PROF VAUGHN: Okay, this video tutorial is going to give you some art historical
context for what we're moving into with Photoshop, and also some basic design
principle theories.
So we're going to talk a little bit about composition, compositional strategies,
the history of collage, which is where we're sort of launching off into our digital
collages which we're gonna call composites, so they're very similar but
they have a couple differences.
Let's start off with composition.
When we're talking about composition, we're really trying to answer this
question: where do you place your elements?
We're always thinking about placing our elements within our composition to get at
the most dynamic interesting look possible.
There are some, sort of, standards that we have in design principle.
We have rules, we have compositional rules.
We have the rule of thirds and we have the golden rule.
We have framing and implied lines.
We have background colour and atmosphere, and something we call value.
So we're gonna look at these strategies so that you can use them in your own work.
The rule of thirds is a really classic important strategy, typically used in
photography, but we can use it also because we're using images in Photoshop
and we're starting to add and combine different elements.
So, in this rule, we're using an imaginary grid of 9 equal parts, the placement of
your elements at the intersections equals a more interesting placement for the viewer.
Um, so in this you can imagine you have a grid, so I've got 2 vertical lines and 2
horizontal lines drawn in black over these sample images.
Anywhere those lines sort of interact, where they cross over, so right here,
right here, right here, right here, that is the most dynamic placement for any
of your objects or subjects.
So you can see in this photograph, our dog is placed in a really good position.
This vase also, uh, picture, has sort of been placed in the same position.
Any asymmetrical placement is going to create something for your viewers eye
to do.
The viewers eye is going to enter the image plane and give it an opportunity
to travel around the composition, because this is more dynamic, more energetic, can
have a feeling of tension, even.
So these are kind of those power positions where you could imagine placing your
objects, elements, subjects, to create the most dynamic possible position.
Here's another sample, I've got the imaginary, kind of, grid drawn over this.
You can see we've got our subject placed over to the left here.
The eye is starting over here because this is in the foreground, and it is sort of
placed off to the side, so we start here.
We're sort of following the curve of the landscape, similar tonal value, following
it around, and we very quickly, our eye is going to go up to this bright spot, notice
this sort of castle is also at a power position at this intersection, and then
we're going to travel over to this imaginary, sort of like, dragon creature.
So, very dynamic position because the eye is travelling around the composition.
Okay, really important classic, kind of, painting, Edmund Dulac,
this is 'The Little Mermaid.'
Uh, here you can see we have a composition similarly, things are asymmetrical, they are
placed off to the right.
It is not centered, the subject is a little bit lower, the horizon line is up about that
middle third if you imagine the imaginary rule of third grid.
Here gives you a kind of clear picture of, kind of, how these elements are placed.
The imbalance is good here, so remember that, you actually want imbalance in
your composition.
If we compared them, I cropped the one on the right a little bit to make it sort of
centered, the comparison should give you a good idea.
Here, your eye kind of comes in and it travels up and it comes back down.
In this very centered image it sort of just breaks the image plane into 2 parts.
Very boring, very static.
We also have 2 equal parts between the top, because the horizon line is falling in
the middle, and this bottom section.
So it's very very static.
Our second rule is the golden ratio.
This is the Greek mathematical equation, it expresses itself as a spiral.
Many of the most famous pieces of art use this ratio to decide on the placement of
elements, and as a natural way to lead the eye across the image.
This is very popular in, um, architecture as well.
The golden ratio, again, it is a mathematical equation.
Once you know he equation you can use it to determine the placement and the scale
of certain objects.
Here's a very famous piece, you can see how that spiral is being expressed in
the shape of the wave.
Many, uh, very important and classic logos are based on the golden ratio.
So the ratio itself is 1 to 1.618, you can see how these play out in logos that
you're often very familiar with.
So these all are using a ratio of 1 to 1.168: Chevron, Pepsi, all of these logos
using that golden ratio.
The idea behind the golden ratio is that it is a mathematical proportion, so
the ratio itself is often found in nature, think of shells etcetera, things you find
at the beach.
Um, that idea is sort of, uh, being borrowed by designers to make logos that
feel naturally balanced.
Okay, let's talk about placement of where you can put your things, again, thinking
of the golden ratio, thinking of the rule of thirds, thinking about imbalance,
thinking about proportion, we're going to try and do the most dynamic composition.
if we think about what is the least interesting thing to do in comparison to
those strategies, it is always something like this.
It is putting your main element right smack in the center of your image,
of your composition.
The horizon line directly down the center axis, super boring, avoid this.
