Van Gogh’s Flowers Vincent Van Gogh created many famous images that included landacapes, indoor scenes, and vases of sunflowers. Influenced by Post-Impressionism, Van Gogh’s style is instantly recognizable – he uses thick swirls of color and bold brush strokes. For this assignment, you will be creating two images in the style of Vincent Van Gogh. Image 1 – Directed Image 1. Download one of the flower images from the class webpage. 2. Open the image in Photoshop (File>open). 3. Duplicate the image layer so that you have a copy of the layer. 4. Use the magic wand and select the background. Don’t forget to include the background that is between the flower stems. While your magic wand is selected, hold down the shift key and you’ll be able to also select the white spaces between the flowers.

5. With the flowers selected, click the add new layer icon in the layers palette and immediately click the new layer’s add layer mask icon. You’ll use this layer for painting the swirling background. Change the name of this layer to swirl. Your layer should look like this.

7. Click on the chain between image and the mask to unlink them. This stops later steps from affecting the mask.

8. Now, click on the image to the left (not the mask) to make this the active image. Set the foreground color to turquoise or a deep shade of blue and fill the layer by Edit>fill. The background behind the flowers should be filled with your color.

9. Choose a

different shade of your foreground color (lighter) and, using a medium brush, paint this color onto the background. Fill the whole canvas with strokes.

10. Use the rectangular select tool (called the marquee tool) to select a small area of the background. Go to Filter>Distort>Twirl.

11. Move the slider to the right to make a spiral type distortion.

Continue moving the marquee tool to different parts of the background and apply the twirl filter (you can use the shortcut apple>F). Do this until the entire background is swirled.

12. Use the marquee tool to select the bottom 4th of the canvas. Go to Image>adjustment>hue/saturation. Move the sliders over to get a kind of mustard color. Click OK to set the color.

13. With the “table” still selected, go to Filter>distort>ripple to make the swirls look smudged / melted. Click OK when you get the look you want. 14. To finish the table, with the yellow area still selected, go to Edit>Stroke.

Set the stroke width to 10 px (to make it wide) and the color to black. Click OK.

15. Move the Background copy layer up so that it is positioned above the swirl layer. 16. Use your magic wand to remove the white background. Just click on all of the white areas and then click delete.

You should be able to see the background again. Make sure you get all of the white areas.

swirl

17. With your Background copy layer still active, deselect the flower (Apple D). Go to Filter>Artistic>poster edges 18. Move the sliders to edge thickness 9 edge intensity 10 posterization 1 You may need to adjust these differently so that your flower looks outlined. You’ll see the outlines of the image turn black. Click OK when done. 19. Go back to your swirl layer. Click on the left thumbnail to activate the background. Go to Filter>Artistic>poster edges. This time, set the sliders differently. (you just want a touch of black outline) Click OK when done.

20. Now, go to Filter>Artistic>cutout. You are going to soften the background. Do this by moving the sliders to 8, 4 and 3.

21. Use the marquee tool to select and frame the entire image. Go to Edit>Stroke.

Set the width to 10 px, the color to black and the location to center. This will frame your entire image in black.

Save your image as yourname.vangogh1 and put in the teacher drop box. Van Gogh Image 2 Use the procedure above to create your own Van Gogh image – use a head-shot of a person (or yourself) or a different flower image. When done, save the image as yourname.vangogh2 and put in the teacher drop box.