Learning to Swim, Illustrator CS2

Week 3 worked color blends. layers, layer blend modes, creating patterns and placing images (photos) in the art work which were prepared in Photoshop...along with a few stroke tips!

I am also taking Getting Your feet Wet with Sara at this time!

Instructor Sara Froehlich at
LVS on Line
Week 1	Week 4
Week 2	Week 5
Week 3	Week 6

Last summer, my daughter's family and I drove to Cleveland, Ohio to the visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. When we walked from the hotel, we found this display if musicians which, from a distance looked real...piano player, cellist and so on! As we got closer we realized they were just...statues! I used this player as the centerpiece for my Moonlight Concerts .

I prepared him in Photoshop by removing his background, saved him with a path, and no background! Placed him in the Illustrator file and used a few copies of him with blending modes...Difference seems to give some really interesting colors!

The back drop is a blended set of rectangles over which are stars on layers with various Blending Modes.

Text on a path with a musical font furthers the theme. stars and Lens Flare Moon also continue the theme

I enjoyed this kind of work and wanted to try some more. I used some photos from Blithewold Gardens here in Rhode Island. The fountain was selected with an ellipse selection and feathered quite a bit (40 pixels) and then that saved as was the stone musician. Same process for the frog whereas the waterlily was lifted totally from its background using the Magnetic Lasso in Photoshop. Blends of two ellipses were used to create the background oval. I made a pattern of a swirl which I used in the path turned to Outline Stroke .

I had wanted a text title so just on a chance, tried making a pattern from text, Blithewold Gardens, Rhode Island and it nicely made into a pattern. With more time I would have done some text warping first. I loaded it as fill for the rectangle above the whole image and then used a lighten blending mode which cleared the text off the fountain face, allowing to show over the other areas which were not so light in color. I had also placed some symbols (shell, dragonfly, butterfly)to enhance the garden theme.