Workshop Documentation in Indesign

Workshop Documentation in Indesign

Last week, the week before the deadline, I decided to give a workshop about documentation. And I don’t speak of documentation simply in Word, but I learned my project group about how you can documentate in InDesign.

I learned working with InDesign about 5 years ago, and I need to admit, I hated the program. Why? Because I was used to write letters or reports in Word and InDesign was a whole other world in that area. After experimenting a lot I saw that InDesign was more professional and easier than InDesign. After a while I had fun working with InDesign and I wanted the whole world to use it too. Maybe too much asked but well..

I gave my group a workshop of one and a half hour where I explained the basics in Indesign, like how do you write in a page, what are the shortcuts and how you make or add symbols. Because we are all designers I found that it was important to learn working with Indesign.

I started to explain my group about how you start making a document at the very start, how you can select the type of report/document (a4, a5 etc.) and how you can add pages quickly. After that I explained about adding text, pictures and symbols in a page. Of course I checked if everyone understood it good because I knew that it could be hard to understand if you are used working with Word. I also showed them an example of my CV which I made in Indesign and my group was very enthusiastic about it. After a while I showed them the A-master, the most important thing in Indesign if you want to add similar things in your pages. I also told them the A-master was ‘a shortcut’ for not copy paste all the time. At the nearby end I checked it again if I was clear enough about working with Indesign and they told me I’ve learned them a lot. Of course I couldn’t tell everything about Indesign because it took me a couple years too to understand it. But I was happy I learned my project group about the basics in Indesign. Maybe they will use it in the future to documentate, who knows!

- Reyhan

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Digital portrait

 Hi fellow artists !

A couple of weeks ago I also did a Workshop with my co-students. I love doing digital portrait paintings, and I do it quite often. So I wanted to share my way and maybe
you can learn some new methods.

For this workshop I showed the process of a digital portrait painting I recenlty made for my boyfriend as a holiday gift.

A tip: use a BIG picture with a high resolution. This will make it easier to see all the details.

I work on a wacom intuos 4 and I used Adobe Photoshop cs5.1.

You might find that I work kind of diffrently, but this just works for me, experiment for your self what works the best your you !


For the begining I don't work with lines but try to train the eye to find the right porportions. I colour pick a lot and put all the colours in the right places. If I have enough I start blending the colours.

When I have worked on a piece for several minutes I flip the canvas so my eyes dont get used to it and then the horror starts ! Everything is WRONG !!!

But that's okay, just use the liquify tool in Photoshop (shortcut: shift+ctrl+X) a lot. With that tool you can transform the object easily !

I only use guidance lines when I can't seem to find where the error is.

I repeat the process several times and start working more on the details. Dont forget to add everything, fine wrinkels, freckels etc. This realy makes a painting come to life !

This is a nice way to train your artist eye, with proportion, how colours are made up and a good portfolio piece !

I hope you have fun and can make somebody very happy with your painting.

Denise.

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Workshop Watercolor

Hello, welcome!
Recently I did a watercolor workshop with my group. This workshop was mainly just painting with watercolors together.

“Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (Commonwealth and Ireland), also aquarelle from French, is a painting method in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-soluble vehicle. The term "watercolor" refers to both the medium and the resulting artwork “ -Wikipedia.

I really like to use this medium, because it’s a simple and you can do so much with it!

Starting
When you start with watercolor it’s for the best if you know your materials.
What kind of paper are you using and what kind of watercolor? Every brand is different.

My tip is just to experiment a lot! And read reviews on internet, there is a lot of information about watercolor brands, different types of paper and tutorials on techniques available.

Don’t forget to just have fun with it.

Some pictures and drawings

A drawing I did

- Numana

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Core Quadrants

An unique and inspiring way to get to know: Core Quadrants

On the 20th of March 2014 I had given a workshop which was called ‘Get to know yourself and the others around you’. The workshop started at 10.30am and ended on 13.00pm. For this workshop I had borrowed a game which is called ‘Kern Kwadranten spel’, in English it’s called ‘Core Quadrants game’ by Daniel Ofman. This was very interesting and inspiring.

In this game there are 64 cards with a positive verb on them and 64 cards with a negative. Each card can go two ways, like a positive card can go to your quality, but you can also keep it as a challenge. With the negative card you can also go two ways, like a negative card can be a trap for you but also your allergy. For example you can think about words like these: Sense of humor, anger or open.

This game teaches us that everybody is born with positive quality’s and traps, which is negative about you as a person. But you can change it by recognizing your trap, so you can work on it. Then you have the allergy, which means what you as person despises in others. And at last you have the challenge, which means what you as person want to have and what you admire in others. Below you will see the diagram that we have used for our answers, so you can see it anytime.

If you are interested to get to know yourself and others then I can advise you to play this game, it is also good for the teamwork!

- Michelle

Diagram (dutch version)

‘Core Quadrants game’
  An unique and inspiring way to get to know
 Yourself and others By Daniel Ofman

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Let’s get creative 10: challenges to spark your creativity

Let’s get creative: 10 challenges to spark your creativity 

I’ve been working on various ways to get the mind in an creative mood. I came up with a few challenges that would spark creativity, and improve your artistic skills. For my workshop I picked one of the 10 challenges, the Colour Scheme Challenge. (10 challenges are found below)

The colour scheme challenge is actually pretty self-explanatory, you use a colour scheme to draw. The idea is that you pick 3 to 6 colours to make a drawing with. The best way to do this, is with painting in shapes rather than with lines, this way you unlock the full potential of this challenge.

I made a psd. document, found below, that could be used to do this challenge. I picked six colour scheme which each contained five colours. Another option was to use a selection of promarkers I brought. People could pick up to 6 colours to use on an art piece. The idea is the same, but without the amazing function of ctrl + Z.

Link to the full 10 challenges here
Link to the colour challenge here

- Susan

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Speed Painting

Introduction Speed Painting:

The content of the lesson will be for advanced painters, you must be known with photoshop and other digital media forms.  After the lesson of today you’ll be able to create speed paints, and having the knowledge behind them; whether they should be your thing, or not.

Steps:

1. Open Photoshop (use the setting U.S. paper whilst opening a new file. )

2. Create a moodboard that provides you with sphere you’d like to create.

3. Create a rather dark background in order to participate through the next steps.

4. Keep the lightening in mind before placing the silhouette of your character onto the canvas.

5. After placing your character’s silhouette you’re ought to bring dimension and perspective into the silhouette, and the background.

6. Finishing touch; try to capture the right shapes and detail them towards your own preferences without overdoing it. (Reminding you that it is a speed paint, and done within a few hours and not an entire day.)

- Sanne

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Workshop: Illustrator tips & tricks for beginners

In this tutorial I would like to explain some of the tools found in Illustrator and help my viewer overcome the obstacles that most users find when they open Adobe Illustrator for the first time.

  

 The topics covered in this tutorial are:

·       - Placing of Files on your artboard

·       - Creating base template

·       - Blob brush vs. Paintbrush tool

·       - Shape Builder tool

·       - Line width tool

You can download/view the PDF document here

- Ruben

 

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