We can think about giving our sense of- giving our composition a sense of space.
When we're thinking of creating a sense of space, remember we're working 2
dimensionally, but we're creating an illusion of depth.
There are several ways to do this, we can use framing elements, put things in the
foreground, angles and implied lines, or atmospheric perspective and value.
Framing, super simple concept, you're thinking about what is on the edges of
your image, left and right, top and bottom.
You can think about it sort of like a vignette, but anytime you have elements
that are used as a frame, your viewer has the inclination to look through
thus these things that they're looking through become kind of a, uh,
highlighted aspect, if you will.
When we're thinking about framing, it's important to just note the following:
foreground, this word means anything sort of in the frontal view right here.
Our midground appears about here in an image, and our background of
course is the farthest away, so it should be back here.
2 dimensional plane, so again it's an illusion of space.
If we were to print this it's actually a flat object.
Here's another example, what could be placed in the foreground to create a
sense of space?
Particularly we know in our brain that this is a small flower, but when placed
bigger in the foreground and we let the background kind of go blurry, we know
that the landscape is actually very dominant, it's huge compared to the
actual scale of the flower, but by giving the flower some prominence in the
foreground, we have a greater sense of space.
Implied line, so implied lines are another design principle that are very important.
And implied line is a broken line that visually we begin to connect together
using our brain.
Your mind is always going to try to connect the dots, creating a
sense of direction.
These are hidden directionals, remember they're not actual lines they're implied
lines, so in this particular instance the implied line is happening with these
concrete spheres.
We start here in the foreground, it's the largest element grabbing our attention,
our mind just sort of visually steps back through the composition.
So we have an implied line that's about a kind of soft arch.
We have actual lines in this image too, we've got a pattern in the sidewalk.
More implied line.
Think about the way perspective can work, you've seen and heard of perspective but
here we have a lot of actual line and implied line.
Implied line happening here, we've got this sort of repeated element dropping
from the foreground into the background, same here.
We have actual line with these sort of concrete, and the lines of the sidewalk,
but a lot of force here, the directional given to your viewers eye is aiming
everything back to this little spot back here.
Implied line is also something that's connected to the gaze.
So when I say the gaze, I'm talking about, um, a human or animal sort of view from
the eyeballs.
here we have our subject, they are gazing this direction which, as a viewer of this
artwork, I want to know wat this person is looking at, so every viewer is going to
follow the gaze, that's an implied line, to this house.
It's coming down with this sort of landscape, coming back over.
Or alternately, it's going up to this house and then kind of swooping
back around.
So gaze is another very very important implied line.
Okay, value and space.
When we talk about value in art, we're talking about the lightness or darkness
of something.
When we talk about space, again, 2 dimensional but we're thinking about
creating an illusion of distance.
So value, importantly, has the ability to create atmospheric perspective.
Again, in this image we're getting a sense of space of a distant landscape because
this mountainscape is getting, um, sort of a gradation effect.
We start from dark, medium, light, even lighter.
So this atmospheric perspective works a lot like fog.
You can think about how things feel very far away when they're foggy.
Here's another example, if you have a weak atmosphere over here, you have
a certain sense of space.
A stronger atmosphere, over here, and it changes the way things feel
in the distance.
Okay, value can be really really powerful, you can use it to emphasize certain things.
You very very very much can create these sort of bright sports or areas of high
contrast that will always draw your viewers eye first.
So areas of brightness are very attractive to the eyeball, we're gonna look right
here and we're gonna look right here, especially because this is so dark
on something that is so bright.
More examples, so these are all focal points, your eye can't not look here
at this egg.
the focal point is here because it is the brightest, the highest value.
Same over here, this super high value beam of light, it is so light and bright
that we start up here and our eye looks down, so we've got value, we also have
a line here so we're getting a really strong focal point.
Notice the placement of the main subject, also in that rule of thirds
it's placed at an interesting kind of dynamic position.
Okay, let's think about collage for a minute.
This will be our art historical reference.
Collage comes from the French word collage, which means 'to glue'.
So this is a really important word, we're gonna think about how this forms the
basis of what we will be doing, which is a composite, but the idea and the roots of
this history are very similar.
We draw on collage from some really important art movements.
We have cubism, dada, and surrealism.
All of these movements were very art historically because they integrated signs
and fragments of real things.
This is one of the first times that this happened in art history, we moved away
from super realistic painting of religious figures and into using these kind of
everyday materials to create a very obvious art aesthetic.
In a collage, you have very obvious edges, and by edges I mean these look like rough
cut pieces, right?
