This week’s project is simple- create a token of appreciation for someone in your life who has invested in you. You again have total freedom to do what you want… Write a song, create an image, write a poem… If you choose a written form, please just attend to the visual layout and create a final piece that contains the words, but is more than just the words.

Specs:

• Work must be inspired by someone in your life that has influenced you.
• The person must be living, and someone you can physically contact/give it to (no poems for your fave dead poet, for example)
• Work can be in any medium, poem, photo, song, etc
• The final presentation must have attention to visual display.

One word can conjure up a thousand different ideas for us. This week I want you to use just the word “broken” as a prompt for your work. Stop and think about the word. Turn it around. Look at the opposite side.

These activities are as much of the creative process as technically and physically creating the art. It’s about how you THINK, not how you draw or shoot or mouse that makes a great artist. And like every thought, you can easily get better at it by thinking about it!

Specs:

• Work must be inspired by the word “broken”
• The theme may not be obvious to viewers. It doesn’t have to be, and probably shouldn’t be!
• Work can be in any medium, poem, photo, song, etc
• The final presentation must have attention to visual display.

Sylvia Plath

“Anxiety is part of creativity, the need to get something out, the need to be rid of something or to get in touch with something within.”

David Duchovny

Total Creative Freedom.

That’s what this quarter is for now. I’ve decided to put down the limitations. The goal is to have you SEE now. See contradictions. See paradoxes. See reality in the confusing and wonderful way it is. Then learn to communicate it back.

Look at the image for today’s post. What does it mean? Is there a “right” answer about it’s meaning? Should art force a specific meaning onto it’s viewers or allow each viewer to engage the piece as an individual, bringing their own meaning, life experiences, and assumptions to the experience of engaging the art? If we force a meaning, is it still art or does it become advertising or propaganda?

This week, I want you to think about the strongest emotion you can remember feeling. Then think about the paradoxical part of it as we discussed in class. Once you can see it, express it. In writing, in song, in images, in video, in dance… However you want to express it. Help us understand or feel the inner struggle that is there- or at least do your best to help us understand it!

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious – the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.” 
― Albert Einstein

We think of things in such concrete and dualistic ways. This thing is good or bad. Black or white. Digital or analog. Positive or negative. Republican or democrat. Worker or employee… Maybe there is NOT a line dividing everything we want to divide, but a vast gradient of gray between our black and white.

Art explores this gray area. It mixes things up. It tries to reveal the hidden. If you’re stuck, use the synectic triggers to help think your way around the dualism. Find and represent a contradiction that you’ve been able to hold.

Contradiction is this week’s promt for your newest piece. Here’s the specs:

• The image must represent contradiction
• The image must be a composite of at least 3 images
• The image must use masks
• The image must use different blending modes.
• The image must be awesome

I also want to congratulate Lauren for making it on Abduzeedo’s Daily Inspiration!!! Amazing pieces of work!!! She made it with this and this. Great Job, Lauren!!! Where is YOUR entry for the daily inspiration?

All images are shots I took, all brushes (except one before I had the idea) are ones I created, and then just took ideas from a couple different tutorials…

Unfortunately I didn’t bookmark them. Grrr.

Mike R was a prolific artist here in the lab and he was pretty creative with just brushes. This week, with the new Brush talk under your belt, you will be too.

Remember that your image must represent the phrase “scatter.” But you are free to think of that any way you want. Don’t be obvious about it! Think laterally. Think Creatively.

I worked on a NQLE project as well, and will post when done. So far, it’s looking more than decent. (update: Done)

Here are the specs for this project:

• Image must represent the word “scatter”
• Image MUST use a new custom brush defined by YOU.
• Image MUST include at least one image you personally captured.

Other than those specs, the shackles are off. Impress me.

Full Size Image

Tip- after you build the 3d texture, select everything on the layer with the path you turned 3D and change it to black. that’s how you get rid of the ugly white look.

http://abduzeedo.com/3d-water-text-effect-repouss%C3%A9-photoshop-cs5

http://www.tutorials-video.com/3d-water-text-effect-photoshop-cs5-extended-tutorial/

Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one’s potential.- Bruce Lee

A lot of people give up just before they’re about to make it. You know you never know when that next obstacle is going to be the last one.- Chuck Norris

Chuck Norris once stared death in the eyes. Four years later, it blinked and Chuck Norris won invincibility. - unknown Sage

Even death can be overcome with enough patient dedication. That’s the moral of the story.

