Creating My Digital Image Manipulation Doodling in Photoshop
Image Inspiration
Doodled magazine example Artist: Jurg Lindenburg
Artist: Helen Kaur Younger Sister
Artist: Matthew
Hattie Stewart
Independent magazine Anorak is a children’s culture magazine which has a really fun cover page, covered in doodles, cartoons and illustrations by artist Jurg Lindenburg. Babiekins in a kid’s fashion magazine, which is less common than the high market fashion magazines. I love their colour schemes and the different ages featured, instead adults.
Image Proposal I am going to create a doodle-technique, digitally manipulated image, designed for a young child/young teen independent-style fashion magazine, such as Babiekins magazine. The target audience for this magazine is towards parents/the older audience who will buy the fashion for their children. I am choosing to doodle because it’s a very fun and interesting technique to design, as well as look at. The different shapes and colours add new character and personality to the original image, almost giving it a new ‘life’, and it’s very attractive and aesthetically pleasing for all ages.
Previous examples of my doodling
To carry out this technique in Photoshop, I will use the brush tool and mouse. I also have the option to use a drawing tablet, but I found with my last practice I prefer to use a mouse. Before the doodle I will prepare the image. This includes either desaturating the image or not, and adjusting the levels of darkness and light. I will also be using layers to overlap doodles. Screenshot evidence of changing the contrast/editing the photo beforehand.
Creative influences My first initial influence was Hattie Stewart as I love her imaginative and creative doodle art, so I knew I wanted to create a more detailed doodle.
Afterwards, I thought about who could be my model/subject, so I chose my little sister. It’s different to see a child being doodled on, and as the doodle art is quite childlike, I thought it would be a good idea to combine the two ideas together. For a kid’s magazine, the bright colours are more likely to attract. It could even be more appealing for parents. I researched child magazines - independent, fashion and art types - and found Babiekins (fashion) magazine and Anorak (child’s general culture) magazine. Although Anorak is not a fashion magazine, I still love the cover designs of cartoons, which I could reflect as doodles in my own work. Independent magazines influence me as they use more creative techniques, and do not often use heavy editing techniques such as airbrushing. The Anorak artist is Jurg Lindenberger; I find him a great influence like Hattie Stewart. Among more creative artists research I found Helen Kaur and Matthew Laurence Knott, both independent and more unknown. They both create fantastic doodle cartoon work using vibrant colours.
Legal/ethical issues Some legal issues could be copyright. I have collected images (above - image inspiration) that are somebody else’s work so I may not have the permission to use these images, as well as others that I might use in my magazine in Unit 30. I am also inspired by many artists’ work so the techniques and cartoons I doodle could be similar to their work. Although I’m not using another artist’s doodle image and starting with my own photograph, to use a doodled image and draw over it would be copyright. As it is my own photograph, I asked my sister, who will be my model, if I could take her picture.
An ethical issue could be doodling on top of an image overall and that it could possibly be ‘wrong’ to display an image that has been drawn on, or draw on an image that another artist has doodled on already. However I will be doodling on top of my own primary image of my sister, so I don’t find this an issue. I also chose to doodle on my sister because it’s a different age group. Typically you would find that older models are doodled on and not so much the younger generation.
Image: Before
Screenshots of evidence - creating my doodle This is my beforehand preparation for my image. I have opened it here in Viveza 2, an editing extension on Photoshop where I can edit certain aspects of a photo using control points. Here, I increased the contrast on her hair so it isn’t light and matches the rest of her hair. The next step I took was deleting the background to make it transparent, but what I will be doing later is putting the edited image on top of a coloured background. I am using the Magic Wand Tool, Quick Selection Tool and Lasso Tools to select the background and deleting it by unlocking the layer.
Here is the complete image with all the background deleted. Now I can move on by layering - putting the the edited image on top of other layers, or putting the next layers that I’ll create behind this.
I used the freehand lasso tool for the curvy edges.
I have selected some hair on my sister’s jumper that I have cut out from the background, that I need to crop out entirely. I selected it using the lasso tool, and filled the highlighted space with ‘content aware’ which means the background around it.
