ABC 5: You Can Be A Visual Artist
An Over View
In this episode we try and give you the Art School 101 which is to talk a little bit about color theory, some of the basic elements of design, how to draw realistically, what sorta art making software tools are out there, and things of this nature. We believe that with a little dedication anyone who wants to, can become an artist, can do commercial design, and can be a fine artist… or that talent is something that we are all in possession of, its just a question of developing.. and we try to show you the path to developing these talents and skills to be a great artist.
Even if you don’t aspire to being a visual artist, we think this episode can have value for you. This podcast can help you communicate more effectively with artists and designers, as to think visually.. it can also help you to appreciate art a little more then you might have been able to otherwise..
If you are a visual artist we hope you’ll at least find the entertainment value in listening to Evan and myself (Matt), try and talk about what it takes to become a serious artist…
This episode is founded on some ideas, about identity and divisions of labor, that I believe to be prophetic in nature in the sense that I believe we are talking about a part of the skill sets you might be in need of tomorrow, once disruptive technologies have radically shift conventional notions of reality and labor divisions. At the moment of time that I write these words, it seems to me that to make statements like this you have to be a little crazy.. because of how at odds with the current conventional notions of reality some of these statements, but we believe if you stick with us, you’ll eventually come to know we weren’t crazy after all.
Color Theory:
Here’s a good wikipedia article on color theory.
The PhotoShop / Adobe Color Picker Graphic
This is by far my favorite color picker as it works in a way that helps to facilitate how I think about color when doing design work. The big Left Hand Square.. From left to write shows the range of saturation for a color, while up and down shows you the value.. or from dark to light… Next to this big square we can long rectangle that shows you what hue we want to work with.. Focusing on just these two areas, working with this color picker, is how I developed my ways of working with color..
Color Ecology Graphic
I made this little graphic to illustrate the issue of color ecology, as we talk about it in the podcast. The gray background is a “neutral gray” meaning that it doesn’t have any color in it; it is a pure gray about half way between white and black, and as such is most sensitive to the ecology issue. When you look at a color against this gray you will best be able to see that color.
Interestingly, whatever color you put next that grey, will turn the grey into its opposite / compliment… So red will make it look green, yellow will make it look purple, green will make it look red, and blue will make it look orange. You will notice that where the grey meets the red, the line of that articulation is it’s self seems almost 3 dimensional, or it all most feels like its vibrating a little bit. This is the effect of simultaneous contrast.. this is what happens when red buts up against green.. the red is making the grey next to it look, in an extremely subtle way, green… You will also notice that where the red overlaps the yellow, the green, and the blue.. the red seems to subtly shift in color.. In this way we can see how “the color ecology of a painting or graphic” influences our sense of what color we are looking at.
Software
Photoshop $650 — Photoshop is the grand poe bah master digital bit map graphics editor / creator / etc.
Photoshop Elements $80 — Evan seemed to think that elements was “essentially” PhotoShop.
I’m not sure if I agree.. yes, the core functionality of PhotoShop hasn’t really changed all that much since its very early days.. and I’m sure elements captures that.. But if you are a serious digital graphics person.. my feeling is Elements probably doesn’t cut it.
Illustrator $500 — Illustrator is what we call a “drawing program” that centers around “Vector
Graphics.” Illustrator, like Photoshop, is a must have for all serious graphic designers. It’s a little more difficult to come to grips with then photoshop, but don’t let that discourage you.
Fireworks $300 — Fireworks is a graphics program that specializes in web graphics. Fireworks combines bitmap and vector graphics editing, creation, and manipulation.. is all you need for web optimization.. it even writes code for you.. (although not the cleanest code, from a developers perspective.)
Next we are going to talk a little about the “Bundles.” If you’re serious about working with digital graphics, there is no question that you need PhotoShop and Illustrator, which will cost you well over $1000. On the other hand you could look at a bundle like Adobe’s CS2 Standard.. which not only includes Illustrator and PhotoShop for under $1000, but throws in InDesign along with a few other odds and ends.
If you are doing graphic design for print, not only do you need Photoshop and Illustrator, but you also need a desktop publishing program, like Quark or InDesign… so you can see how this bundle becomes really attractive.
Adobe Creative Suite 2 Standard $900 (includes Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and some other odds and ends.)
The Next bundle to look at is “SC 2.4 Premium.” Essentially its the same as the standard edition plus GoLive, Dreamweaver and Acrobat. The question for you is “is that worth the extra $300?” The answer is probably.. GoLive and Dreamweaver are essentially redundant… They are both program you use to put together websites… so graphic design for the web.. Dreamweaver is probably the better of the two, and GoLive is about to be discontinued.. Acrobat is a very neat kind of authoring program, for authoring things like e-books, brochures.. and what have you.. You can now even put 3D content into Acrobat PDFs..
My feeling is, if you are looking to be a graphic designer who works in interactive design.. you probably want to go this way, at least.
Adobe Creative Suite 2.4 Premium $1200 (includes Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, GoLive, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, and some other odds and ends.)
Adobe’s Web Bundle is.. The whole Photshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat thing, plus Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Flash. In my view, if your serious about interactive design for the web, you probably want Flash in your tool box, and Fireworks in not undesirable. I suppose the question is, “is the web bundle worth $700 more then the Premium bundle?” and I think… Flash Professional’s list price is $700.. so you know.. you do get Fireworks and other odds and ends like Contribute and Flash Paper but.. I think we are, at this point, getting into the world of overkill a little bit. I mean one thing I can tell you.. if you haven’t worked with these tools before.. it’s going to take you more then a year to become proficient with them all… And now for something different… Painter. Painter costs around $430, and what is really powerful about Painter is that it’s a digital tool for emulating “Traditional / Natural Media techniques,” which is to say things like oil painting, charcoal, water colors, etc.. I LOVE painter… It can give you results that no other program can come close to.. and its great for sorta distinguishing your work from the pack.
The last tool we want to talk about is Gimp. You can find out more about Gimp here. I don’t know too much about Gimp, accept that its free open source software, that’s.. well basically its a graphics program that specializes in creating graphics for the web. Because its free, its probably a great
place to start off. Finally Evan mentioned a place on Apple’s website where you can find free downloadable stuff.. well, here’s the link.
Artist’s mentioned:
Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein… see some of his work
on Goggle here.
Roy Lichtenstein on
Wikipedia here.
And, of course, we have to mention the
Roy Lichtenstein Foundation.
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso on Wikipedia.
The Official Pablo Picasso website.
Further reading / listening / viewing
I haven’t had any luck finding any good books on the subjects talked about here… or at least I’m not remembering the classics of the fields.. I did, however, find a book in my personal library that is a classic on the 101 of Interactive Media Design. It’s a book called MTIV: Process, Inspiration, and Practice for the New Media Designer by Hillman Curtis.
Hillman curtis is a New Media leader.. who’s work I respect a great deal. Check out Hillmancurtis.com for some very interesting and exciting work… I’m a particularly big fan of his artist documentary series.