They're just glued down pieces of paper, maybe some drawing, maybe some painting.
This was a mix of high and low art, you're very familiar, we've probably seen a lot
of these kinds of pieces.
Picasso is this example here.
Cubism, you can think about in terms of its sort of fragmented nature.
We have many many many parts.
Some cubism was just painted, some also has collage where they glued little bits
of paper in, but either way think of cubism in this sort of multifaceted nature,
they were really breaking with prior traditions and attempting to show many
angles at once.
Cubism was really important because it was a reaction, it was very much against the
prior tradition of Western art.
The artists broke out of artistic conventions and they made work that felt
fitting for their time period.
This is Braque and Guitar.
Dada came next.
In dada artists incorporated a wide array of iconography.
These are- iconography refers to signs to signs and symbols.
That was reinterpreted portraits, often they were figures that were sort of
fantastical, very strange.
They became a little bit more innovative and used different and more material than
our surrealists, or than our cubists.
And again, iconography is really just the study of interpretation of visual images
and symbols, so signs and symbols.
Hannah Hoch was a great dada artist, using all magazine bits, cut found material,
interesting sense of scale in Hannah Hoch's work, interesting combination of elements.
Very strange, uh, fantastical odd portraits.
Hannah Hoch is known for saying "there are no limits to the material available
for pictorial collages, above all they can be found in photography, but also
in writing and printed matter even in waste products."
Here are some more samples of Hannah Hoch pulling and pushing against
propaganda imagery, things found in newspapers.
Francis Picabia on the right, incorporating text.
We similarly -- we may not be using magazines
but we have a wide range of images that we can use
from the internet.
Okay, last art movement that we are going to quickly look
at is surrealism.
In surrealism, we are talking early 1900s, 1920s, 30s.
Here things are going to get really, really crazy.
We start thinking a lot more about the subconscious.
So this is when Freud becomes kind of apparent and, um,
culturally relevant.
The artist really tap into this idea of the subconscious.
They think through, um, what they call the automatic,
which is sort of letting your brain flow, not at or in yourself.
Psychoanalysis, again, is an area they look into and
they become really concerned with dreams.
You can see that playing out in their work.
So here is Dali.
Magritte, the double secret.
So again, they are really concerned with the
internal experience of the human.
How does our psychology work?
Our mind?
Our subconscious?
Here is some more Salvador Dali.
Very strange combination of figues.
Always thinking about our design principles.
Look at this horizon, it is in the lower third,
that is an important rule of thirds.
This is not centered, it is off to the left.
Rene Magritte, here is another one.
Look at the repetition of elements or images.
We've got a pattern of this man sort of falling through the sky.
This is something you could very easily achieve in photoshop after this week.
Okay, so we are going to think about digital composites.
They have, again, we are sort of pulling on our art historical references
but we have moved into the digital era.
How can we achieve some of the same things, and what might that be?
To what purpose?
So when we talk about composite it is really important to note that
all we are referencing is the combination of two or
more images together in a seamless manner.
So we are not necessarily sort of emphasizing those edges like
they did in collage.
But we are making it look seamless.
That is the point in a digital composite.
That is where photoshop will help us.
So here I have got an image.
I have taken the fireworks and composited it over this sort of,
um, mountain star scape to get this.
Again, seamlessly done so it appears real even if the
content or the story that it is telling is sort of fantastical.
We are going to get more and more, um, clever with the
way that we do composites.
We are starting off slow but as our images get more complex,
your compositing skills will get more complex.
There are tons of great composites out there that you can look at
for inspiration.
Remember, we are always looking to create what appears to be a
seamless image even if the idea reveals a magical idea or
a magical truth or some sort of narrative
that we know is not real but we can believe it
because it is seamlessly done in photoshop.
This is Eric Johannson.
Great photographer, editor.
You can look up his work, this is just one example.
I think it is called 'Give Me More Time'.
Carley Shelly, kind of a everyday portrait photographer
who uses portraits of her subjects to create digital composites
that fit maybe the characteristics of her clients.
Chris Chrisman.
Again, we are really thinking about seamless editing to create a new
scene that is somewhat magical or a new truth.
And Roland Ong, this one, um, this artist is kind of important
because when you watch the newest version of photoshop
and you see this sort of man with a mirror in the clouds,
that actually was done by this artist.
So, interesting sort of tension built.
Again, always looking at the rule of thirds.
The seamless editing so that these look very real,
knowing of course that the ocean is not a blanket that could be picked up
but again, how could we achieve this in photoshop?
These will be the things that we will be looking towards doing
for your first assignment.