End of Semester Wrap Up

Today’s essential question: What should I work today to ensure the best possible grade for this course?

This is our last class of the Media Component of Foundations 1. You should catch up on any outstanding work.

Missing/Incomplete Projects:

• Daniel – Multiple Mes (final blog post with finished project + artist statement), Celebrity Prints (final blog post with 4 prints + artist statement), Room Design (final blog post with finished project + artist statement)
• Ashanti – Celebrity Prints (final blog post with 4 prints + artist statement)
• Island – Room Design (final blog post with finished project + artist statement)
• Darnell – Multiple Mes, Celebrity Prints, Room Design
• Brian – Room Design (final blog post with finished project + artist statement), Multiple Mes Artist Statement, Celebrity Prints (and artist statement)
• Maria – Room Design (final blog post with finished project + artist statement), Multiple Mes (final blog post with finished project + artist statement)
• Gretchen – Room Design (final blog post with finished project + artist statement)

Visual Arts Open Studio Hours

• Tuesday, January 22 – 7:30-10:30AM
• Thursday, January 24 – 7:30-10:30AM
• Friday, January 25 7:30-10:30AM

 

Interior Design Artist Statement

Today we will finish our room designs. We will then upload the finished PSD and PNG files to our shared Google Drive folders, and create a final blog post with a PNG of our finished room design and a 150-word artist statement.

Interested in learning more about interior design as a college major and career? Check out the following websites:

• Interior Design at RIT (4 year BFA program)
• Interior Design at MCC (2 year AAS program)

Artist Statement Brainstorming Questions:

• Describe your artwork
  • What does your artwork look like?
  • What art elements (ex. color, value, shape, line, texture, form) or principles are most obvious in your work?
• How did you create your art?
  • What media is your artwork made from?
  • Describe the process or steps you took to create your artwork.
• What is the big idea behind your artwork?
  • Who or what inspired your artwork?
  • What is your artwork about?
  • How do you want people to feel when they view your artwork?
• Overall thoughts
  • What did you learn from creating this artwork?
  • Is the final piece what you imagined? How so?
  • What did you do well? What could you have done better?

Extra Credit Opportunity: Donors Choose Thank You note

Write a thoughtful thank you note of at least 150 words thanking Donors Choose for the iPad. Write about projects you have made or plan to make, and how the iPad has provided you with opportunities you wouldn’t normally have.

Design Opportunity: North Winton Village Festival of the Arts

Poster design must be submitted by January 31st

Today we will:

• Finish our room designs
• Upload the finished PSD and PNG files to our shared Google Drive folders
• Create a new blog post with the following:
  • a PNG of our finish room design
  • a 150 word artist statement about the project

Interior Design Day 7: Details

Today’s essential question: What are some details that I can add to tie my room together?

Small details such as baseboards, molding, and ceiling textures are often overlooked, but can have a major impact in making a room feel more put together. What are some details that tie the room together in the examples below?

Image Credit: Jackson

Image Credit: Jordan

Image Credit: Natalie

Image Credit: Shannon

Image Credit: Troy

Today we will:

• Continue working on our rooms
• Upload both the PSD and PNG of our progress to our Google Drives
• Create a new blog post with the following:
  • a PNG of our progress
  • what you worked on during today’s class, and what you still need to do to finish your room

Interior Design Day 6: In Progress Critique

Today’s essential questions: What are some things that are working well in the featured student examples below? What could be improved to make them even better? What ideas do these give you about your own project?

In Progress Room Designs

Image Credit: Natalie

Image Credit: Genevieve

Image Credit: Alyssa

Image Credit: Amber

Image Credit: Daniel

Image Credit: Troy

Image Credit: Gretchen

Image Credit: Harry

Image Credit: Island

Image Credit: Jordan

Image Credit: Jackson

Image Credit: Jack-Henry

Image Credit: Vegas

Image Credit: Shannon

Image Credit: Maria

Compare your rooms against the project requirements during the critique.

Project Requirements:

• Created in Adobe Photoshop from the provided blank room template
• Includes a minimum of 10 different images
• Floor and walls have been covered with texture or altered in color
• Contains a light source (lamp, fireplace, windows, etc)
• Follows one point perspective
• All objects in the room go together to create a cohesive style
• High Quality Craftsmanship
  • No pixelation
  • Background cleanly removed
  • Images photographed from appropriate angles
  • Lighting matches up
  • Scale and proportion makes sense

Today we will:

• Critique our room designs so far with 1-2 classmates
• Continue working on our rooms, incorporating any feedback we received during today’s in progress critique
• Upload both the PSD and PNG of our progress to our Google Drives
• Create a new blog post with the following:
  • a PNG of our progress
  • the feedback you received during today’s peer critique
  • what you worked on during today’s class, and what you still need to do to finish your room

Interior Design Day 5: Adding Scenic Windows

Today’s essential question: How can I add windows with a view to my room design?

