I just finished my first real course in Digital Illustration. I learned how to create images in photoshop on my own over six years ago with the help of online tutorials, but this was my first time getting real face-to-face instructions on using the program. Fortunately most of the basics I already knew, so the class was not that difficult, but I did still learn a lot of helpful tips and a LOT of hot keys, which are amazing time savers. My favorite hot-key is holding down the space bar to get the hand tool, which lets you drag your picture across the screen so you can view different parts of it without using the scroll bars on the boarder of the window.
I also really like command – and command + to zoom in an out. But those are just the ones I use most often, and there are many many more.
Anyway, most of the class consisted of using a wacom tablet to paint pictures in photoshop. Here are a few of my practice pieces.
The first image is a “caricature” of a famous person, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I used the liquify tool, the spot heal and many other things here and there to manipulate his face into a whole new look…..
The second piece is a simple layer collage or scanned objects, layered on top of one another with different blending effects on each layer. I scanned mostly stuff from my craft box. 🙂
The third piece is an ink drawing that I did last year, but have scanned into the computer and colored digitally. This was a pretty straightforward color-inside-the-lines assignment.
These three pieces are just the beginning, however! And I have many more digital assignments to blog about soon.
