Image making also involves image manipulation. Acquiring an image is only the first step, it's almost always necessary to modify the image to get it to work at its best in the context of the design.
Image manipulation includes:
Designers use different visualizing techniques when drawing out their ideas:
An image created with line, using a tool such as a stylus, pen, or pencil, with no solid area or shading effects other than cross-hatching. Known as line art, it's easy to print as it doesn't require half-tones - although this is barely an issue anymore.
Emphasis is given to the outline of an object or figure to its specific contour, to render mass and form.
Basic shape rendering of a form using flat fields of color.
A form is depicted through varying tonal values (through shading rather than line).
A rapid visualization technique; a quick, rough drawing method used to communicate concepts and to present layouts and plans.
Drawing to define three-dimensional spaces or objects. Like Tonal Drawing, but probably more detailed and photo-realistic. Photo Realism artists like Nathan Walsh and Ralph Goings
Simple Stylized rendering of figures and situations. Japanese Manga, the Marvel Universe, Roz Chast.
Drawing that emphasizes particular expressions and features. Like the late great Al Hirschfield.
How an image is presented affects what it communicates. This is where thinking about the rectangle the design lives inside comes in. Considerations include:
The blank space surrounding the visual on the top, left, bottom, and/or right.
A thin stripe or line used to separate text elements.
A band running along the edge of an image. Our text says "A border should never overwhelm or distract from what it frames". I say, never say never...
The act of cutting an image to use only part of it. An artform in itself.
A visual that extends off the edge or edges of a page.
Colors are the mother tongue of the subconscious.
Carl Jung
Color is subjective, cultural, and elusive. No one knows if the way you see blue is the same way I see blue. Yet there are ways of talking about color and the relationships between color.
It exists in both the physical world and in the digital. Let's start with the physical...
As we know, any single color has three distinct properties:
We see color as light that hits the back of our eyes. Our eyes have three kind of receptors that are sensitive to three spectra of light: Red, Green and Blue
Increasing Energy
Increasing Wavelength
Each of the lines in the image represent the responsiveness of the associated cones in your retina.
If you look at the color wheel, do you find it odd that it goes around in a circle, yet the visible spectrum doesn't? I have no idea why...
But here's a good article on the phenomenology of it all: Color Wheels.
Here's and interesting perceptual trick.
When light bounces off the paper and colors are absorbed out of the light to reflect back a color into our eyes. Thus it is known as Subtractive Color.
When light shines directly into the back of our eyes. Different colors of light add together to make a color, thus it is know as Additive Color.
What we all learned in grade school
The three primaries, colors that can't be mixed from other colors
The three secondaries, colors mixed from the primaries
The six tertiaries, colors mixed from adjacent primaries and secondaries:
Red Orange, Yellow Orange, Yellow Green, Blue Green, Blue Purple, Red Purple.
Or Vermillion, Amber, Chartreuse, Teal, Violet, Magenta.
Colors on opposite sides of the color wheel
Any set of hues next to each other on the color wheel
Any set colors whose hue remains the same
Any three colors whose hues are 60° apart
Complementary pairs of compound colors. In other words, two sets of two colors, each set of two is adjacent to each other while the sets themselves are on opposite sided of the color wheel
Different values of light and darkness of a single hue.
Colors have an innate temperature. The colors of fire and glowing coals (red, orange, yellow) sit on the warm side. Colors of the daytime sky and water sit on the cool. They don't quite split 180° apart, but just a little off, between red-violet and violet, and between yellow-green and green. (In other words, there's more warm colors than cool).
Grays can come in warm and cool variations, which can be quite elegant when used thoughtfully
Our text makes the ridiculous statement that it's best practice to use a color palette that is either cool or warm
. I don't agree, using a cool shadow in opposition to an object lit with warm light is an old trick used by many great painters. Take Wayne Thiebaud for example
Our text lists these concepts and approaches to color as the best practice,
or what's considered in the design industry as the most professional approach:
inappropriate
Continue working on Exercise 6: Drawing for Designers
Graphic Design Solutions: Chapter 7: Compositions (5th edition, pp 143-170)