Midpoint Draft

Experiment 3- Intaglio Printing

This is the image of Pinterest that I tried to recreate. I used Intaglio Printing in order to give it a rustic look.

I started by drawing the image in my book with ordinary pencil as a practice, so I can then transfer the technique used to draw this as accurately as possible onto the silver card, without any mistakes, because they would irreversible if made.

This is my final, finished product, after doing Intaglio Printing and Photoshop Editing. 

On the right is the drawing, engraved in the foil card. I used a pair of compasses to engrave the drawing first. I  then used a piece of cloth and thick black ink to wipe of the drawing on the foil, until all the ridges within the engraving were filled with black ink. I then used the printing press to print the image onto paper, which is on the left. I lay the foil card on top of a piece of paper. I then rolled it through the press and the ink from the drawing, pressed into the paper, leaving an imprint on the paper in the shape of the drawing on the card.  

I then scanned the print into Photoshop where I increased the threshold in order to highlight the rustic looks of the drawing and effects of the print.  

Word Tree (Ink and Transparent) Experiment

Above is the 'Word Tree' that I drew after I had scanned it into my documents and uploaded it to Photoshop. In this photo I am cropping it down to keep the image straight. Below is the image I found on  Pinterest, which inspired my 'Word Tree' which includes lyrics of the artist I am making the album for.  

Above I am adding in the ink affect to the image, to make it stand out compared to the original pencil sketch.  i have done this by changing the threshold to become darker.

Here it I am preparing to clear the white from behind the tree, in order to leave a transparent background so when I add the tree to my album cover there isn't a white background behind it. But first to be able to clear the white I have to unlock the layer, which you can see I have already done in the picture if you look at the layers panel. 

Next I have selected the magic and tool, which will clear the white away. I have disabled contiguous, which means the whole of the background will be selected, as above, instead of just areas. 

Then once it was all selected I pressed Backspace on the keyboard and this cleared the background. The result was the above image.

Then I had to put the tree onto another PS document in order to change the colour. So I opened a new document of a similar size and then used the selection square to select the tree. I then copied the image and pasted it into the new document as you can see I am doing so below. 

Next I selected the layer so I could colour the image. Once selected you can se that it surrounded by marching ants.

Next to add colour I selected the fx at the bottom on the layers panel. I selected colour overlay and changed the settings to normal and then changed the colour to brown using the colour. As you can see the outline of the tree turned to this colour.

This is the final product of this experiment.

Ink Drips and Marbling Combination (Night Sky) Experiment

This is the image I found on Pinterest that i decided to recreate digitally but without photography.

I began the project by making these ink drips, using Indian ink. I dripped ink from the top of the paper in the sink. I turned the paper to different angles, until the drips took shape to form what looked like trees. Above it shows what I did after I  scanned it into the computer, which was to first crop the picture.

Secondly I used he magic wand tool to take out the white between the black ink markings. 

Magic wand tool in progress. You see the difference before and after the use of the magic wand clearly now.

The black ink markings after the use of the magic wand tool.

Next I scanned in what I am going to use for the basis of my background.  I created this using an effect similar to ink marbling. I splattered ink the sink and then put paper that had been pre-soaked in water of the top of the ink. When i took the paper the ink had imprinted and spread across the paper to create this effect. Above it shows me cropping the image down to get rid of any white edges around the edge of the paper. 

Next I dragged the marbling effect image across onto the document of the ink drips and then adjusted the layers to have the ink drips as the top layer.

Here I have split the layer of the ink drips in half and adjusted each side using free transform to tilt them at an angle to make them look similar to the shape the trees take in the image to the right.

Next I adjusted the saturation and lightness using the Hue/Saturation tool to make the colour on the under layer brighter and more vibrant like the are in the picture to the right.

Next I selected the layer and added an effect using the fx button at the bottom of the layers panel and selected gradient overlay. Here I adjusted what colours could be seen and in what order going down the page. This would go over the top of this layer and wouldn't effect the colours in the original picture.  

Finally I needed to add in the stars,  so I used the brush tool. I set the brush to white and 0% softness and then from time to time changed it's size to give different sized stars.

This is the finished piece.