Digital brushes tutorial

As I promised, here is a quick tute on using brushes in photoshop or photoshop elements.
You can get sets of brushes free from lots of sites on the net - just type for example, "leaf brushes"  in google.
You will have to sift through a bit for the free ones, but it's worth it in the end.  also, you will need to find the correct directory to put them in on your computer in program files, so that Photoshop elements can find them.
There are also plenty of tutes on making your own brushes if you feel like more computer time -lol

I use photoshop elements.
First I open a blank document.

Then I use the rectangle tool to fill the background with colour.  This is optional, you can work on a white background if you wish, or add colour when you create the new image.

Next, I create a new layer from the layer menu.  You don't have to do this either, it's just easier to remove a layer if you don't want it later, rather than trying to edit specific things out after the design has become complex.

Next select the brush tool and choose a set of brushes from the drop down box

Then choose a brush.  Once you have clicked on a brush, when you move the cursor over your background, the shape of the brush will be visible.  It will probably be too large for your liking.  It always is for me.  Use the menu bar at the top to alter the size.

Now wherever you click, your shape will appear.  I like to use the leaves one at a time, although you can play with the cursor and make ghost trails etc.  Remember the undo command and also if you have wrecked a whole layer, just delete it and create a fresh one.  Here's my first, very bright layer!

Now, you can create a new layer and add on top of this.  I chose a different brush, size and colour for this layer.

One of the things I find annoying is if all the shapes are oriented the same.  This is another reason for using layers. I can rotate only this layer using the rotate menu.

So you continue on, adding different brush layers,  in different colours and rotations.

The more layers the more complex the fabric or paper you print will be.

Now that's a nice Autumn sort of fabric.
Have fun playing with this, but remember, the fibre is the thing.  A computer is no substitute for some fabric paint and your own creativity.

Hopefully tomorrow, I'll have some fibre stuff for you.

Time to begin again

Well, that was a long time wasn't it?
It's not that I haven't been working, I have, but it has been so hard to get back into my routine.
Best thing is to just do it.
I have learnt, during this hiatus, that my blog helps me to remember what I am working on!!!  
And of course that was the reason I started it in the first place - as a journal.
So where today?
On Mondays, I will endeavour to blog about some mixed media, which shouldn't be very hard, since I have been doing a lot of it.

Digi Fabric

I consider digital imaging to be part of mixed media.  In my case, it is a tool I use in mixed media, either to create papers, or to create fabrics.
I have finally got the hang of using brushes in photoshop and have been making a little bit of fabric.
Here are three brush fabrics which I love.

This one uses leaves, which is my current theme.

This one uses lots of different butterflies.

This one uses lots of speckly distress brushes and is much more controllable than doing it yourself!
Here it is printed on fabric.

This print highlights one of the problems with printing, which I forgot to do and that is to increase the contrast and select vivid colours when printing.
Another thing which also helps is to remember to increase the yellow - even if it looks too much, because yellow can be so easily sucked up by the other colours.  You can see that the main difference between the two pictures is the anount of yellow - And my printer has not run out of it.

Hopefully tomorrow, I will give you a quick tutorial on how to create these textures.
Because Tuesday will be tutorial day!
It's good to be back.

Fiddling with photos

Here are some photos from my garden that I have been fiddling with to give me a bit of inspiration for some floral quilts.  Generally I use filters in Photo shop elements and I have my favourites, so without further ado-

Some daisies. Photo on left, filtered with "Paint daubs" on right.

You can see in this close up that the picture that the "pieces" are like confetti and I could use this filter to create a monet or impressionist type collage by using coloured scraps and tulle as in my journal.

Helleborus or winter rose, which I love. Here I have used "Cut outs"  to create a pattern for a fused picture.

You can see in this close up that this filter has created shapes which I can cut out of fused fabric.

Some violets. and the filtered picture using "frescoe"  I like this one because it gives lovely depth on the leaves.

In this close up you can see that this is a perfect candidate for a fused picture which is also painted.  I would use this to create a simple pattern, then use it to apply the darks and highlights which are on the leaves.

So you have had a little look into another one of my design processes.  These pictures would be converted to patterns using photoshop again, by tracing the outlines on a new layer then deleting the original layer.  Each colour would also be added in a new layer.  I have previously looked at this here.

