Visual Alchemy: The Fine Art of Digital Montage

Visual Alchemy: The Fine Art of Digital Montage

by Catherine McIntyre
Released January 2014
Publisher(s): Routledge
ISBN: 9781135046149

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Book description

Catherine McIntyre, like many fine artists, created traditional art for decades before encountering the versatility of digital imaging technology. Free of her Rotring pens and scalpel, she now uses Photoshop to create her montages. Visual Alchemy explores McIntyre’s sources of inspiration as well as her methods, offering an aesthetic guide to composition, color, texture and all of the other means of communication that artists have at their disposal. While these concepts and techniques make use of Photoshop, they will apply to any digital imaging program and indeed to any medium, whether traditional or digital. Featuring McIntyre’s own art as well as that of artists around the globe, Visual Alchemy is an invitation to discover the artistic possibilities of picture making through digital montage.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half Title
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Table of Contents
  6. Preface
  7. Dedication
  8. INTRODUCTION
    1. Digital manipulation as a medium of expression
  9. THEMES
    1. Finding your subject
    2. Themes
  10. BEAUTY AND IDEA
  11. INFLUENCES
  12. INSPIRATION
    1. The influence of practice
    2. The influence of environment
  13. SUBJECTS
    1. The portrait
    2. The nude
    3. The landscape
    4. Architecture
    5. The natural world
    6. Still life
    7. Myth
    8. Abstraction
    9. Absence
  14. COLLECTING SOURCE MATERIAL
    1. Taking source photographs
    2. Treasure hunting
    3. Finding a model—portraits and nudes
    4. Photographing portraits and the nude
    5. Anatomy
    6. Still life—making your own subjects
    7. Building an archive
    8. Interiors
    9. Taking it outside
    10. Public and private collections
    11. Found photographs
    12. Non-photographed input—scanning and filters
    13. Using drawing and painting
  15. METHOD
    1. Technique
    2. Resolution and image quality
    3. Creating a background
    4. Selection
    5. Avoiding selection
    6. Evolution
    7. Shadows and light
    8. Combining textures
    9. Translucency
    10. Cloning
    11. Developing your image
    12. Practice
    13. Saving it and final touches
  16. COMPOSITION
    1. Proportion
    2. Geometry
    3. Gestalt theory
    4. Symmetry and asymmetry
    5. Complexity
    6. Focal point
    7. Achieving perspective
    8. Framing
  17. COLOR
    1. Color and space
    2. Color and mood
    3. Color gamuts
    4. Color contrast
    5. The absence of color–monochrome, sepia and color tints
  18. TEXTURE
    1. Finding textures
    2. Reflections and refractions
    3. Pattern
    4. Microscope to telescope—playing with scale
    5. Using texture
  19. TONE
    1. High- and low-key images
    2. Tonal contrast
  20. INVERSIONS
    1. Color and tone inversions
    2. Solarization
    3. Orientation
  21. DISTORTIONS
  22. DEVELOPING YOUR IMAGE
    1. Developing style
    2. When is a picture finished?
    3. Struggling for ideas?
  23. THE FINISHED IMAGE
    1. Archiving
    2. Getting your work “out there”
    3. Agents
    4. Permissions and copyright issues
  24. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
  25. Acknowledgements
  26. Model release form
  27. Further looking and reading
  28. Contributing artists
  29. Index

Product information

  • Title: Visual Alchemy: The Fine Art of Digital Montage
  • Author(s): Catherine McIntyre
  • Release date: January 2014
  • Publisher(s): Routledge
  • ISBN: 9781135046149