First lesson In Image Retouching

     I have spent the last week watching another lynda.com course, this weeks lesson was called "Retouching Bridal Portraits". It covers all different ways of enhancing and retouching different types of portraits. I have done a little bit of retouching in the past, but this was a really great eye opener into better practises of using lots of layering and masking so you don't make changes to an image that can't be undone if you make a mistake. I liked the face that the course focused on enhancing what was already there rather than completely changing the person in the photo. 
     I have tried out a few of my own images from the archives, turns out I really don't have a lot of good quality portraits to mess around with! So these were the best I can do and my sister is a little mad I picked a "moody" photo of her... Sorry Flo...

This first image I chose was based on one of the images on the  course being backlit. I got rid of some flyaway hairs, retouched small areas with lens glare and warmed up and brightened the whole image. The screen shot below shows some of the many layers and masks I used in creating this image.

     This next one is a holiday photo of one my oldest friend Missi, this one didn't have too much work done to it. I cleaned up the background, smoothed the skin and brightened up the teeth and sunglasses and added some contrast and curves adjustments. 

This final image was by Hannah Nichols from Pink kitten Dance School where I take aerial circus classes. I chose it because it gave me a chance to try lots of different types of clean up on the background. I used lots of different filters to remove the dust and add blur. I also copied areas of the curtain across to cover the lights before blending these in and adding spotlights and colour edits in the Camera Raw filter tool. 

I still need a lot of practise with this but it is good to know some more skills and tools I can use to clean up images and enhance them in a natural way. 

Start Something New

It is the start of a new year and the time where most people are assessing their situations and making various resolutions and plans for the year ahead. Whilst for many people this involves keeping fit and eating well, apple has come up with a different spin on it, which I really quite like.

They have a new promotional campaign for the new year which is called "start something new" the focus of this is creating art using apple products. Whether that is through inbuilt software and applications, or through third party apps which utilise the touch screens and cameras in iphones and ipads. They showcase a number of different pieces of work on their website here, naming the artists and the tools that they have used. 

I love the idea of this, whether you are using apple products or not I think it is a great time of year to start new projects. I decided to give my desk a good clear out and tidy up so that I could get doodling. 

Now anyone who might follow my instagram feed probably knows that I have been taking aerial classes in Bristol for just over a year now. After my final project at university focusing on circus, I had always dreamed of trying out aerial skills, and now I have gotten to a point where I am really happy with the many tricks I know. 

Today I had a really great training session, I have been trying to build up my calloused hands and pain resistance after a 2 week break over christmas and today I feel like I achieved a lot. 

I haven't drawn any people for a little while so I decided this was a good excuse to get some practise in. My rotring pens are unfortunately a little sad and dried up so I decided to play around with a glass dip pen I bought last year, the nib gives quite a thick line but there is a really nice flow to it which I like the feel of.

Desk all set up.

I don't think my people will ever have faces, especially using this thick a line!

I really like these cheap zebra mechanical pencils for sketching out lines and shapes to build on. 

Hopefully will do a few more of these and colour up the good ones, does anyone else have any design/drawing resolutions they fancy sharing? 

24 Hour Comic (oops)

So I posted about the 24 hour comic I did in my other blog by accident... oops... not sure how to change it over so please check it out here!

Heres a couple of the edited pages which I have been Photoshop-ing today:

If anyone knows a good place for printing black and white comics cheaply let me know! Hoping to sort out getting them done for Bristol Artists Book Event

London Drawings

I went on a research trip to London with my friend Jess a couple of weeks ago, we did a lot of drawings in the V&A and Tate modern, was really nice to chill and do fun drawing for a change :)

We are planning on making some kind of book/zine with the sketches we like to sell at Bristol Artists Book Event in April so I have been playing around with sets of images, heres a little preview, let me know what you think, am wondering if some of them might work as t-shirt designs!

You can see some of Jess's lovely drawings over here

I do love a bit of circus

I haven't put much up here in a while because I have been working for the past few weeks on a pretty big project. I have been commissioned along with two others on my course to design the walls of Plymouth Universities new optometry centre.

It is all pretty exciting and I have managed to turn it into an excuse to draw a lot of circus performers and animals wearing glasses!

Here are a couple of preview images, I don't want to give too much away until it is all finished and ready.

Give Up Your Day Job

Last thursday I took part in "Palentines Day" an event organised by the Give Up Your Day Job team who host alternative craft fairs in Jack Chams bar in Plymouth. 

We were given the stage area to sell our wares, I went along with fellow students Sophia Viney, Jess Stewart Croker, Beth Bains and  Abby Regler. Do check out their blogs for lovely illustrations! 

As we had the stage, we got to look over everyone, and we also had an area behind our stall with sofas which was pretty awesome :)

There were a lot of alternative valentines cards, zines, mix tapes to be swapped, free stickers and lots of cake!

I also met Dulcie Houghton who makes these beautiful steampunk plugs along with cards and jewellery. I was admiring these a lot even though I dont have particularly want to stretch my ears they are super beautiful :)

Lize Meddings one of the organisers designed the poster and was also there selling risograph prints, comics and giving out free Palentines Day mix cds! 

I always find it really hard not to buy things at these events-everyone has such amazing things that you know you won't find anywhere else its easy to buy lots... In the end I bought a vintage bag and melted vinyl record bowl from Parisian Sweets Vintage, a zine and poster from Lize and one of Abby's amazing icecream cone cakes! Hoping they do one again soon :)

Zines preview

This is just a little sneak preview of some things I am working on right now. We are going to Bristols Artist Book Event (BABE) later on this year so I am preparing some zines to be screen printed in all different colours!

The first is of a group of men made up of body parts, haven't decided what this will be called yet!

The second is a little book of carnivorous plants.

Let me know what you think :)

The Sketchbook project

I feel like I haven't posted enough here recently. This is mainly due to it being christmas and me having no access to a scanner or much internet!

I generally put pictures of drawings I like on instagram as soon as I take them, give me a follow over there if you are interested @josiethejump. 

Over christmas I decided to do the Sketchbook Project as something to do aside from my uni work for a bit of fun. I chose to draw peoples dreams because the things people come up with are so much more strange and random than what I could come up with just making things up!

I ended up using a different style to what I have been recently. I kept with using black line and the odd bit of brush pen with quink in, but I used a graphite pencil in different ways to add shading and add a bit more dimension to the pictures compared with the way I usually just use flat shapes. 

Here is a few to start off, let me know what you think, I love reading peoples comments! 

I had a dream a polar bear chased me through my house and when I came downstairs he was eating the laces from my favourite shoes.

I had a dream I was pregnant with my friends baby.

I had a dream I dropped my new phone off a bridge into a river.

ipad life drawing

Slowly getting to grips with the ipad. First drawing here was 20 mins second was 45. You can see a pretty huge difference between the two, I learnt a lot from the first one to make the second one better. 

life drawing

Found some ink in the life room and decided to try working smaller in more of my own style. This took 45 mins, next time I will spend even more time on all the shadows and highlights as I think this will help when i am drawing out to make things more accurate!

240 final

Finally have finished everything, just tying up loose ends before our hand in tomorrow!

240 procrastination

So here are some photos of my workstation which has become home since we arent allowed in the studio :( Have actually gotten motivated to do drawing today! Spent an hour this morning drawing jess and then took photos and videos at trampolining to draw tomorrow. 

Bottom one is all the stages of me doing a cartwheel from a video! Took a lot longer than i though it would, cartwheels are more complicated than they look!