Collage

I did some collaging over the weekend. I'm trying to keep it cohesive with the other pieces and I think it's actually working :)

This collage is similar to the ones I was doing last summer where I scanned and printed out old magazine photos and used them instead of the original piece of paper. This time I'm using the same book and knitting pattern as the other digital collages and paintings so I hope it reads as part of the same batch of work. I've got watercolor on cold press paper, gouache on hot press paper, pencil lines, and then the printed pieces which I printed out larger than the original scale.

Collages

So here's two of the collages I was starting on a week ago.  Top one is 9x12" and the bottom one is 8x10".  I printed out the magazine pictures, some scanned wood, and I did a little spray painting with some little stencils I cut.  It's nice working on this kind of project because I could work a little at a time in between doing schoolwork and reading.  I'm not sure what I think about them yet...I'll have to let them sit for a little while and look at them again.  I definitely had fun messing around with them, though.  I've got a few more pieces of paper with spray paint on them so they will end up collaged too.

My creative space

I had a sudden whim to do something collage-y because then I can work on making something a little bit at time.  It's harder to work on a painting in short bursts what with all the setup and cleanup each time I sit down.  I'm on the home stretch in my classes but I can't just do schoolwork so I thought collage would be good.  

I love collecting old books and magazines but I have a hard time finding bits that I want to use.  I know a lot of people do amazing collage work with vintage paper but for me, there's too much of that old-paper brown.  So I did some scanning and printing yesterday so I could use the images but keep the white of the paper, and I added color to some black-and-white photos.  Since I'm using my good archival roll paper in my printer for these, I'm working on flattening out my pieces of paper here.  That's as far as I've gotten today, but I'll update with more later.

Oh, and I had to relocate to the dining table because we're in the middle of a heat wave.  I love all the windows in my studio but it does make it toasty in there right now.  I heard Seattle broke a record high temperature yesterday.

Many more spaces here.

Canvas prints

I'm finally kind of functional again and getting over a cold, so I'm starting a new project.  These are canvas printed by my new (to me) printer that I found last month on Craigslist.  I'm going to paint with oils over the top and see what happens.  I tried this a little last summer at school, but the school printer was 44" wide, not 17" wide.  But hey, I didn't have to sell my car to buy it, so that's nice.

I like printing out these diagrams so that I can have a lot of repeated identical forms without actually having to paint each one in.  To make the images, I used different custom brushes in Photoshop and I love them so much I want to make sure everyone knows how to make them.  So I present:

Custom brushes in Photoshop

Here's my image as scanned.  It's from one of my sweetheart's old college textbooks...I just tore out the pages I wanted and scanned them.  

I cropped out the bits I didn't want using the crop tool in the toolbar.

I adjusted the levels (Image-->Adjustments-->Levels) to get rid of the text showing through from the other side.  Levels are a really easy way to take out the paper texture or color from scanned images.  To make a white background, as here, I slide the farthest over slider on the right (a little white triangle) towards the left until the whites are actually white.  Make sure the "Preview" box is checked...and it's easy to check if you like your changes by checking and unchecking the box a couple times to see the original.

I used the brush tool with white selected for the color to just blot out those letters that I didn't want.

Now for the exciting bit:  go to Edit-->Define Brush Preset.  If it's grayed out, make your image a bit smaller with Image-->Image Size.  In CS2, the longest side of your image can only be up to 2500 pixels wide.  You can give it a name if you like.

The brush will appear when you click on the brush tool and select it from the list up in the top toolbar (newest brushes at the bottom, so scroll down to it).  Pick a color you like and a new image/document to work on.  To use the brush, just move your mouse to where you want it and click.  You'll see the outline of the brush as you move, so it's really easy to see exactly what it will look like.  You can also change the size of the brush with the Master Diameter slider.  

That's it!  I use my custom brushes all the time.  It saves a ton of time versus just adding the same image 20 times in new layers.  

Ok, I hope that all made sense.  This is a learning process for me, too.