Digital Surface Design

For my birthday I treated myself to a DVD by Diane Doran called "Digital Surface Design" click here Diane Doran I love her color and the patterns she creates with this technique. I watched it completely through on the TV and made notes, my DVD player on the computer was messed up. What fun it is!! She shows you how to blend photograph colors for interesting backgrounds, to replicate hand dyeing techniques. Then the part I was really interested in was how to put the patterns of grasses or leaves onto the layers.

I worked with some different types of grasses and two different gingko leave photographs. It took me a while to get started as I only have Photoshop Elements 6 and she was working with version 11. But once I got some of the color choosing figured out, I was able to make simple backgrounds, I did not fuss with more detailed ones.

Then doing the "brushes" for printing your design was actually very easy. She did not go into how to create a good quality image, by increasing the contrast and converting to black and white, so that you have a good silhouette to work with. But I had already played with that on my own.

Once I got the hang of things, after a bit of trial and error, I had a lot of fun. Of course the color ink on my computer sucked itself dry, it was low to begin with, and I only printed one onto fabric, than I thought I would just do 4x6 prints on paper to see how they looked.

What fun it was, I still have not tried the different "Style" choices, "textures" and lots of other things, but it was a good start. I did learn how to make different size images, to layer them and make different layers to overlap color changes. Now I need to go through my photos to see what would be useful with this technique. I know I have lots of birds on branches, seed pods, berries, and other natural elements that would make good silhouettes. I did make a few notes as I worked out my issues, so the trick will be if I can do it again tomorrow, without having forgotten every thing I learned today. Now to run to the store for more color ink, treat some more fabric with bubble jet set, and run around with my camera taking useful pictures.

I will also link this with Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click on the badge in the right hand column to see what other creative textile peolpe are doing.