Talkin about inspiration!

     Alrighty guys, I know it has been a day or two since I last posted and perhaps that is too long for you to hold interest in my blog. So, here I am, pulling you back into the world of graphic birdie. Today's post is all about inspiration for what you are working on in graphic design. My forms of inspiration are a bit different from looking at a photo or listing of ideas. Hopefully you enjoy my ways of becoming inspired to draw something!

First method of inspiration: Music
     Turn on the radio! make sure you do not listen to music you have heard over and over again. Listen to the new sounds and voices and meanings, imagine the instruments playing and what the singer or band looks like. Never look the song up on YouTube before you finish your painting, it may influence what you imagine. You are welcome to draw the people who you think are singing but I suggest you look into the deeper meaning of the song and draw that! Maybe you are making a background, with this method of inspiration, you can smoothly or sharply create a background just by closing your eyes and following the patterns in the music. So, get out your radio and start working! Who knows, you might just find a new favorite band.

Second method of inspiration: Smell
  Yep this one is a funny one, but it works for me. Alright, in this form of inspiration, take out a strong smelling food or light a candle or go outside right after it rains! Smells are often connected to memories, especially for me! So in this process you may remember something sweet, sad, funny, or beautiful, it may be the smell of your mothers old perfume or the smell of your old best friends house. It may remind you of a trip you took once or it could remind you of an old car. You never know what smells will bring up in your memory which makes this form of  inspiration so much fun. Once you find a smell/memory, draw it or photo manipulate it or collage it, Make sure not to make it perfect, use some abstraction, this will bring in the image of a foggy or forgotten memory. Not all people remember by smells and if you do not, form a fun and creative fake memory. This is meant to be fun so if it is not working to bring any ideas up for you, try something else. Never let a form of inspiration tire you out or bore you, that defeats the purpose.

Third and final method of inspiration: People
     People are incredible in how they all have their own agendas and goals. For this form of inspiration, go to a public area like a park bench. Or go ride a bus (safe bus of course). While you are in a public area, look at the people around you. Imagine what they are thinking, where they are going, why they are so calm or anxious. Create stories in your mind about thee people as a whole or individually, then go home and create a piece of art from your stories. Never take things literally with this form of inspiration, just let the basic ideas from people around you, come into your head and inspire you. Also, be polite of the people you see and never interrupt them or tell them your theories. Imagine yourself as a ghost, pretend no one can see you and you are just looking into the world from outside. Enjoy this form because you can get some pretty crazy ideas from it. Try different ages of people, maybe go to a school or a nursing home sometime.

I hope my unique forms of inspiration help you out a bit. You can't lose anything by trying them! Be safe though, never go somewhere dangerous or smell something hazardous. Have fun and feel free to share your art with me from these forms of inspiration!

 

Shading Tutorials!

Ok, now after all these days you have been waiting, I am going to post some tutorials. These tutorials are for learning shading for digital painting. I have always struggled here and finally found some decent tutorials. They are mainly for photoshop but most, if not all f the tools used, are available in other programs. So enjoy, I hope they help you as much as the helped me.

http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm - This is a detailed description for everything shading, it is a great place to start but it is very extensive. Don't let this tutorial scare you.

http://www.cellesriaart.com/resources/basic-blending/ - This is an overview of blending techniques if you are struggling with how to blend your shading

http://www.melissaevans.com/tutorials/pencil-sketch-to-smooth-digital-shading - This is a tutorial on how to turn pencil sketches into digital paintings. I found this very unique and helpful if you are better at traditional drawing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxO8u-loAEc - This is a tutorial on how to shade a sphere

Soon I will have some tutorials on how to shade people because I find that very helpful.

i made these with some shading help. The orb is from the YouTube tutorial 

Latest and Greatest

Hey everyone surprise its me! Over the weekend I had a fantastic experience of learning how to shade people, It is only a brief start and with all the flaws, I am still proud. I have been trying to learn how to shade people for quite some time. Oh, keep in mind this image is not meant to look completely realistic. Enjoy
I will have several shading tutorials up in a moment

oh and the hair was just a last minute effort

I forgot eyebrows! that's what was missing. I will fix that.

Thought I would share a quick painting that i found while browsing through old files

Learning Pixel Art!

