Final Project

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

• use any of the skills gained or honed in this course to create something new
• expand upon techniques used in exercises
• prepare a highly polished final result

To put yourself in a movie, successfully, it takes a lot of careful work with selecting, masking, color adjustment, lighting adjustment, noise, etc.   You will choose a movie still (watch in HD if possible and take a screenshot to use as your main background image) or you can find a movie poster and use that (make sure the resolution is at least 1200px on each side at 72ppi). Find or take a new image of yourself that fits the right angle of the shot and put yourself in the picture.

Read this example and look carefully at how the author focused on the details to make it look realistic. Realism is the focus of this project idea.

Create a fun collage using many pieces digital images. Find lots of inspiration on Pinterest.   Also, Johanna Goodman   is doing some amazing contemporary collage work.

When was the last time you did a careful master’s study of a painting? This technique will help you perfect your painting skill immensely. Choose an old master’s painting (at least >100 years old) and re-create it digitally. Choose one you really love.

Here’s a great (but long) how-to on master’s studies by Noah Bradley, who is an amazing artist and teacher (Art Camp). Skip to 1:04 on this video to see his demo of how to do a full master’s study. In the first hour of this video, he talks about how to do value and color studies, also both valuable exercises. If you go that route, do at least six of them. If you do a full master’s study, just one.

Here is another quick overview and link to the basic process by CGCookie:

Artist Steve Payne took a series of paintings by George Dawes of Russian generals and replaced their heads with celebrities and other well known people.   Payne’s work is great inspiration for an exercise to hone in on ‘surface’ painting techniques where you’re also trying to match the style of the underpainting. For this idea, don’t copy the idea directly   –   don’t use these images, find a different painting and incorporate a completely different person or an animal or, if you create 3D characters one of those potentially.

Try to get the new parts to match the look and feel of the main painted background. Or maybe switch it around and use the original painted head, George Washington?, and put it on someone else…or…

Resources for finding Public Domain paintings:

• National Gallery of Art Collections

This idea is more about the style of poster that you will create, less than the subject matter. Old propaganda posters give us inspiration for a style and feeling. They often employ primary and bold colors to foster an emotion and inspire a call to action. They are typically created by the government to inspire patriotism around war, racism, and social issues.

These images have inspired contemporary artists to create propaganda-style posters for not such serious issues. This is the focus of this option. Create a propaganda inspired poster. Here are some examples:

Double exposures have always been a popular technique for alternative images. Using digital images and Photoshop, you can get very specific with the look and feel to create a carefully constructed work that can be pretty interesting.