Day 2 Reflections (June 7) — Lim Hao Yang

Why I’d Chosen this Project

Project one Digital Painting appeals to me more as compared to the other projects. It seemed more interesting and fun as well as allowing me room for creativity and personality.

Challenges I’d Encountered and How I’ve Overcome Them

1. Understanding Professor Martin Constable Fully

When the group gathers to listen to Professor Constable at someone’s iMac, it was difficult to follow him as he used many keyboard shortcuts and work very quickly. I was able to overcome this by attempting what he had taught and asking for help when I required assistance.

How I’ve Benefited from this Programme

1. What Exactly is Digital Painting?

Digital painting is neither photography nor painting—it is in-between. Digital painting mainly uses photography as a base and painting as an enhancement to achieve desired effects difficult or even impossible to be done on either one of the above mediums.

1. Layers—Masking and Obscuring

Layers is the most popular function in Photoshop, it is enables users to quickly and accurately edit separate parts of the picture whilst leaving the option to rearrange them. Masking is basically “deleting”, but in a more versatile an user-friendly way. It performs non-destructive deletes by hiding the undesired areas which can be retrieved easily as compared to destructive deletes such as using the Eraser tool. Obscuring can be done through covering objects in (or nearer to) the background with objects in (or nearer to) the foreground. The effects can be used to give objects a sense of space and belonging to the picture.

This can be used to save time and effort as well as provide the option to be “fickle-minded”. It is used to create a sense of depth in the picture, allowing the use of multiple layers of foregrounds and backgrounds.

1. Putting into Context

Putting images into their appropriate context can be done through the use and position of the backgrounds, and the lighting effects. The context is important to determine an object’s “power”. A lower horizon can make an object hold more authority due to the low position of the viewer, vice versa.

This psychological concept can be used to inject more emotion and stronger messages into pictures and images.

Digital Painting 1

Before and after samples of a digital painting done by Lim Hao Yang on June 7 in School of Art, Design, Media, NTU.