i-m-a-g-i-n-efx-august

Workshops
Photoshop
Photobashing
an illustration
Dave seeley takes you through his creative process, using Photoshop
to craft a digital illustration from disparate photographic sources
Artist
ProFilE
Dave seeley
location: US
Dave’s a full-time digital,
traditional and hybrid
illustrator in the sci-fi
and fantasy genres
www.daveseeley.com
get your
resources
See page 6 now!
In this workshop, I’ll
take you from the
beginning of my
process to the finished
digital image. I’ll
explain how I approach the work,
absorb the parameters and interface
with my client to define my task.
Then I’ll take you through the search
and selection of the photographs I’ll
use to construct my illustration.
I’ll demonstrate how Photoshop is
the critical tool in knocking out
(masking for isolation) and editing
the individual parts in order to make
them live harmoniously in the
finished work, and also how
Photoshop is critical in overall edits
in refining the finished illustration.
For this project you’ll need to
have a basic understanding of
working with photographs in
Photoshop, including image
resolution, colour palettes, value
range from black to white, and
working on layers. I’ll be working
with complex selections and
masking, transforming/scaling, layer
blending modes, and adjustment
layers. I’ll also be painting with
brushes, and using filters to distort,
sharpen and abstract.
While many artists’ processes use
photographic reference, I’ll show you
how I use photos directly in creating
my images. That’s a “backwards” way
to go about image-making in contrast
to most traditional – and many
digital – workflows, but because
most detail is introduced in the
initial stages, crafting the picture
often involves the destruction of
detail back towards a level of
abstraction that’s associated with
artwork rather than photography.
78 August 2017