midterm portfolio

This is a picture of me and Vennie, the horse I had leased for 4H horse and pony. The picture was taken while I was showing in a halter class back in 2005 or 2006. I'm not too happy with this piece because I struggled removing a few things. In the far left corner there were two horses. I used the lasso tool to select the rear end of one horse then deleted it. I struggled removing the other horse because he was behind the fence. After removing the two horses, I used the patch tool to clean up, but things got a bit blurry. Behind Vennie's head, there was a light pole. Using the lasso tool, I selected the light pole and removed it from the picture. As I had done with the two horses, I used the patch tool to clean up the bits of light pole that was left over and to make the window that was behind the light pole look like a window. I feel I did better removing the pole than I did removing the two horses.

The family dog, who really is family. Buster was about a year or two old when we took this photo, so this is another old photo like the photo of me and Vennie. In this photo, I went patch tool crazy. There is a fold from Buster's rear end to his cheek that was kind of hard to remove. I patched the fold in two sections starting with part of the fold that was on his back. Then I patched the part of the fold that was on his head. There were spots on the wall that I removed using the patch tool. I selected each spot one by one then drag the selection to a clean spot on the wall. Due to time fade, there were a lot of little white spots that dotted the floor. Along side the patch tool, I used the spot healing tool to fill the little dots with the floor color. I'm pleased with the way this piece turned out because it really enhanced the original picture, though there's still a bit of evidence of a phantom fold.

This beauty is an extraction of a rose from one picture onto a horse's face in another picture. The original pictures are from morguefile.com. When I first saw the horse I immediately knew that it needed a flower in its mane. I chose the rose because the red makes the mane stand out more and gives the horse more of a charming character. I used the quick selection tool to select around the rose then I moved the rose from its picture onto the picture of the horse. Then I placed the rose on the horse's forelock by its ear. I went back to the picture of the rose and quick selected more of the leaves around the rose and moved the new selection onto the horse's mouth as if the horse was holding the rose. To make the rose by the ear smaller, I clicked the command, shift, and T keys then adjusted the rose so that it looked more like it was resting on the mane. 

I really enjoyed this piece. I call it Classical Tiger. He's flashy, he's stunning, and he's gonna get ya. The original pictures are from morguefile.com. I used a lot of masks for this piece. First I selected a tiger, and when I saw this handsome feline, I saw, in my mind's eye, a bow tie and a top hat; just look at that smile on his face! If only I found a cane, but that would have been too much. The picture of the flowers that I used for the background was too small, so I overlapped the picture of the flowers. I added a mask to the top layer of flowers. Before messing with the mask, there was a line from the overlap that went straight through the background. I adjusted the opacity of the mask then used the brush tool to take away the line. In between working on the background, I added a mask to the tiger and used the brush tool to remove the tigers background to make the flowers its new background.  I picked out a top hat that would fit the big cat using the selection tool then flipped the image and moved the selection onto the tiger's head. I added a mask to the hat to clean up the outline around the hat. Unfortunately, when I picked the bow tie, I didn't save it, and couldn't find the image again to add to my reference pictures that are on the side of main piece, but the bow tie image was also on morguefile.com. I quick selected the bow tie and flipped the image then moved it onto the tiger. Pressing and holding command, shift, and T, I adjusted the bow tie to fit the tiger's throat then added a drop shadow to keep the bow tie from floating above the tiger.

I call this piece Rabbit Prayers. I like this piece though it isn't my best practice with shadows versus light. I was attempting to show off what I learned about masks and what I had learned from simply playing with photoshop at home. I masked the candles and the floor, used the brush on the mask layers to take away part of the floor from the candles, then quick selected the rabbit and added it to the image. My main concern about this piece is the shadows and where the light sources are. I tried to make the rabbit darker by using a drop shadow, but the drop shadow was not working. I made a copy of the rabbit's layer and clicked the alt and delete keys to fill the original layer with black. I moved the original layer down a bit to show a cast shadow of the bunny in front of the candles. Then used the drop shadow to come down off of the darker shadow. I selected the rump, part of the hing paw and stomach and added a Gaussian blur for a shadow effect. The original photos are from morguefile.com.

