Capture & Create

The learning process never ends but continually opens up new doors. Just when you participate in a workshop to develop a particular skill, to understand the ins and out, to master something in order to feel confident to carry out the process on your own; you soon realize that you have only reached 1o% of what is actually possible and the learning curve steepens again. This is a good thing otherwise the learning would be boring, there would be little change and life unexciting.

I was inspired by a comment made by a fellow teacher today in response to the advanced Photoshop workshop today I attended through my SFU Graduate Program. It eluded to the fact that Photoshop artwork involves an immense amount of work. The time and creative process that is required to produce a piece that is pleasing to the eye undergoes several detailed steps. My perspective has change and I have suddenly become aware of the visual artwork around me and have been taking that second look wondering if Photoshop was involved. For example the wallpaper in Starbucks, the graphic design on labels, and advertisement all caught my attention today after school. My eyes have been opened to the details around me. As of today I am guilty of taking random pictures of sewer grates, graffiti walls, peeling paint, veins of leaves, the texture of cork, and sculpted cast iron imagining the possibilities of using them as layers in Photoshop.

Photoshop and the Process: import self portrait and images of textures, resize canvas, add new layers, manipulate layers, use tools for blending, masking, and brushing different features.