Spotlight On An Artist – Michael Maggs

December 19, 2007 — colorserenity

Michael Maggs is a professional photographer who has donated some very beautiful images to Wikimedia Commons. Several have received top honors. Visit his gallery of work.

Expect to see this colorful image as the January 1, 2008 “Picture of The Day” for Wikimedia Commons. It is also used on Wikipedia as the main image for the “Color” category.

pencils1.jpg

What a clever way to present the color wheel. View the full sized image and the Creative Commons license that goes with it. Michael releases most of his photographs under Creative Commons licenses. A few are in the public domain.

Thank you Michael for your contribution to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. Your work is very pleasant to look at. Most of all, thank you for making this image available for use on my blog.

©2007 colorserenity.wordpress.com

All content on this blog is the property of the blog owner and protected by U.S. and international copyright laws and cannot be stored on any retrieval system, reproduced, reposted, displayed, modified or transmitted in any form, electronic or otherwise without written permission of the copyright owner except as noted below. A brief excerpt of content may be quoted as long as a link is provided back to the source page on this blog. No part of this blog is under a Creative Commons License.
Posted in art, color, color theory, graphic design, inspiration, photography, talent, wikimedia commons. Tags: , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Spotlight On A Website – fromoldbooks.org

December 16, 2007 — colorserenity

Today I am turning the spotlight on fromoldbooks.org. It is a wonderful website where you can find tons of old illustrations and other fragments from long forgotten books of the past.

“From Old Books” is run by a gentleman named Liam Quin. He has been collecting old books for years. At some point Liam decided to share some beautiful illustrations with the online audience. Out of that grew his current website. What a treat for the rest of us, right? It works for me!

Most images are in the public domain and ready for your use. The image below entitled “Star of Bethlehem” is one example of what you will find there.

starofbeth.png

Expect to be delighted with pages of text, hand drawn lettering, old book plates, black and white drawings and much more.

When it comes to color, you will find some truly beautiful antique images like this one. Images that would have remained inside their dusty book jackets were it not for the vision and generosity of one man.

They don’t make books like this any more with the old inks that are so colorful and vibrant. Most of the images at From Old Books are not in color, but you will still find a few very nice ones.

If you don’t want to labor at exploring the site, there is a random generator on the first page. Use it and just about any part from an old book will pop up. Now what could be easier than that?

One last thing. Apparently this project has proven quite an undertaking. If you would like to help defray costs with your PayPal account, you may use one of the “make a donation” buttons.

Thank you Liam for the wonderful work you are doing. And thank you for bringing us color from the past so that we might get a chance to view books the way they used to be.

©2007 colorserenity.wordpress.com

All content on this blog is the property of the blog owner and protected by U.S. and international copyright laws and cannot be stored on any retrieval system, reproduced, reposted, displayed, modified or transmitted in any form, electronic or otherwise without written permission of the copyright owner except as noted below. A brief excerpt of content may be quoted as long as a link is provided back to the source page on this blog. No part of this blog is under a Creative Commons License.
Posted in antiques, art, books, color, design, graphic design, illustration, inspiration, public domain. Tags: , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

Tutorial # 1 – Blending The Blue Shell

December 9, 2007 — colorserenity

 

If hope you enjoy creating digital color pallets because I am thrilled to share a revolutionary method I devised for obtaining great colors. It involves smoothing an image by blurring it. From that blurred image it is possible to harvest a coordinated “family” of hues.

blue-shellsm.jpg blue-shellsm-blr.jpg

The first sea shell has a lot of color variation. The contrasts between the dark veins, the medium blues and the light colors is well delineated. But there is too much difference in “key” or contrast of light and dark. This makes it difficult to obtain colors with a creamy look as shown in the color pallet below.

blueshell-colorpallet.gif

The second thumbnail image has been treated with a “Gaussian” blur in Photoshop. Blurring the image blends the underlying gray scales just enough to lessen the severity of the original photo. The colors run together and even out the key, softening the differences. Colors “puddle” into areas as shown in the second image – the image I obtained my pallet from. Once you find the smoothness you like, start taking samples of color. With practice you will learn how to map out areas which work well together.

icp-image1.jpg

If you don’t use Photoshop try FotoFlexer. It’s a free membership. The Style FX tab and “soften” option will blur your images.

To create pallets like the one shown above you must purchase the ICP color picker for around $20.00. It can store far more than 5 colors as shown. The link is in my right sidebar under “Tools”.

For a free color picker try color cop. The link is also in my side bar. The shell photo is courtesy of publicdomainpictures.net.

Update: I forgot to mention there are two 100% free open source image editors that will do a variety of tasks for you, including Gaussian blurs. If you don’t mind loading another piece of software, look into Paint.net. The link is in my “Tools” category on the right side of the screen. Paint.net is the name of the software. Not the site address. And it is by far the easiest software for this kind of work.

Then there is Inkscape. It is also a free tool, but more for vector drawing. I am a newbie to Inkscape, but I look forward to seeing what it can do. Check out some screen shots here from the Inkscape website. Thanks! :-)

©2007 colorserenity.wordpress.com

All content on this blog is the property of the blog owner and protected by U.S. and international copyright laws and cannot be stored on any retrieval system, reproduced, reposted, displayed, modified or transmitted in any form, electronic or otherwise without written permission of the copyright owner except as noted below. A brief excerpt of content may be quoted as long as a link is provided back to the source page on this blog. No part of this blog is under a Creative Commons License.

 

Posted in art, art tutorials, color, color scheming, colour lovers, creativity, design, digital art, graphic design, interior design, photoshop. Tags: , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

What’s In A Straw?

December 8, 2007 — colorserenity

 

Image of straws from trulyfreestock.com

Image of straws from trulyfreestock.com

straws-colorpallet.gif

This image is perfect for creating a muted color pallet. The shadow over the straws is just enough to offer up some calming tones. Using my ICP color picker I was able to come up with this pallet. I tested the pallet on kuler.adobe.com first to see if it looked good. The orange is slightly more vibrant than the other colors.

©2007 colorserenity.wordpress.com

All content on this blog is the property of the blog owner and protected by U.S. and international copyright laws and cannot be stored on any retrieval system, reproduced, reposted, displayed, modified or transmitted in any form, electronic or otherwise without written permission of the copyright owner except as noted below. A brief excerpt of content may be quoted as long as a link is provided back to the source page on this blog. No part of this blog is under a Creative Commons License.

 

Posted in art, color, color scheming, color theory, creativity. Tags: , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »