Monday, November 17, 2014

Small Bird Series


Monday, November 17, 2014

My last set of art for 2013 consisted of a series of small bird pieces.  I wanted to design some bird compositions that consisted of using patterns to 'color in' the birds and grasses behind them.  I started with some Dover bird illustrations and background designs that were simply black and white line drawings.  I cleaned up the drawings by making sure that areas that I wanted to fill were completely enclosed as well as removing extra detail lines that cluttered the images. 

There is a small set of patterns that come with Photoshop Elements, but few that I was interested in using.  You can create your own patterns by simply selecting all of a pattern image, and under the Edit menu clicking on 'Create Pattern from Selection'.  Your new pattern will appear in your Patterns drop down list.  You can then use the pattern to fill in a selected area when you use the Paint Bucket Tool as long as 'Pattern' is checked in your Options Bar.

To create many of my patterns, I exported fabric designs from Electric Quilt and opened them in Photoshop Elements.  This works pretty good, but in some cases if the area I want to fill is larger than the pattern I am filling it with, you may notice the pattern tiling.  For purposes of these fairly small bird pieces, what tiling there is, isn't really noticeable.  Eventually I will be creating many of my own patterns that will tile seamlessly and will work better in larger works of art.  The following six pictures are the finished pieces from this smaller bird series.






 

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