Final Design Project

Here are the steps and print screens involved in my final design project.

Firstly, after scanning my sketch, i started colouring the skin tone of both the girls in the sketch. I used a darker tone for the top one and a lighter tone for the bottom one, to show that we can change our skin colour through photoshop.

After that, I proceeded to colour their facial features. I coloured their lip, eyes and eyebrows. Here, i also wanted to emphasise the fact that we can change our natural eye colour, as the girl on top originally had brown coloured eyes, but at the bottom she has blue coloured eyes.

I then coloured their hair. For the bottom picture, after i coloured the girl's hair red, i further went and filtered it so that it would have a special effect.

Here, i then coloured the tools that were used in photoshop for retouching peoples skin or faces. I used a blur colour for the tools so that it would stand out. In this step, I also coloured the word Photoshop. I used the mezzotint filter for the the word.

Here, i coloured the computer and the background for the text. I used a bright pink colour so that the words photoshop would stand out against the light background. 

And lastly, after colouring my background, this is my final design project. For my background, i separated it into two layers. The first layer was black and the second layer was red. After colouring those two layers, I used an eraser with a special brush to create the strokes.

The reason why i came up with this idea was to show how technology has influenced and changed us humans. In the old days, you could not change how you look in a photo. Now however, with a digital camera we can instantly delete the photos we do not like and instantly retake another without having to worry about wasting expensive film. The same applies for photoshop, where we can edit and retouch our pictures to enhance our appearance. For example, we can change our hair colour, our eye colour or even make our face look thinner. Photoshop has and will continue to work wonders for us. However, no matter how much retouching or editing we do in photoshop, in reality, our appearances are still the same and we should always learn to love and accept ourselves irregardless of how we look.

Sketches for Final Design Project

We were asked to come up with five sketches to express how technology has influenced us humans. This is the first sketch i came up with.

 

For this sketch, i wanted to show how technology has advanced in agriculture. It shows a scene in a paddy field where farmers had to manually use a tool to collect their crops. However twenty years later, farmers have the technology to yield crops easily.

Here, i wanted to show how communication has evolved over the years because of the advancement of technology. In the old days, people had to use birds or horses to send a simple message. Now, with the creation of the telephone, calling a loved one would be just a click away.

For this sketch, i wanted to show that because of technology, our younger generation are becoming more and more antisocial. They slowly will lose their skills to communicate because they are too absorbed with playing their games.

Here, i wanted to show the evolution of transportation. In the old days, cars were not as efficient as some of the cars today. Besides that, transportation such as the airplane and boat have come a long long way.

And finally, this was my last sketch. In this sketch, i wanted to show the wonders of photoshop. These days, any photo you take can be edited or retouched. For example, if you have bad skin or different colored eyes, all of that can be changed through photoshop. This was also the sketch that had been approved for my final design project.

Pop Art

For this exercise, we had to turn one of our pictures into a pop art. i decided to use a yellow greenish colour for my face and neck so it would contrast with the dark colour of my background. For my hair, i coloured it red and decided to use a filter on it so that it would liven up the pop art.

Photo Montage

For this exercise, we were supposed to create a photo montage using photoshop. I chose a christmas theme for this photo montage because i really love the christmas season. I decided to look for a picture of an outdoor ice skating rink with a beautiful setting. After that, i found a picture of a couple ice skating happily, and put that onto the picture of the ice rink. On the top left hand corner, i inserted a picture of santa riding his sleigh with his reindeers! Besides that, i also found a picture of a snowman and the word Merry Christmas to put on the picture. I intentionally arranged the words near the snowman's hand so that it would like the snowman is holding the words up and wishing all of us a very Merry Christmas!!!

National Art Gallery Trip

During one of the weekends, our whole class took a trip to the National Art Gallery in Kuala Lumpur. There were a lot of paintings on exhibition there.

At the entrance, there were two escalators. On the wall next to the escalators, they showed some of the paintings that we were going to expect inside the art gallery.

The art gallery consisted of three floors and each floor had two separate sections, showcasing different artworks. Some artworks showcased there consisted both paintings and structure. Besides that, they also have regular art classes for children where they teach them how to draw and paint.

We were not allowed to take pictures inside the art gallery. However one painting that caught my eye was a watercolour painting by Long Thien Shih entitled Caged For Show. This particular painting had rows and rows of cages arranged side by side. These cages had birds inside of them and some of the cages had miscellaneous items inside them. I liked this painting because it had a very calming effect. The colours used were very bright colours such as a warm yellow tone to paint the cages and a clear blue sky with the occasional clouds. The cages were also painted in a way that the further the cages were in the painting, the smaller they would get. I also liked these painting very much because it gives a feeling of a warm, sunny, windy day where we can just stand and admire the birds that are "caged for show".

Design and Pattern

For this exercise, we were asked to create a pattern using the principles and elements of design. I drew this pattern because i liked tribal designs. A principle of design implemented in this pattern is repetition. The tribal patterns are drawn repetitively where the design constantly alternated between the right and left triangle and the top and bottom triangle pattern. Besides that, an element of design used in this pattern is shapes. For example, triangles were mostly used to from the tribal pattern.

Art Movement

Impressionism

One artwork i like from the Impressionist period is this painting titled: Saint Lazare Train Station by Claude Monet. Impressionism is a nineteenth century art movement that was started by artists based in paris ( Wikipedia, 2013). Some notable artists of the impressionism period include Claude Monet, Frederic Bazille and Paul Sezanne. Some main characteristics of Impressionism are relatively small, yet visible brush strokes (Wikipedia, 2013). Besides that, impressionism characteristics also included the use of movement and unusual visual angles. Impressionists usually painted landscapes, outdoors or portraits. Rather than concentrating on small details, they concentrated on the overall outlook of the painting using short "broken" brush strokes using mixed and pure unmixed colour to intensify colour vibration ( Wikipedia, 2013). I chose this artwork because of its simplicity in showing the atmosphere at a train station. Just by utilizing short "broken" brush strokes, Monet was able to bring to life the atmosphere at a train station.