Hey everyone! another unique type of graphic design is called Pixel Art! Pixels as you probobly but may not know, are what digital images are made of (you can look up the actual defenition if you'r that interested. but anyway, Pixel art is a form of art that is created by placing individual pixels one by one. It is a very time consuming project but each peice is unique and usually very well done. Pixel art images are usually very small and used digitally on games, websites, ect.
here is an example of a pixel art piece:

 

This one is from  http://minidollz.ninique.net/

This one is by me




This one is also by me


Obviously I am no pro but people can be really great at this!
So, are you interested in Pixel art? Well here are some fantastic tutorials to get you started! They are in order for what you should learn first according to me. But feel free to use them in any order. I would also love to see what you made! These all work for most design programs with or with out a bit of tweaking.

http://www.wikihow.com/Become-a-Pixel-Artist
http://kitted.deviantart.com/art/Pixel-Shading-Tutorial-47269811
http://www.derekyu.com/?page_id=222
http://www.spriteland.com/tutorials/drawing-pixel-art-tutorial.htm

First Gimp Tutorials!

Yep thats right, here are some of the first Gimp tutorials for my blog! It was requested by a friend for me to post some great Gimp tutorials on how to make "signatures" siggys or signatures are small image collaborations with text representing a person or thing or company. They are often used on websites or forums. So here is a few tutorials on how to make pretty awesome signatures. These tutorials are for people who are allready pretty familiar with the basics of Gimp.


an awesome youtube video (one of my fave tutorials)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qweu4KxDNuQ&feature=player_embedded

here is a site with 100 fantastic links to amazing siggy tutorials.
http://webdesign14.com/100-cool-forum-signature-photoshop-tutorials/

I can post more later  but this will launch you

Beginning Photoshop

Hey Everyone! I heard via email that some people were interested in beginning Photoshop tutorials and where to start with that if you allready own Photoshop. Well, today I found a great tutorial for beginning and learning the tools of Photoshop.  So here it is:


http://mashable.com/2010/08/12/12-beginner-tutorials-for-getting-started-with-photoshop/

enjoy! and any sugestions on things you want to learn or see here are welcome!

A piece of my own artwork just to throw out an example of graphic design : )

For New Graphic Designers

This Blog really needs a jump start so I will start with the point of this blog! Right now I will be doing a different graphic design learning topic each month, most of the tutorials if not all of them, will be based off photoshop but If you want you can request a different type of program such as Gimp or Illustratior or other things like that. I have not picked the first topic yet but I will soon. For newcomers to graphics, read below to start. For older graphic designers, I will start posting tutorial links and other fun stuff asap!

- If you are brand new to graphic design and do not have a program to work off, I can get you started on where to go and how to learn. First, If you have a PC which many people do, you have this great free program called "Paint" which is a great place to start digital drawing. If you are more interested in web design and photo-mainpulation I strongly suggest a free downloadable program for both Mac and PC called Gimp. Gimp is basically a downgraded free version of Photoshop. Due to the fact that Photoshop is several hundreds of dollars, Gimp has several flaws and errors but is a fantastic way  to start graphic design. If you allready have a program like Photoshop than thats great and you can strt with it but if you do not have a program allready on your computer I HIGHLY suggest that you do not go out and buy one right away, Graphic design is certainly not for everyon but there is a chance it may be for you like it was for me. On a personal note, I started graphic design on Gimp and later bought Photoshop. If you plan to buy photoshop and are a student, make sure to ask for the student discount. Here are some helpfull Links for launching into the world of graphic design. I will also post the link to the GIMP download. (always make sure you are on an official website for downloads, if you download from a false website it may give yourr computer a virus.)

-Where to download Gimp for Mac or Windows
http://www.gimp.org/

- Downloading instructions to beginning project tutorials
http://www.vtc.com/products/GIMP-2.6-Tutorials.htm

-Gimp tutorials! provided by gimp, great place to start after instilation
http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/

-Microsoft Paint (ms paint) the basics and where to start
http://www.lkwdpl.org/classes/MSPaint/paint.html

I hope that launches you off to the incredible world of Graphic Design!

New and Learning

Hey everyone who happens to read this blog! I am a student who is here to help you and myself learn more about Graphics and Graphic Design. How exciting is that! I am in a blogging class so that is another reason why I am creating this blog. I would love to share with the beautiful tutorials and learning techniques that I find across the internet or perhaps outside of the facinating electronical box(computer). To start off I will introduce you to some of my work which is just a start to the future. I would also love to hear any feedback that you have about my artwork or website. So, without further adue, here is my website! http://stewartart.weebly.com Enjoy browsing! Also if you have any suggestions for Graphic Design topics you would like me to help direct you with, please tell me! Iwould love to hear any comments or questions from visitors.