Screenshots of evidence - creating my doodle Now I haved moved on to the background colour of my magazine cover image. I did this by drawing a rectangle over the whole image, selecting the colour and then putting this behind my edited sister so she is on top of the pink box. I also have another layer of the original photo behind. I could have deleted this...
...but I kept it there as an extra copy. If I wanted to edit the original again I could, as you cannot go back on the edited version.
Next I began my doodling and shape tool process. These blue shapes were created using the shape tool and the rectangular lasso tool. I filled the selected area with the colour I wanted. This is inspired from Anorak magazine as they used this 3D box effect using shapes too.
Next, I started creating the eyes. I didn’t use the brush tool for this, instead I used the shape tool again. When you use the mouse you cannot get perfect curvy lines so I thought I would use the shape tool as it’s a compromise and a different technique to what Hattie Stewart used. Again, I overlapped the layers so the white eyes are behind the black centre eclipses.
Screenshots of evidence - creating my doodle Afterwards, I moved on by using the brush tool creating hearts and waves in the style of Hattie Stewart. I was inspired by Helen Kaur, another digital artist to create the wave shapes and using the different tones of a colour, for example the dark tone of blue that goes down in a gradient to a lighter blue.
I used the brush tool to create the individual shape of the eyelash, filled the shape used the paint bucket tool and then duplicated this layer to create many, duplicated eyelashes. I had to free transform/rotate each eyelash to make it a different angle.
For the other eye, I had to flip one dividula eyelash and flip it vertically. I then had to rotate it again to mirror to the other eye.
After this, I decided to make monsters, as the cover is for a kids magazine, in the style of Anorak magazine. I used the brush tool for the outline, and then filled the shape again with a desired colour. I had an example above to look at for inspiration. Another idea I thought of, which is much more advanced than the first wave idea you can see at the top of this page, is making the waves exactly in the style of Kaur. These are more curvy and creative . I used the different colour tones as well. I found a template image, then refered to this while making my version.
Screenshots of evidence - creating my doodle These are my finished waves using different shades of colour. I chose different shades of colours that would go together, and would suit the pink background.
For extra decoration I added some dots . It breaks up the colour and adds some extra creative decoration. I made these dots with the brush tool, by making a single dot.
I then added text, the title of my magazine as this is my cover. I decided on ‘little’ as the magazine features the smaller generation. It’s a different type to feature the younger, more little children models. Also when you use one word, it’s sharp and effective.
Inspired by Hattie Stewart I have created flowers using the shape tool, so I can have the same shape petals. I used the brush tool again to create the white dots and lines which add a shine and reflection to it. Also, I created the black shape between the flower petals using the brush tool, in the same way I made the eyelashes.
Screenshots of evidence - creating my doodle I made several flowers by duplicating the layers and changing the colours. You can also see the finished detail of the black petal parts and how it separates the petals (picture on the right).
I then added some drooping paint to the cover title, as this is also something Hattie Stewart did too. It makes the title more fun and stand out more. It’s really creative and effective to add this. I added some pale pink rectangular bozes using the shape tool. These will be the background for the black doodles. It breaks up the darker colours.
I saw on another example (which I placed in photoshop to copy and reflect on) that Hattie used bricks to also break up and space out doodles, so I created this using the shape tool, using no fill and changing the border thickness. I duplicated the layer and make a brick layout on the same layer as the black doodles.
Screenshots of evidence - creating my doodle This is the brick work on my doodle. I have also added in this screenshot more black doodles and blue dots around the waves. I also added more white dots above the purple monster. The idea of this is to add small intricate detail.
I decided the change the background to experiment colour schemes. This is also inspired by Hattie Stewart’s VOGUE doodle cover.
A signature mark created by Hattie is the crazy eyes she creates. I made this designusing the shape tool.
This is my final image screenshot, as I have now finished editing.
Image: After
Copyright, resolution, colour modes and saving files Why is using copyright-free imagery important?
