Cheri Arbuckle

Watercolor Day 9

carbuckle — Thu, 31 May 2018 02:43:46 +0000

Banana Leaves. And then there are the days when it just doesn’t come together. My blending definitely didn’t work in for this lesson. I want to chalk this up to inexperience and then throw it in the trash. But I’ll keep a hold of it, so that at the end of the summer I can… Continue reading

Watercolor Day 8

carbuckle — Thu, 31 May 2018 02:37:39 +0000

“Forest For the Trees”. I know the trunks of my trees aren’t straight, but then the trunks of real trees aren’t perfectly straight, either. But these lean more than most real trees do. I should get better with practice.

Watercolor Day 7

carbuckle — Wed, 23 May 2018 01:03:11 +0000

“Stipple Tree”. It’s called that because the leaves were created by stippling–loading the brush with paint and touching just the tip of it to the paper. I don’t think it makes a very convincing tree; I’m looking forward to learning other ways to paint them.

Rooms With a View?

carbuckle — Wed, 23 May 2018 00:52:33 +0000

The last project from last term that I haven’t yet posted was our last (hopefully forever!) assignment using Photoshop’s native 3D tools. Of course, now that I’ve said that, I’ll end up getting hired to do 3D work in Photoshop as my job.

Like the crates, we were given three room corners and were required to create tileable textures for the wall and floor. The one object in each room simply had to be textured.

Room 1

For this one, I wanted to create the feeling of being inside an aquarium, hence the rock floor and the walls are supposed to feel like water. I don’t think I was very successful with that. Like an aquarium, the top and bottom of the walls are bound by black metal bands. The table is marble, since big rocks like that can go in aquariums. I think I might have been more successful with my idea if I’d textured the table as some of that overly-vibrant coral dyed you see in every tropical fish store.

Room 2

This room’s theme is”distressed”. I wanted it to look worn out, with peeling paint on the walls and well-worn flooring. I also used colors that I don’t normally work with. The door, which you can see if you zoom in is made of rusted metal. It also has no door handle, because I wasn’t sure how to make one, so once you’re in, you can’t get out.

Room 3

This is my paper steampunk room and my favorite. The floor was made from a scan of some thick cardboard I had and the walls are pastel paper. The wall pattern is from a steampunk image I tiled. The “safe” in the corner is faced with the same glass I used for the sides of my third crate. Then I layered a picture of gears on the top.

Watercolor Day 6

carbuckle — Fri, 18 May 2018 00:59:31 +0000

“Leaves”. More leaf practice.

Watercolor Day 5

carbuckle — Thu, 17 May 2018 00:58:19 +0000

“Laurel Wreath”. Yay! I’m finally out of abstract shapes, at least for this book’s lessons. Today I got to paint leaves and I’m really happy with the way the wreath came out. I know that I’ll probably look at this at the end of summer and groan about how amateurish it looks, but today I’m really pleased with it. Watercolor on cold-press Arches watercolor paper. #everydaywatercolor

Watercolor Day 4

carbuckle — Wed, 16 May 2018 02:53:25 +0000

“Carnival.” I usually work with a limited color palette, but this time I decided to throw in as much color as I wanted to. The only rule I had was that each color had to be used at least three times in different parts of the picture. My brush-handling technique certainly needs work, but I… Continue reading

Strange Cargo

carbuckle — Wed, 16 May 2018 02:42:54 +0000

This assignment was my first two where we had to work with Photoshop’s native 3D tools. We were given three plain crates that we were required to texture in Photoshop. To say it was frustrating would be an understatement. But on the whole, I think they came out pretty well.

All textures and images used are public domain images.

Crate 1:

The wood textures here were taken from two different wooden wall images. The eye is from a cat picture. I did a fair amount of dodging and burning to give the illusion of depth on the wood, as well as a very small amount of bevel and emboss to roughen up the wood slats. I hand-distressed the “Handle with care” sticker with a layer mask and some judicious painting. I love the juxtaposition of the giant eye in the little box.

Crate 2:

The boards that form the slats of this crate were taken from a picture of a wall of wood boards. The particle board sides were a single sheet of particle board I wrapped around the box, so each of the sides are a different from the other. The letters and shapes were created with displacement maps to give them a a more worn appearance.

Crate 3

I tried to do a displacement map on this one, so that the sticker really looked like it was laying on top of textured glass, but it became so distorted, it was unrecognizable as a sticker. If I feel the urge, I may give it a go again and see if I can do a better job.

Watercolor Day 3

carbuckle — Sun, 13 May 2018 03:39:29 +0000

Today we have triangles. Yesterday we had circles, tomorrow we will have hexagons, but today–today we have triangles. In warm colors even.

I’m titled this piece “Staccato”.

Watercolor Day 2

carbuckle — Sat, 12 May 2018 02:24:01 +0000

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m teaching myself to paint watercolors. This is my first real attempt (Day 1 was just lines and squiggles of one color, so I didn’t really want to post it) this summer. I’ve done some watercolor painting in the past–costume plates and some just doodling around with watercolors, but I’ve never had any actual instruction in painting at all. So I bought several books on beginning watercolor painting and decided to use Everyday Watercolor as my starting book.

I’m pretty pleased with this, even if it is just a collection of circles. The colors are a just a tiny bit darker in real life. Tomorrow we’re doing triangles. Well, I did triangles today, but I’m not posting them until tomorrow…. Right. I’ll sign off now