MollyW-Texture

__**ORIGINAL PICTURES**__


In an art class, students get to experiment with all different types of media such as paint, colored pencils, and markers. However, one type of art that many people forget about is photography. Taking and editing pictures is a form of art too, no matter how often people fail to realize it. I have had little experience with using Photoshop though, so this first project was pretty new for me. For this assignment, we had to combine at least three pictures with texture in an interesting way. While creating my project, I was able to experiment with many different tools in photoshop. First, I learned how to do simples things such as resize and move the images around as long as cropping them so I could copy and paste certain sections into my piece; I put each individual photo in separate layers as well so I could easily edit them. Then, to make each of the photos look more interesting than their original form, I used tools such as ‘curves’ to help lighten certain images and darken other. Also, to make the individual photos looks better together, I used the eraser tool often, along with changing the opacity and blending tools. For this project, right away I knew I wanted to use some of my favorite photos: a close-up on a bench and a few pictures of flowers beside gravestones. However, coming up with a concept was a bit more difficult. After playing around with the brightness settings for a while, I ended up making the bench the background, but much darker than the original photo, then I layered bright-colored flowers over top of this. I designed it that way to show that even when things seem dark and depressing, something good can always emerge even when you least expect it. For the composition, I placed the flowers in front of the bench, however, they are along the edges rather than placed directly in the center. Looking back at it, I wish I wouldn’t have put the two biggest flowers on opposite sides of the piece, but I really liked how the petals sort of just hung off the edge of the page. Overall, I am fairly proud of my project, considering that I have never used Photoshop before. However, I wish I would have made the photos look more like one picture, but it was hard to blend them together with bright flowers on a dark background. Therefore, it was a great project to start off this class with and I will need to continue trying to improve my Photoshop skills for the upcoming assignments.