Photoshop and Digital Art

Recently, I started taking a class at school called Communications Technology. This class is an elective that focuses on learning new softwares. This happens to include Adobe Photoshop, something I’ve wanted to learn for a while now!

So far we’ve done a few assignments, each with a particular focus (a tool or a technique). After watching the demonstration videos posted by the teacher, we try it out ourselves in the program.

The first project I did in Photoshop was this beach drawing. This was actually the first time I’ve ever used the program, so I’m a VERY early beginner, as you can probably tell (go easy on me lol). I like it for my first attempt, but it could really use better blending and more fine detail. Maybe it was my canvas size, but even the 1px brush seemed too small for what I wanted.

The next one is my favourite one. The point of this assignment was to practice using selection tools to move elements around the composition. We were provided this page of images and told to make a face with them. I still haven’t named him, so comment any ideas down below!

The next assignment focused on exploring the many filters Photoshop has to offer. For the background, I used the brushes to fill in a small section of stars and then duplicated it to cover the whole area. I experimented with different filters for the planets, but ultimately just used a spherical effect and added in a light source. I also considered adding rings to one of them, but I ran out of class time.

Although I had fun doing these assignments, I’ve never really been all that interested in digital art. It just doesn’t appeal to me, mainly because I prefer the feel of pen on paper and being able to hold a finished piece and hang it up. I might try downloading Photoshop and using it for smaller things like studies, or for general photo editing. This is definitely a useful skill that can help with things like social media promotion. A lot of artists Photoshop art they have for sale onto pictures of rooms so clients can see what it looks like hung up. That way, you get the full effect without having to sacrifice image quality.

One thing I am interested in is editing reference photos. This is something I learned about from Robin Sealark (an artist I’ve mentioned many times on this blog!). On her YouTube channel, I’ve seen her edit reference photos to adjust lighting and colour or to combine more than one image. In the future, I would love to try this and make an original painting out of it. By using a method like this, you can change a reference photo to suit your needs.

Have you ever used Photoshop? Do you have any tips? Comment them down below!

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