It is illegal to take and use someone else’s image from the internet without the right permission or license. This is an act of crime - stealing, so we shouldn’t take an image, or draw over an image that isn’t ours either. This is why I used my own primary image. Using an image that isn’t copyright-free is infringement, a violation against the rights of the creator of the image. This includes: -Using the whole image or part of it without permission. -Further use of the image without permission. -Adapting the image without permission (in this case doodling). This is why it’s important to use copyright imagery.
There are several websites where you can source copyright-free images: www.pixabay.com www.creativecommons.org Cyan, Magenta, Red, Green and Yellow and Black Blue This is used for printThis is used for the ing: you’ll find that the computer screen, colour cartridges are consisting of 256 RGB these colours. colours.
What is resolution?
Resolution is the amount of pixels in an image. Low resolution means there are not many pixels, so the image is bad quality and blurry. If you were to stretch out the image, it would get worse, and you’d see many little squares. On the other hand, high resolution means there are many pixels that make up the image. It’s better quality than the low resolution images as it’s more sharp and crisp, so if you were to stretch out To resize an image whilst still keeping it in proportion, press down ‘Shift’.
Low Resolution Images High Resolution Images
Dots per Image 72 dpi is used for...
Uploading to the web or computer. It loads a lot quicker because it has very low resolution.
300 dpi is used for...
Printing. It’s better quality and holds a lot more detail, but it is a bigger file so it loads a lot slower.
Examples of file extensions and what they are used for: .psd - photoshop working file .pdf - compressed, portable file (saves as actual copy and does not change anything) .jpeg/jpg - photos/images, an easy and simple file, everyone can open and read. .indd - indesign working file .gif - animation .png - bigger files, preserve a lot more quality, none is lost
Evaluation
Tianna’s Evaluation Tianna said that what works well with my image is that it’s very colourful and there’s lots of detail. She said there is always something to look at. It’s not boring and it’s very well illustrated. Tianna believes that I used a graphics tablet for my technique but I was patient enough to use the mouse and make my doodles free hand with the brush tool. I don’t really like using the tablet. Tianna thinks that my target audience is for kids, which is correct as doodles are child-like and will attract them. Overall, Tianna said I could improve on making all my doodles bold by giving most things a bold black outline such as the hearts so they stand out more, as well as outline the text. Emilia’s Evaluation Emilia said that my work looks amazing, with so much to look at. It’s colourful, bright and bold. She stated that I used the paint tool, lasso tool and shape tool for my doodling, which is correct. She believes the target audience for my piece for 5 years olds up to around age 30. Overall, Emilia said that I could improve by 3 things - keeping a solid background colour, doodled on the model image and used more styles and different shapes. My Self Evaluation I am happy with my piece as a lot of time, effort and patience has been put into it so I’m happy with the outcome. I like using my own primary image because I know the model and can reflect their personality into the image. I like the bright colours I have used and I believe the target audience of children will love to look at the fun and crazy doodles. I was also very dedicated with my doodle and I wanted to make sure it looked it’s best, that’s why I edited the photograph beforehand and added various layers to build up my image. I’m taking my recieved feedback into consideration to change my image. I think I could improve on my work by doodling more on my model, but still keeping it to a minimalistic standard because I don’t want to over do it. I could also change some of the patterns or change some of the colours. I’m making certain bits bolder with a black outline, and making the background more curvy so it flows with the rest of the image.
Taking my feedback into consideration I have changed the colour of the waves so they suit the colour scheme, and made the heart bolder so they stand out more and fit well in the image. Before, the heart didn’t have an outline which looked odd, so I have given it the border.
(Image below) I’ve changed the colours of the flowers to a lighter shade because it makes the image more subtle. I gave each of the petals outlines too. (Image above) I changed the colours of the monsters at the top of the image and did the same to the pink flower in the corner as the same as what I did to the others on the left.
This purple box, which used to be a different colour, was also given a border. I did this by using the shape tool and rectangular lasso tool. I gave this heart a border too and changed the colour of the monster. So far I have changed my image to a purple theme.
This is where I made the background curvy so it flows and isn’t rectangular. I made it curvy by using the shape tool and drawing circles. I then re-drew the doodles to fill the new shape. Also, the dots around the model went behind her head before and now they go around the edge.
The Final Image