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Digital Collage and Painting: Using Photoshop and Painter to Create Fine Art
vBulletin Book Store > vBulletin books beginning with D
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Digital Collage and Painting: Using Photoshop and Painter to Create Fine Art |
Author: Susan Ruddick Bloom
Published: 2006-06-02 |
List price: $54.95
Our price: $34.62
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Usually ships in 24 hours
As of: September 06th, 2008 02:01:05 AM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 What type of book is this?
I feel that the author was torn between writing a step by step, "follow these directions to recreate this image" project book for beginners, and a book filled with art to inspire and spark the creativity of those a bit more advanced. For me, it does neither well.
There are about 600 pages in this book. The first 500 show you other artists finished work then give you detailed, step by step directions, complete with screen shots and settings, on how to recreate what the artist did. This makes it seem to me like a step by step project book. Problem is, you aren't supplied with the images so you can't duplicate the image (and why would I want to anyway?). I would guess that each piece of finished work you're shown gets at least 10 pages of directions on how it was done. If I was a beginner and wanted a step by step project to follow, it would have been great, but only if they supplied the images, which they don't, so it's not. As I'm not a beginner looking to replicate someone else's work, all those pages and screen shots were a complete waste of book space and my time, reading page after page after page of settings and screen shots bored me silly.
Sometimes, you get page after page of screen shots on how the artist fixed a bad photograph before he used it in his collage. Huh? So now this a basic "How To Use Photoshop" book? This is why I say the author wasn't clear on what type of book she was writing.
I feel the book misses the mark as one to inspire and spark my creativity simply because 500 of the 600 pages are filled with screen shots of how to replicate someone else's work. If I could have gotten 600 pages of art with a small blurb with the gist of how it was done I would have loved it.
The best part about this book for me was the quotes. There is a quote about art on almost every single page. The reason I didn't flip past section after section of screen shots was that I didn't want to miss the quotes.
So, unfortunately, this book will go on my shelf and probably never see the light of day again. If it supplied images to go with the steps, I'd pass it along to a beginner to use, but it doesn't so I won't. And all those pages of screen shots doesn't really spur my creativity, so I'll probably never open it again.
 Most chapters are good...
Most chapters are very good. My interest is painting--I found that several chapters were just excellent instruction and tips-others were OK. Worth the purchase price to me...
 Digital Collage and Painting: Using Photoshop and Painter to Create Fine Art
This book was like reading a great novel, I couldn't put it down! The inspiration was excellent. The incorrect assumption of some that "digital" means "computer generated" is debunked in this excellent work which has lots of beautiful examples of many kinds of digital art (not just collage). There are lots of step by step tutorials that are helpful and tips for using the tools of PS and Painter to their best advantage.
It is not a beginners book however as Bloom assumes that the reader is familiar with PS and Painter. Still this might be the work that makes one REALLY want to do the work needed to become proficient in these programs.
Loved it more than any other work on this subject and I already have a shelf full!!!
Suni R
 Buyer Beware
Ok, firstly if you want a hands-on plenty of action book stay away from this one. Sure you get to see how other artist have created their work but if you read carefully there are gaps between getting from one stage to the next in some cases. Also a MAJOR dissapointment is you get no images to play with so you can attempt to emulate what the artist is doing as you read. Using the same techniques on different images can obviously give you totally different results.
There is a small hands-on section (26 pages) at the back where you have to download the images to work with. Come on guys how about a CD..? You also have to download a total of 49 files off the web if you want all of them AND they are all largish TIFFS instead of jpgs so be prepared for a long download session.
Basically if you want to be a digital vouyer and have a perve at how others do it without having fun yourself buy this book. If you want to get down and dirty and have heaps of fun then look elswhere. I have read many good PS and Painter books but for me this is not one of them. I might add I am a very experienced PS user and more than a fair Painter user and while the author certainly knows her stuff the book for me is a major letdown and certainly not for a new user looking for a good start to take them to an intermediate level.
Bridging the Digital Disciplines
Artists create by combining and extracting elements, often employing diverse techniques, to express ideas. Sue Bloom's new book brings her background as a teacher and digital artist and painter to the reader by showing how different artistic methods can be combined to create a work richer than any single medium alone could provide. She does this, not just by describing her own work, but by inviting 21 other major digital artists to share their eyes and techniques. Of course, she provides some excellent chapters on the "basics" of digital creation in Photoshop and Painter, but her book's unique strength, I think, lies in going beyond all of the usual "How to" books. It is a book which bridges these different digital disciplines. It covers collage and panorama creation, along with artistic tools in Photoshop and Painter while at the same time has a large section on "Artistic Considerations" (which includes "Experimentation" ideas). Bloom's first sentence begins with the question: "Where does that kernel of inspiration come from?" She brings us many tools to use. Along the way, she offers inspiring and thoughtful quotations from artists throughout history. I took great comfort from her quote from Emerson that "Every artist was first an amateur." An inspiring and truly unique book. BRAVO.
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