I am extremely proud of this piece, Inverted Leopard. I moved the image of the leopard onto the image of the rocks that I wanted to use for a background and brushed away the leopard's original background. I made a copy of the leopard's layer and put a mask on the copied layer. I inverted the color of the leopard then used the brush on the mask to reveal the lovely piercing eyes and nose. I chose an inversion that I liked and found one that shows the spots and the solid color of the original cat. I went through hue/saturation and chose the blue purple. In the original picture, the leopard's eyes are very dark. Under adjustment-levels, I adjusted the lightness of the eyes and painted in the pupils with the default paint brush. The original pictures are from morguefile.com

Same as the "Inverted Leopard", I am extremely proud of this piece, Owl Town. I moved the image of the owl onto the desert image and put a mask on the owl taking away the owl's background so the owl would have the desert image for a background. I love to right text for many of the pictures I play with to further send a message, be the message funny or something useful. "This is my town" is in Rosewood style. I clicked "create warped text" to warp the text in a wave and adjusted how wavey I wanted the text to be. On the fallen tree, it says "Owl Town". I changed the color of the text to an orange brown color to kind of match the tree and added an inner shadow to appear as if the text were carved into the tree. I clicked "create warped text" and chose rise to fix the text to the horizontal direction of the tree creating a sort of vanish point of the text. The owl is says, "I'll be watching you." because that's what owls do, they watch you while you are asleep. I chose a light gray color and clicked the custom tool then the oval to make a saying box around the text. The original pictures are from morguefile.com.

This was a fun one called Have You Seen My Brother? The iguana is looking for his brother, and his brother is hiding from him in the grass. This one I was fighting with because when I did the mask of the big iguana, I tried brushing away its original background and the background kept smearing and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why. The about two hours later I found out I was on the wrong brush setting. What a laugh I had that day. Anyway, I used a round fan thin bristle brush and a round angle low stiffness brush for the grass around the big iguana's legs and stomach and around the lower body of the small iguana. As in the picture Owl Town, I used a light gray color for the speaking oval around the text, "Have you seen my brother? He tore my favorite shoe." because white took away too much from the image. I clicked the custom tool for the arrow pointing to the naughty little lizard in the grass and held down the command, shift, and T keys to shape and angel the arrow at the small iguana. I made the arrow small because I wanted the viewer to read the text first then look for the small iguana, though that shouldn't be too hard since the little one is kind of light. The original pictures are from morguefile.com.

Remember the old saying, "Wolf in sheep's clothing"? Well this is the opposite called No Wolf Will Mess With Me. What better way is there for a sheep to avoid getting eaten by a wolf than dressing like a wolf. I picked a forest background and found an image of a wolf and a image of a sheep that I felt would fit perfectly together. I moved the wolf image onto the forest image and put a mask on the wolf to brush away its original background. I selected and made copies of the grass at the wolf's feet and placed the copies in different spots around the forest's floor. Then I quick selected the sheep and moved it to the forest adding a mask to the sheep to clean up some the original background that came with it. I searched for some wolf ears, and found some dog ears that I quick selected and added onto the sheep. I used the round angle low stiffness brush to paint in the wolf markings on the sheep.  I quick selected the wolf's tail, putting it on a new layer and dropped the layer of the wolf's tail under the sheep's layer then applied the wolf's tail to the sheep's rear. There was a stack of logs in between the two trees in the very back. I quick selected the skinny tree in the far back and moved the selection over the logs. Then I quick selected parts of the bigger tree in the back and placed the selection and the copy of the selection over the parts of the tree covered by the skinny tree's selection. The original pictures are from morguefile.com. Ok. Story time. This sheep got lost in the woods. He heard the nearby howls of wolves, so she found some wet tar on the road and rolled in it and found a fury toy with a ball and tied it to her rear. She found some dog ears from a Halloween costume, all this stuff lying on the road in the middle of nowhere, and puts the dog ears on her head. One of the wolves comes down to investigate her while she's scratching like a dog. She stops and looks at the wolf, the wolf looks back at her and it puts it head to the side in confusion. The disguised sheep yips and yaps like a wolf making the wolf more confused. The wolf snorts and walks off glancing back over its shoulder at the sheep. She sticks out her tongue and the wolf trots away.

This is Wolf Eyes. All eyes tell a story. This wolf is scared from a close encounter with a hunter , which is why the eyes are so wide and the pupils are dilated. Wolves are no longer on the endangered species act meaning that ranchers and hunters can hunt these beautiful majestic creatures and if wolves are spotted near a ranch, ranchers can kill them on sight. What I had originally wanted to do was put a silhouette of a hunter in the pupils of the wolf's eyes, but it wasn't working out the way I had planned. I had drawn the eyes in my sketch book then scanned the sketch onto the computer; opening the image in Photoshop. I used the default brush, a round fan stiff thin bristle brush, and a flat curve thin stiff bristle brush to paint the eyes and face. I put the pupils, the iris, and the rest of the eyes on their own layers so I could work with highlights and shading better. I'm happy with this piece because the eyes came out great with the hint of dark blue in the pupils, but I'm also unhappy with this piece because I do not feel I accomplished the mood I had wanted to set in the picture.