Tài liệu Drawing by Lauren Jarrett and Lisa Lenard- P9 doc

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Chapter 25 ➤ Express Yourself

Whether it’s storage, matting, or framing, here’s some of the best

information you’ll find for taking care of your drawings after the

drawing’s over.

On Storage

You’ve spent a lot of time on your work, so treat it right when

you’re finished, too. Portfolios keep your work safe, clean, and flat,

as it should be. Paper storage drawers are expensive and take up

space, but they’re well worth it if you’ve got the money and the

room.

The important thing is to store your work somewhere where it will

be kept in its natural state: flat. In addition, you’ll want to keep it

away from damaging sun rays and—even more damaging—water,

so next to the garage window or in the basement next to the

sump pump are probably not the best places.

Matting and Framing

Less is more. Simple is as simple does. White is right. Art, or its mat, should not be expected

to match the couch.

In other words, forget the fuschia or lime green mats to match the flowers on the rug. Your

work will look best in a simple white or off-white mat and a simple wood frame that can be

more or less the color of the other woods where you plan to hang it. The important thing is

that the choices help the drawing; it will find its place on the wall.

Turning a New Page: Fine Art Meets Tech Art

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Arles is bleak, and the blasted mistral keeps me indoors. I go days without speaking a word to

anyone. Thank you for the money. With it, I bought a blazing tangerine iMac, which I am E￾mailing you on right now. You were right, the Hotmail account was very simple to set up and

free, so I can still survive on five francs a day.

—Noah Baumbach, “Van Gogh in AOL,” The New Yorker

Can you imagine Vincent with an iMac? He probably would have felt more connected and

maybe less troubled. One thing’s for certain—the high-tech world is having an effect on al￾most everyone. You can run but you can’t hide, so jump in—you might like it more than

you ever imagined.

Creating a Virtual Sketchbook

Creating a virtual sketchbook is as simple as a few peripherals for your computer—a scanner

and a color printer. Which scanner and printer you buy will depend on both your budget

and your desires. We leave it to your local big-box computer store to help you with the

myriad choices, but we can help you with the basic how-to’s once you’ve got your equip￾ment.

Try Your Hand

Start with a light color for your

planning lines. Lavender works

very well because it blends into

almost any color, and it can

become a shadow if the lines are

outside your objects as you de￾fine them more closely.

Part 7 ➤ Enjoying the Artist’s Life

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Scanning Your Images

Most flat scanners are designed to read images up to 81

/2" × 14", so if your drawings are larg￾er than that, you’ll have to scan them in sections. The process may be unwieldy and the re￾sults, less-than-desirable reproductions of your drawings. If you’ve been doing a lot of your

sketching on the road, though, you probably did so in a small enough sketchbook.

Is there a drawing that you particularly like? Start with that one. Tear it carefully from your

sketchbook and then lay it flat on your scanner and scan it in (you’ll need your manufac￾turer’s instructions for this, and there’s no way we can help you with those).

After you’ve scanned your image, the program will ask you to save it. Give it a name you’ll

remember it by: “Laguna Sunset” or “Fisherman on the Gila” are two good examples.

Now, you can look at your work with the imaging program that came with your scanner, or,

if you decide you don’t like that program, another that you’ve downloaded off the World

Wide Web. One of the things that you can do, once the image of your drawing is saved to

your computer, is manipulate it. That means you can erase those extra scribbles in the cor￾ner without fear of going through the paper, or you can add some lines to the fisherman’s

face. Don’t get carried away, though—we think real drawing’s a lot more fun than virtual

drawing.

Printing Your Images

You can also print your images, of course, once you’ve scanned them into your computer

and saved them. If your drawings are in black and white, you won’t even need a color

printer. Even the popular—and inexpensive—bubble-jet printers do a great job with graphic

images, which is what your drawing is.

E-Mailing with Your Own Art

Now that you’ve got it on your computer, you may want to e-mail your art to all your

friends. So long as attachments are an option with your particular e-mail, e-mailing your art

is simple: Save it as a small .jpg file, add it to your e-mail as an attachment, and then write

your note. Poof! Off it goes to annoy one or all of your friends—just like all the jokes that

they’ve already seen three times.

Creating Your Own Illustrated Home Page

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

I’ve started to work again. Check out my home page (and note new address). I designed it

with a soft malachite green, a fiery iMac raspberry and a troubled Prussian lilac. I may’ve

mastered the brushstroke and HTML, but am a novice with Java. There’s always more to

learn.

—Noah Baumbach, “Van Gogh in AOL,” The New Yorker

There are classes in HTML and Java, two of the most popular Web languages, and there are

editorial programs that make it much easier to create a Web site of your own. You can also

customize the home page on your Internet program. One example to take a look at is

Lauren’s home page, the first page of her Web site at www.laurenjarrett.com. Check it out!

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Chapter 25 ➤ Express Yourself

Creating your own illustrated home page is now as simple as following the instructions

your e-mail provider probably has set up on your ISP home page. You don’t even have to

know any special programs anymore; the directions will walk you through it all, including

how to download the art you’ve scanned and saved onto your own illustrated home page.

If you’re interested in something truly professional-looking, however, we’d highly recom￾mend a Web designer. You get what you pay for, after all.

How to Learn About Drawing

on the Computer

We may be the old-fashioned, middle-aged artist/teacher types—

although we are anything but old-fashioned or middle-aged—but

we think you should do your drawing first, and then scan it.

You will not really learn to see and draw anything on a computer.

Sure, you can make pictures, but it’s just not the same as direct

hands-on drawing.

Drawing with a mouse or stylus and art pad is not the same as

drawing with a pencil. There is not the same connection when you

can’t look at the hand that’s drawing and see what’s going on. In

addition, the feel of a fine piece of paper and the internal dialogue

that you have while you’re relating to your subject, seeing, and

drawing are basic pleasures, time for your inner self, and the path

to your own unique creative soul.

Computer Art Programs You Can Learn

Now then, the tirade is over. Computer graphics programs are a dif￾ferent story, because they are a way of using your drawings after

you have made them, for everything from cards, presents, posters,

and all kinds of commercial uses, should you be so inclined.

Adobe Photoshop and Quark are two great programs for using art.

Lauren uses one or the other for everything, and they’re well worth

the time to learn. Photoshop can do anything you can think of to

an image, or montage of images, with or without type. Quark is the

favored layout program, but you can use PageMaker as well. Adobe

Illustrator uses imported art, too, but it has more bells and whistles.

There are lots of other art and graphics programs available for Macs

or PCs. You can draw with a mouse or a stylus and art pad, using

the shapes, colors, graphics, and special effects of programs like

Canvas, Paint, Appleworks, and SmartDraw, to name a few. In addi￾tion, there are specialized programs, such as AutoCad for architec￾tural, landscape, and mechanical rendering; 3-D and special effects

programs; and the many programs for Web design and interactives.

Take your pick. They all have huge manuals, but you can do it if

you try. We admit to being Luddites, and so we stick to the pro￾grams that work for us.

Artist’s Sketchbook

Graphic images on your com￾puter are any images that are not

text-based. Different images have

different suffixes (those are the

letters that appear after the dot

on a filename, including .jpg,

.ipg, .bmp, .gif, and many oth￾ers). Graphic images also take up

a lot more memory on your

computer, but if you’ve got a

current model, you won’t need

to worry about them using up

your available memory for years,

if ever.

The Art of Drawing

Consider private tutoring if you

can manage it, or maybe you can

share a tutorial with a friend who

is also interested, to halve the

cost. You will learn much, much

faster in a private tutorial. It’s

like having a personal trainer!