Looks like I need a lesson in that as well since it’s been a month since my last post. In the lab, you guys were working on the Adobe Certified Associate exams and most of you have passed.  Remember, that doesn’t mean you’ve arrived at the finish line, it means you’ve qualified yourself the right to run. It’s the starting line.  You should be working now on your own art. Learning new skills with tutorials and plugging them together to make something amazing, like mr yong’s amazing bruce lee image gracing today’s post. Nothing but some tweaked texture images and creative use of masks and blending modes.

We’re turning another corner. You should now be comfortable with the basic tools in Photoshop and Illustrator- the two most popular and powerful tools available to graphic designers in the world. You have the same tools that every major ad agency and photographer use to perfect their own work. Anything you’ve ever seen in a magazine, cd cover,  or movie poster are at your fingertips. All you have to do is learn more tricks and tips and get an idea that means something to you- and think of how to express it.

We’ll be experimenting more with other art and design ideas. Scanning our own textures, splatters, taking photos, learning more awesome tools in PS and IL, and generally getting creative.

You have the tools, you have the resources… now you just need to get moving on creating your masterpiece. Check abduzeedo daily, gather your inspiration and morguefile folders, and start tapping in to what you have inside.

Then learn to bring it out.

I’m listening to the book “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell and also some books on psychology, and I just had an epiphany:

Success comes from accepting what is.

In “”Blink,” Gladwell is talking about stocks, war, and relationships. Of course my psychology books are obviously covering a lot of the same things- these are the things we humans worry about. But “Blink” is analyzing how people were successful under stressful, fast-paced situations- Its’ looking back at what already happened and what the people were thinking  during that experience. The psychology books discuss how to prepare yourself to be successful in situations like that… but before they happen. So both books are looking at stressful situations and decision making, but from the opposite sides of the situation.

But here’s the epiphany… Both of them say the same thing. Both say that your expectations about what should happen are premeditated disaster. Like any friends you know in a 12 step program might say: “Expectation is a premeditated disappointment.” Turns out this is true! So often in our lives, our expectations about what should and shouldn’t happen actually affect what happens, and even more so, affects our decision making process while it’s happening.

This is true in your brain. If you say you’re dumb at math, you will be. You quit too early, you find it frustrating and hard to focus, and you’ll hate having to do it. If you say you can’t be creative, same thing… Quitting too early, getting frustrated, giving up and doing poorly. Your brain listens to what you tell it.

Interesting side note… think of the music you listen to. The movies you watch. The gossip you get excited about and share. All of those experiences actually affect the way you see the world. They affect the feelings you will have. They affect the behavior you will exhibit in certain situations. Are you taking good care of your thoughts and emotions?

The bad news is that the brain listens to whatever it hears. But there’s good news, too:

The brain listens to whatever it hears.

Double edged sword, no? Check this out… You can start giving your brain different messages, and your brain will start to think and react differently. Guess what feelings are? Activity in your brain. You can change the way you feel about
situations by simply training your brain to think and feel differently. It’s up to you. There are two simple choices- Control your feelings, or be controlled by them. You get to choose your view about things by simply giving your brain more of the kinds of food for thought that you want to enjoy. More happy equals more happy. More mad equals more mad.

Of course I want you to do this with art. I want you to look at our inspiration sites like Abduzeedo and Media Militia and start training your brain to look at good art- to see colors, to enjoy good balance and get used to good design. I want you to open your mind to the possibility that you are more than you think you are and to start living the way you want to, not the way you think you “need” to or being controlled by your feelings.

But more than that I want you to do that with your view of the world. Guess what? Your view of the world is not reality. It’s reality through the filters of your emotions, your personal experiences, your brain’s training up till now. Don’t like the world? Maybe the world is more of a mirror than you think it is. Maybe what you don’t like is really inside, not “out there.” Reality is what it is… but your feelings are what YOU make them.

So my challenge to you- take a look. There are people living in straw huts with no food and they work 12 hours a day trying to grow food in a pile of rocks and they’re happy. They think the world is beautiful and they love life. And then there’s those people who eat every day, get free education in air conditioned buildings, have ipods and a closet full of clothes and they’re miserable.

Same world, different eyes.

And thanks to James for a perfect image to illustrate the point.

JOURNAL: What kind of eyes do you have? What kind of eyes do you want? What are you doing about it?