Dilly Dally with designs, they don't all have to be created.

Celebrate design - 2

The next steps in my process.
These pages show some thumbnails of my ideas regarding the theme.

Some are more detailed than others, and you can see that I go back and make changes.  I decided that the two in the middle with the double ended arrow could be merged into one idea.  sometimes I need to add notes, as in the bottom thumbnail, to remind me about what is in these quick sketches or what they symbolise.

This thumbnail was developed a little more with some calculations and extra notes.

Whilst this last thumbnail is more detailed in the notes added.  Allof the diagrams are just that.  They are sketchy notes that may become work.  From these, hurried sketches, I create mock-ups in photoshop which I print out full size and put on my Design board for a while.

As I am walking past them each day, I make mental notes of additions to make, of how to do certain parts and alterarions to make.  Here are five mock ups.  Some are a printouts of only one layer of the piece, some are just line drawings, and some are just photo collages.  All have had changes made to them since this photo and there are  a few more of them now.
At this stage, I might take only one of them to the final stage, or I might take them all and add a few more.
This is only a design process and changes will happen at other stages as well, so the final work might actually bear little resemblance to my initial mock up.  And of course, the photo mock ups have no texture or dimension.  They are just flat pictures, so changes may occur when they metamorphosize into textiles.

Remember everything in your sketchbook does not have to become a finished piece of work.  They are just ideas that you are playing with.

Taking the design process back to front

Today, I am going to talk about another WIP and how my initial design process there was the reverse in many ways of the one I began describing yesterday.
Sometimes, I have an idea in my mind for a long time and I might look for reference photos or inspirations for a while before I even think to start and in this case, I did not even start with a sketch.

I had been given some SWARF (this is metal filings, like steel wool, that comes off a lathe when turning metal), because I had commented that it reminded me of the froth on waves, so making a piece with it became a bit of an obsession and of course my love of all things watery came into it.
The pictures above, (from geograph.org.uk via wiki media/creative commons) were my inspirations for this piece because I wanted waves crashing over rocks.
Instead of sketching, this time I began with the fabric itself.

In the picture above, I have simply pinned scrunched fabric to a board where I thought it might work.  Of course, I pinned and repinned added and took away and looked at it and went away and came back.  In reality, my composition bears no real resemblance to any of the pictures, but takes ideas from all of them.

On my board, this does not look as balanced as it does in the picture.  This is an important point.  Sometimes, simply putting a frame around your work or cropping it can help to give it substance and depth.  See this recent blog here by Diane Perrin-Hock.  After looking at the photo, which is a crop of my collage, I opened it in Photoshop Elements (I am not going to go into detail about HOW I did it, only WHAT I did - How is an whole other blog) and decided that the sky needed a bit more room, because I felt there should be splashes of foam up higher. Below, I have extended the sky.

 Also, this collage does not have the metal filings on it yet, so there is another layer above the waves, which you will see as I make up a simplified colour map of my piece in the steps below.

Here is a simple line drawing, made by tracing over the photo above, then saving the tracing as a new picture.  As you can see, I am not particularly precise when drawing on the computer, but IT DOES NOT MATTER - it is just some lines dividing the different areas of the picture.

 Here are the first two layers, the black and brown of the rocks (obviously, the black is below the brown, like a shadow, but still, no need for real accuracy).

 Next the dark and medium blues of the deeper water, both in the background and a little in the foreground.

 Pale blue in the foreground water and the white foam (slightly grey so you can see it)

The final layer (also white) is where I intend to put the swarf to imitate froth.
But there is still something missing.

Here I have added a few highlights to the rocks, as it is a sunny day.
Now, I have a basic diagram of where I want things to go in my piece, so I can take all the fabric off and cut and manipulate it to make the textures I want, and when I put it back, it will probably look a lot closer to the final piece than my original simple collage.
Obviously, the colours I have used in the diagram are only a guide and are more values than actual colours.  They are areas where I might put several different pieces of fabric in the appropriate colour/value range.

So this was a different way to design.  This way is more hands on and about playing with fabric to get the effects you want - in a general way, which can then be refined later.

Don't forget to play with fabric - It's the best way to understand how it can go together.