The Beginning (Scratch Reflective Essay)

I have been playing with Photoshop off and on for the last eight years.  I truly believe it is not necessarily possible to ever learn everything about Photoshop.  It is such a diverse program with so many options the endless possibilities that it provides are limitless.  I have been out of circulation with it for some time while catching up on science classes and other prerequisites for my degree.  I am excited about this class and was excited about this assignment.  I love the freedom we have been given to explore our creativity and play with the possibilities.  I finally got to play with a drawing pad, and i think i will be finding a way to purchase one for my own home.  I would consider myself an average user of the program, not a beginner or an expert, however i have been an artist all of my life.  These first three projects were challenging and fun all at the same time and a great challenge to remember how to do the things i wanted to make it do.

Since were were given free range of creativity with just a few guidelines i didn't allow myself to have any solid idea in my mind.  Over the years i have found that when you allow projects like this to become themselves with out a real plan, you often end up with some of the best stuff.  With the first project i did, the flat project, i originally just wanted to play with some of the ovals and colors to see where it went.  It eventually started to look like a painters pallet and rather became from there.  With the second project we were limited by only several colors, the only idea i had in my head was to keep it clean and simple.  Simple is often under-rated in creative projects, but it is true that sometimes less is more.  I like to use words in my projects, not all of them but somehow it personalizes them and gives a little addition to it.  For the second project i used part of the lyrics from a song that i love, i didn't begin with that in mind but after viewing it when it was "finished" it felt exactly like the words i left on the project. For the third project the instruction that stuck out in my mind the most was to "imagine paper cut outs".  It led me to a more child like frame of mind and i began with just a solid black background and added a filter that gave it the asphalt appearance, i put in the yellow lines for the feel of a road and after staring at it for awhile the tortoise and hare started to become.

I used many layers in these processes, it is probably one of the best features of Photoshop.  It gives you so much freedom to move, adjust and fit anything you create where you want it.  I look forward to playing more with these projects, learning more and blending together more of my ideas into even better final projects.  I would like to learn more about masks and more tricks on making things come together and possibly be easier to put together.  I can't wait to continue this blog and work through more challenges as we go along.