Sunday, June 30, 2013

Photography Report 8 (I think XD) : taking photos of pets/animals

If you have been following me for sometime now, you will know that I have about 10 billion pictures of our cats...and some of other animals....but mostly cats ;)
Soooo-today I'm going to give you a few tipps on how these pictures of your beloved pets or zoo animals or wild animals will turn out best!
Rule no.1: Basically the most important thing is that both you and the animal are comfortable. You can never force an animal to be cute and calm so that you can take pictures of it. If it runs away, then try it another time. The worst thing you can do is chase after it and force it to be on the picture some how. The pictures won't turn out well and it is not good for your relationship either :) By the way-food is always a good motivation ;)

 Rule no. 2 Go down so that you are on eye level with the cat or the dog or whatever it is you are taking a picture of. Nothing is worse than a great view on the top of the head and fur. Noo-you want the face and you can only get that, if you meet the animal down there.


Rule no. 3 Do it a lot. As with all things-it takes time until you get the hang of them. For the animal and for you. For example at the beginning Salsa (The cutie pie below ;D) was really scared of the camera and the noises it makes but now she doesn't give a damn. :) Also if you do it a lot at some point you will know when the animal is "in the mood" and if this is so-taking pictures is way more easy!
Rule no. 4 A high shutter speed is often desirable as well. If the animal does something awfully cute and then your picture is blurred you will be furious! So  simply use a high shutter speed from the beginning and this won't happen to you! :D



 Rule no. 5: Experiment with settings, colors, positions, lightings everything. A sleeping cat will essentially always be and look like a sleeping cat, you don't need 10 pictures of that. You can have endless fun with animal pictures, if you always come up with new ideas. You could try giving the animal some kind of prop-anything you can think of.


Anyway-I hope this helps and I can't wait seeing your awesome animal photos! ;)
xoxo Alex

Saturday, June 29, 2013

Awesome Monroe inspired hairstyle

What'up peoples :) doiing good everyone?
I usualyl have a photo or something which I draw so when I draw from my head, the drawings aren't so great but still for some reason I like them better because then it can actually theoretically be exactly the way you want it to be..
So anyway-I hope you like it!
xoxo Alex

Friday, June 28, 2013

Wildbeest

Ok-I was actually torn whether I should show you this or not-because honestly I seriously don'T like it, but I mean I've posted shitty drawings before so I guess I shouldn't complain.
Anyways-the composition is totally messed up and I don't like the way the colors at the bottom turned out.


xoxo Alex

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Blue Wildbeest

Yep-you read correctly-I have no clue why this beest is called blue-because on the photo I had it is not...ah well :D I thought it would look cool in watercolors and tried to come up with a mess free way to color it....

I failed...See for yourself!
But the head didn't turn out that bad as it looks on that picture actually :D
For some reason it reminds me of those cave paintings...I wonder what the rest will be like when it is dry! :D
xoxo Alex

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Looking into the closet

Heeelllo guys :)
The next part of the Art Project :D (By the way-just as a hint-these aren't in the proper order yet :P)
This is the second to last one :D I can't wait to show the whole thing when it is done! :P
xoxo Alex

Monday, June 24, 2013

Work in Progress Midnight Fan

Hello hello hello! :D
The fan itself is now done...only the background is missing :D
I don't really know where this is going...I wonder what it'll look like when it is done...
xoxo Alex

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Photography Report 8: Experimenting with Back-Light

Hi everyone :D
The idea for this photography came from a photograph. The other cat (not the red one who is so photogenic, but the black one who is always difficult to get on pictures because he is so shy and you can never really see much because of the lack of contrasts in his fur...) was being awfully cute the other night on my desk so I took the camera and started taking pictures. It was dark outside and my desk light was on so there was very unusual lighting and in some pictures, where Floyd was sniffing the lense, the camera pointed into the light...
something intrigues me about this picture...nothing is sharp apart fromt he light circles and for somereason it is kind of cool don't you think?
So I carried on experimenting with back lit pictures which is something all of you ought to do 'cause it is so fun and you can take awesome artistic pictures using it! :D
If you keep your lens hood on (the thing which you can screw on and off at the front of your camera XD) you will have more of the circles you can see on the photos that I took-while if you don't want that kind of artistic effect you can reduce them using the lens hood.