Today we will learn how to add windows (and any scene we desire behind those windows) to our room.

How to Add Scenic Windows to a Room

1. Open your window image and drag it into your room file:
   
2. Adjust the perspective of the window with the scale and distort tools (Edit -> Transform -> Scale, and Edit -> Transform -> Distort)
   
3. Duplicate the Layer (Layer -> Duplicate Layer). Hide the lower duplicated layer by clicking on the eye in the layer palette.
   
4. Remove the inside of the window with the tool of your choice:
   
5. Open the scene you would like to go in your window.
   Drag the scenic image into your room file.
   Make sure the scene layer is below the windows layer in your layers palette:
   
6. Adjust the perspective of the scene so it matches the perspective of the window with the scale and distort tools
   (Edit -> Transform -> Scale, and Edit -> Transform -> Distort)
   Remove any part of the scenic image that does not belong in the window with the Photoshop tool of your choice:
   
7. Make the lower window layer visible in the layers palette and select it so it turns blue:
   
8. Adjust the opacity so the glass looks see through:
   

This technique also works for doorways, closets, trophy cases, etc:

Today we will:

• Continue working on our rooms
• Save our room files as both a Photoshop (.PSD) file and PNG
• Upload both the .PSD and .PNG files to our shared Google Drive folders
• Create a new blog post with the following:
  • a PNG of what our room design looks like so far
  • A few sentences describing what is going well as well, what your next steps will be, and what you are finding challenging.

Room Design Day 4: Ceiling Texture

Today’s essential question: How can I add visual interest to my room with a ceiling?

Ceilings are often overlooked in interior design, but the right ceiling details will tie a room together.
Look at the ceiling types below. Which ones do you think would work with your room design?

Tray Ceiling

Coffered Ceiling

Beadboard Ceiling

Cathedral Ceiling

wood cathedral ceiling chiefly Open concept living room vaulted ceiling with beam detail

Exposed Beams

Today we will:

• Continue building our rooms in Photoshop
• Save our image as BOTH PSD and a PNG
• Upload the PSD and PNGs to our shared Google Drive folders
• Create a new blog post with a PNG our progress

Interior Design Day 3: Adjusting Perspective to Add Texture to Floors and Walls

Today’s essential question: How can I use various features in the transform tool (perspective, distort, scale) to add detail to my floor and walls?

Today we will download the blank room source file and begin building our rooms in Photoshop.

Download the Blank Room Source File

1. Log into your school Google Drive.
2. Click on “Shared with Me” on the left column.
3. Right click on “empty-room-source-file.jpg” and select “Download.”

OR Click here to download the file. (You must be logged into your school Google account to be able to access it.)

How to Add a Texture to Your Floor Using the Perspective Tool

1. Drag your floor texture into your room (do not use the “place” feature!)
   
2. Edit-> Transform -> Scale. Scale your floor so it fills the space below where the floor meets the wall. (This is one time that it is ok not to hold down shift, because distorting the dimensions of the floor texture in this step might actually make it look more realistic later.)
   
3. Edit -> Transform -> Perspective.
   Drag the front corners of the floor outward to transform your floor so it has the correct dimensions.
   
4. If your floor still feels a bit off, you can adjust individual points by going to Edit -> Transform -> Distort.

How to Add a Texture to Your Walls Using the Perspective Tool

You can use these same tools to add texture to the wall.

1. Drag your wall texture image into the room file and use the perspective, transform, and distort tools to make it look like it fits on the wall:
   
2. Once the first wall looks correct, you can duplicate the layer (Layer->Duplicate Layer), and flip it (Edit -> Transform -> Flip Horizontal) and then move it to the other side of the room.
   
3. Duplicating layers will also help you fill the back wall. For example, simply scaling the image on the back wall may look strange if you force the bricks to fit the space.
   
4. However, you can scale the image to be the appropriate height (Edit -> Transform -> Scale).
   Once again, it may be ok to distort the dimensions of the image in this case.
   
   Then duplicate the layer (Layer -> Duplicate Layer).
   Flip the image so you will have a seamless tile (Edit -> Transform -> Flip Horizontal) and move the image so it connects with your other layer.
   
5. At the bottom of your layers palette, click on the folder icon  to make a new folder.
   Name it “brick wall”.
   Drag all the brick layers into this folder. That will help keep your layers organized.
   

Further uses for the perspective/distort tools:

• make a poster, framed picture, or mirror look like it is hanging on one of the side walls
• add windows to one of the side walls

Today we will:

• Begin dragging images into our room and using the perspective and distort tools to make them look like they realistically belong in the room.  Make sure you name your layers!
• Save our image as BOTH PSD and a PNG
• Upload the PSD and PNGs to our shared Google Drive foldes
• Create a new blog post with a PNG our progress

Interior Design Day 2: Tips & Tricks

Today’s essential question: Why is it more important to find images taken from the correct angle vs images that contain the correct colors?

