Conveniently, I came across a video about which part in camera is more important, the camera body or camera lens.
Friday, March 13, 2015
I decided to make a small little project for myself by mixing two songs together, "Reflection Eternal" by Nujabes, and "Stay With Me" by Sam Smith. Once I completed the project, the track turned out great, but I felt like I need to do more. I decided to create an audio spectrum to make a video to match the song. I've learned how to create a audio spectrum from a previous project for our school holiday yearbook presentation. Here is a tutorial on how to make them. The program I used was "Adobe After Effects". The steps, for me, were very straight forward. Firstly, created a radial gradient of light blue to a darker blue. Next I imported the audio track. Then, through the effects panel, I looked for the "audio spectrum" effect, dragged the effect into the composition, then resized it to the screen. After, I simply set the priority to the audio layer, then customized the colours. Finally, I added text, made a few transitions, then hit "render".
Tutorial
Friday, March 6, 2015

Last friday, i've gone to the lake with a friend to take a few pictures for an upcoming competition. The first step to photo shopping these pictures was to exaggerate the colours in this image. I simply brought up the saturation in "adobe lightroom" to convert the "raw" images. I then added a sunset effect but adding a orange radial gradient along the horizon of the lake/city. Next, I exaggerated the blues in the water by using a hue/saturation mask and pumping up the blues/cyans. After, I slightly sharpened a few focal points such as the subject and the rocks to bring the viewers attention across the whole image. And finally, I added a vignette by using the circular marquee tool and selecting the area I wanted the effect to be. Then, I "feathered" the selection and used the blending mode "multiply". I made a mask from the selection then inverted it to finalized the "vignette" effect.
I've learned these techniques from a youtube channel called "Phlearn". The video below shows somewhat the same thing, but with a cute puppy dog.
Friday, February 27, 2015
I've recently created a photoshop self portrait for a profile picture. Here, I selected background blur with a black and white mask. Then selected the yellow "Nikon" logo (bottom right) and created a separate mask for it, adding the only colour in the picture. The purpose of this small project was to learn the fundamentals of the colour range selection tool and how I could create a strong effect on an image. Not only does this look good, but it makes up for the negative space towards the right side of the picture.
I learned this effect simply by searching up tutorials on how to limit colours in an image. Click here to observe one of these tutorials.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
This Presentation demonstrates the origins to the art style of "Graffiti". This presentation hold basic information about three different graffiti artists. Click here to view the presentation.
Saturday, February 21, 2015
During times of boredom and randomly scrolling through the internet, I've come across a Youtube channel/Website that has helped me improve my photography and digital arts. The website I've discovered is called "Phlearn". They teach techniques on both Photoshop and Photography. Unfortunately, they do not do hair tutorials, though i'm very jealous of the male instructor's hair, Aaron Nace.
Being involved in the yearbook committee allows me to handle cameras very often for many events. Watching video tutorials from this channel has helped me think of how to handle cameras in certain situations and what settings to set them to. For example, setting a camera at a low ISO is best if the environment is well lit such as an outdoor sun, or using your own lights. Shooting a event such as football and setting the shutter speed high such as 1/3 of a second would be very bad. Your subject would appear extremely blury, unless you are panning your camera to give a motion blur effect. But usually, shooting fast subjects would result in the photographer shooting in low shutter speeds such at 1/400 of a second or lower to capture the best image in that duration of time.
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
This week's activity was to practice and learn some of the drawing tools in the program "Adobe Illustrator". Here, you simply see two lights bulbs, almost completely alike each other. The one from the left is the original image, and the one to the right is the illustrated version of that image. As simple as it may be, simply tracing the shapes of the original image. It can still be quite challenging trying to plan how your layers of each shape may be placed, and what color it may need to blend with. For example, working with shades, I used about 50% of opacity on the shading and reflection shapes on the light bulb. It was also a bit challenging how to work with different gradients and different shades of grey.
A new technique I've learned from the in-class tutorial videos was the use of the "Pathfinder tool". Using the pathfinder made it much easier to create shapes by uniting shapes together, intersecting, and excluding shapes. I mainly used the "unite" function to easily create symmetrical shapes, for example, creating a perfect circle, followed by a series of shapes to make up the bast bulb structure. Then uniting all these shapes into one made it easier to work around with, and easier to colour.
If I had all the time I needed, maybe 5 hours straight, I would be able to completely replicate the original image, including the small reflection below the bulb.
This assignment was quite straightforward, and was more tedious than difficult.
Friday, February 13, 2015
Not too long ago, The school of L.C.I hosted an open-house event named "Amazing Inside" to show off the amazing things we do at L.C.I. Luckily, I was able to take part in this event and show the public what a Year 1 "CyberARTist" can do with only knowledge of the first course of CyberARTS. Later in 2014, i've discovered a Photoshopeffect of any style of dispersion. I've always wondered how these effect are made, but it turn out it's the most simplest Photoshop manipulation, and 4-year old can do it!
All this dispersion effect consists of are: custom paint brushes, use of masks, and imagination. I began to quickly select the main subject and save his selection. I duplicated the selection, then shifted the duplicate slightly to the right. I then loaded a custom brush set from downloading it online. In the picture above, i've used a smoke paintbrush. From here, I created a layer mask on both subjects, the duplicated and original. I inverted the duplicate's layer mask to hide it, then began to have fun.
By painting black on the layer mask of the main subject with the smoke brush, i was able to creatively "smoke" away his face. Now, I painted white on the duplicated subject and gave the illusion of the subject's face being smoked away.
Click here to watch a tutorial on this effect.