Here are some more shots :D So have fun experimenting and I'd love to see your results! ;)
xoxo Alex

Friday, June 21, 2013

Midnight drawing work in progress

Hey there :D I was just drawing and listening to awesome music (the new album by Artcon :D)-give them a listen ;)-when I realised that it was kinda late :P
Don't really know where this is going...:D 
xoxo Alex

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Art Project: Cyclist

Well here's a more plausible scene from my art project ;)
night'y'night!
xoxo Alex

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Art Project: UFO

 Let's see if you guys can guess what this is :D
Alllright allright allright-I'll tell you. It is a Ufo from the perspective of a wollen hat...:P
xoxo Alex

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Konrad Klapheck

This post will be again something a little different than usual :D A little more text.
So I was at this art lecture today, it was part of our art course for school. To be honest I would have never gone if it hadn't been compulsory but I think I did learn some interesting things which I thought might be interesting for you to.
via

So first about the lecture. It was basically the curator of a new exhibition which is going on in Düsseldorf at the moment which is a retrospective on the German artist Konrad Klapheck. He is from the area around Düsseldorf but apparently there hadn't been an exhibition about him here for quite some time so they decided it would be nice to have one.
Klaphecks works themselves are in my opinion not exactly spectacular. During is career as an artist he was very consistent in his choice of topics and the objects he drew often repeated himself. As an example for that-he drew over 40 typewriter and over 30 sewing machines in his roughly 300 works. Other objects he favoured were for example shower heads or shoetrees but recently he started drawing figures, women and jazz musicians as well. What I like about the drawings are that at least for nonschooled eyes very straightforward an uncluttered. His first signficant painting was simply a typewriter. Maybe I like that because it makes me feel better about myself when I simply draw trees-like yesterday :D I'm sure some art professor could interpret a lot into my trees XD
There are several things that bothered me though. Klapheck drew a lot of modern machinery, or machinery that was modern when he painted it. Now for me the medium he chose for that wouldn't fit-I don't associate oil painting with moderness at all. Also mainly the composition of his paintings make them look surreal, however he doesn't use bold color blocking to underline this feeling, but executes his paintings in a very naturalistic and lifelike style. Of course that adds contrast and all that-but I don't get it. And I don't think it looks nice either XD
The main thing that I didn't like was the lecturer though. Maybe this is because I'm a big fan of Hundertwasser though, who forbid the people who guide through is exhibitions to "explain" the paintings to the viewer. When I listen to a lecture like this, I ask myself-how the heck does he know that (this happens in my art class too by the way). Of course this curator knew a lot about Klapheck and talked to him about his works too, but I still don't like it at all when others "explain" what the artist was trying to say. If you can explain it in words, then where is the freakin point in painting or drawing it? And who knows whether the artist was actually explicitly trying to say one specific thing. The painting might mean something to him, which others cannot understand, but at the same time some one else might interpret it in a different way. Every viewer has different associations to a painting, so who is any lecturer or art critic to say that only one particular interpretation is right?
If anyone the artist himself is in the position to say something about the meaning of his paintings, but otherwise I think it is up to the viewer to decide what he thinks he sees or understands from it.
And I mean there is always the possibility that there is no meaning, right? People alway say, that a good painting or drawing has a meaning, but why is that good? It might be more satisfactory for the artist to create something that is not meaningless but what difference does it make?
Good night :) 
xoxo Alex



Monday, June 17, 2013

Zen Trees

I have found recently that drawing trees is extremely relaxing...You don't have to think about what you're doing, just observe and put it to paper, meaning that your mind is free to wonder. Very interesting things you come up with I must say ;)
This tree is in our garden and I can see it from our window.. I love the way how it kind of looks sureal because  it is only the part which is sticking out of another tree-they kind of grew into each other :D
xoxo Alex

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Photography Report: how to add the extra spice

So uhm-I was thinking today about what I could do as a photography report and it came to me that maybe you guys are interested in how I make my photos look the way I do...rarely do my finished versions look the same as the originals :D Some of you will call this cheating, I just call it improving :P Yeeeah we are talking photoshop. Well technically not photoshop-don't have the money for that-but there is a great freeware version Paint.NET which is very similar and it does most jobs you will need-and there are lots of plugins you can download too! :D
The basics of photoshop are definetely cropping and changing the colors which is why we will start of with those today :)

Cropping is very very simple. All you do is choose the selection tool from the tools menu,
click and drag the cursor over the part of the photo you want and press the crop button in the menu at the top!










My tipp for all you people unfamiliar with photoshop-cropping is essential! There is basically no photograph I keep without cropping it, because it can really improve the focus and add a lot of tension to you photographs.
What you have to remember though-all of these irregular shapes are very handy when they are digital but when you print picture there are often set formats you have to keep-so keep what you want to do with the pictures after you have cropped them!


Changing the Colors is a little more tricky. There are several different ways of changing the colors of a photograph and you basically have to experiment which you like best. The way I do it, is change everything, try everything and experiment with everything. Yes this is time consuming but it is fun too! :D
The first method is using the color and saturation tool which you can find under the tab "corrections".