Today we will learn several tips & tricks that will help with our room design project.
We will download very large images (at least 2MP) and remove the images from their backgrounds. We will save these files as PNGs so the backgrounds remain transparent and upload them to both our blogs and Google Drives.

Angle of View

When downloading images, consider the point of view from which the image was chosen.
For example, this couch would look great against the back wall:

while this couch would work better against a side wall:

If you have to choose between an image that is your ideal color, or one that has been taken from the perfect angle, choose the perfect angle. Trying to fake the perfect angle with Photoshop’s perspective tool will give you something like this (notice how we should be able to see the side of the armrest):

Changing Color

On the other hand, it is very easy to change the color of an object in Photoshop.
In the example below, I will change the color of the couch:

Duplicate the couch onto a new layer (Layer->Duplicate layer) and use the eraser tool until only the part whose color you wish to change remains.

Then go to Image -> Adjustments -> Hue/Saturation and adjust the sliders until you are happy with the result.

See how well that works?

Adding Color

Hue/Saturation will not work for anything that is white, gray, or black, since those colors are desaturated and technically have no hue.
Luckily, it is very simple to add color to a neutral object.
We will paint the white walls in the image below using the Color Balance effect:

Duplicate the layer with your object and use the eraser tool until only the part whose color you wish to change remains.

Then go to Image -> Adjustments -> Color Balance and adjust the sliders until you are happy with the result.

In this case, I have dragged the cyan slider as far as it will go, but the wall colors are not as intense as I would like them to be:

In such a case, we may need to apply the Color Balance effect more than once.
Simply hit “OK,” then go to the top of the screen, and once again go to Image -> Adjustments -> Color Balance:

This is what the walls look like after a second round:

Today we will:

• Remove the backgrounds from any images we may want to include in our rooms.
• Save these images as both PSDs and PNGs and upload them to our shared Google Drive folders.
• Adjust the color of any objects (if necessary)
• DO NOT TRY TO BUILD YOUR ROOM. This will force you to save your images with their backgrounds removed in separate files.
• Create a new blog post with the following:
  • PNGs of any images whose backgrounds you removed today or whose colors you changed.
  • A few sentences describing what is going well as well, what your next steps will be, and what you are finding challenging.

New Project: 1 Pt Perspective Room Design

Today’s essential question: How can I design an interesting interior space?

Interior Design Project

Today we will begin our interior design project. We will research various interior design styles and create a new blog post with a “mood board” of the look we hope to achieve.

We will start with the blank room template below and turn it into an interior space of our choosing. You may want to consider, but are not limited to, spaces such as a dream bedroom or dorm room, an art studio, a coffee shop or restaurant, a music venue, or a store.

Blank room template:

I have purposefully not provided the high-res version of the room template today to force you to spend all class on your project planning post. No one should be working in Photoshop today!

Here are some examples created by past SOTA students:

Project Requirements:

• Created in Adobe Photoshop from the provided blank room template
• Includes a minimum of 10 different images
• Floor and walls have been covered with texture or altered in color
• Contains a light source (lamp, fireplace, windows, etc)
• Follows one point perspective
• All objects in the room go together to create a cohesive style
• High Quality Craftsmanship
  • No pixelation
  • Background cleanly removed
  • Images photographed from appropriate angles
  • Lighting matches up
  • Scale and proportion makes sense
• Final Blog post includes:
  • PNG of final image
  • 150 word Artist Statement

Today we will

• Research potential interior design styles we may use in our project
• Create a new blog post with the following (use Giacomo’s post as a guide):
  • A minimum of 20 images we may use in our room design project. Make sure these images are large enough not to look pixelated! These images should cover the following things:
    • lighting
    • furniture
    • architectural details (stairs, pillars, molding, wall and ceiling textures)
    • floor materials and coverings
    • windows and window coverings
    • art and accessories
    • intended color scheme/style
    • Remember, you are starting with the plain image at the top of the blog post, so you will have to add every detail in the room yourself.
  • A paragraph describing the intended purpose of the room, the style you are trying to create, and how the items you have posted will contribute to the room

Catch Up Day

Today’s essential question: What outstanding assignments do I need to complete by the end of today’s class?

Today we will catch up on missing/incomplete assignments. Here is what you should have completed by the end of today’s class:

• Publish a final blog post with your set of 4 coordinating celebrity prints and a 150 word artist statement about the prints. Troy and Jordan are the only people who are done with this assignment.
• Publish a final blog post with your finished Multiple Mes project and a 150 word artist statement about the Multiple Mes project. The following people still need to publish this post: Daniel, Darnell, Brian, Amber, Maria.