It is fairly straightforward-the first bar is for what color tone you have-you could make everything red or blue or pink if you like. Second bar is changing the saturation of the colors. If you put it way to the left it will become black and white, on the other side is very colorful :D
The second method is using the curve tool which is under the same menu.
The cool thing about this tool is that you can either set it to light density and change the contrast (the most common shape for the curve here is the S shape you can see here)
ooor you can set it to RGB and then change the colors individually :D
The last and trickiest method to change your colors is using the manual modification menu which you can aso find under the tab "corrections".
There you basically change the histrogramm of the photo. I can't tell you exactly what this is our how it works I just know that you can do awesome stuff when changing :D Here you can also adjust every color individually which is awesome to ;)
One thing to remember when adjusting photos though-never forget to keep a copy of the original! If you ruin it and accidently press save you will go maad if you don't still have the original...trust me :D it has happened XD
xoxo Alex

Saturday, June 15, 2013

My dream hairstyle

Speaking of awesome hairstyles :D I will keep this picture until I work up the courage to cut my hair short...and then I'll tell the hairdresser-I want this :D *---*


I'm not sure whether I'd keep it in pink 'n blue or choose some other color :D but stilll XD
xoxo Alex

Friday, June 14, 2013

Afro

This is something I've been wanting to try for ages XD
What do you guys think?!
 xoxo Alex

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Art Project: Birthday Cake

Here's another part of the series :D Yeeees I know it is not really getting more logical but you'll See!!!
xoxo Alex

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Doggie

Just a dog I found in the paper today between the photos of the flood in southern Germany (all my support to the victims by the way!)...
xoxo Alex

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Aliens

Weeell-this is the second part of the series from my art project for school XD
Aliens examining a wollen hat....yes it is a little abstract but I promise once you know all the piece it will be logical (maybe :D).
xoxo Alex

Monday, June 10, 2013

Photos from Zollverein

Hey guys :D I still owe you some photos! I took these at the "Eifel-tower of the Ruhrgebiet" if you will (:P) which is Zeche Zollverein!






I love how each of the horses on the merry-go-round had it's on name by the way...XD
xoxo Alex

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Photography Report-double exposure :D

Hi there :D I still owe you a photography report this weekend :P
Because lots of you like this pic so much, I decided to do a kind of tutorial for it :D
The concept is called double exposure and it originally came from analog photography. Everytime you forgot (or in the present tense for all you hipsters :P) forget to move on the film (can you say that in english?!) further on before taking the next picture, you ended up with two pictures together :D If you do it right you can achieve a great effect!
In the times of digital photography, you can easily recreate this effect by putting two different photos on different layers in photoshop (or paint.net for those who don't want to spend that much money ;D) and then changing the opacity of the top layer. This way you can also influence how much you want to see of each picture...
The trick to this is that you take one picture with a prominent object and then one which is more like a texture, or a background so that it kind of fits together :D But most of all you have to experiment and you'll always get something good! :D


Some of these pics are part of a different series I shot today-I promise they'll appear here soon too! :D
xoxo Alex

Saturday, June 8, 2013

Assortment of photos (a.k.a flowers!)

I've been told that I take too many pictures of flowers...But they are incredibly unselfish and grateful models..you can change their colors until they look nothing like what they do in real life, they don't move away, you can take as long as you like taking their picture and they are beautiful too...
So I tell you-if you want me to take pics of other stuff, tell me what and I'll do so...no seriously-I'm always open to try new stuff and thankful for any advice ;)
Meanwhile-enjoy some flower pics...:D




no this ain't a flower :D just an übercool elephant with some pots XD
Enjoy your weekend!
xoxo Alex

Friday, June 7, 2013

Art Project: Thrift Store

Hi there :D This is a little drawing that is part of a bigger art project I'm working on for school at the moment! :)
There are probably going to be a few more of these on here soon so get ready! :D
xoxo Alex

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Stern Girl finished piece

Hi guys :D So finally it has been done :D She is finished....
I'm not exactly sure whether I like it or not. The whole composition is kind of messed up because her dress is so dark, her face so light, the floor so colorful and bold and then the windows behind her soft again...Contrast-yes okay-but then they need to be spcaed out and not like here-dark at the bottom light at the top....I guess I could just make it darker at the top but then again I would probably make it worse so I'll just leave it as it is XD
It is so weird when you've been working on one of your pieces for so long and then in the end...you don't like it...
Ah wel the next will be better (and definetely not of someone wearing a black dress! XD)
xoxo Alex

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Stern girl work in progress part 3

Hi there :D Don'T worry-the watercolor won't stay raw and unfinished looking for long :D Details will be added sooon! :)
see ya tomorrow! :D <3
xoxo Alex

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