Creating a Fine Art Series
Lesson 47 of 70
Editing Composite Shoot #2- Creating Rooms in Photoshop

Creating a Fine Art Series
Lesson 47 of 70
Editing Composite Shoot #2- Creating Rooms in Photoshop
Lesson Info
Editing Composite Shoot #2- Creating Rooms in Photoshop
now, here's the natural line is well of the wall. I'm not sure that if I can, I'm not sure if I can guess where it is exactly. So let's see. Click shift. Uh, and that's where it's gonna be. No, because I've made my decision. That's the choice. And you might ask, Well, why are you even bothering? Like, why do you cut it there? Well, the wall shifts so the perspective of the backdrop has to shift as well. So that's what I'm going to do is follow that natural line, and I'm actually going to use the same exact piece. So I'm gonna copy that piece right back in. Just pasting it in. I'm gonna move it over, and I'm going thio first. Yes. Shrink it down a bit. Not gonna worry about shrinking it too much because it needs to be a little larger than the other pieces have been. And I'm going into edit transform perspective. Oh, changing the perspective so that now it fits right there. Let's move it aside so we can see where it matches up on the wall. Perfect and start to erase. So the first thing I...
'll do is go down to the baseboard and click and shift and make sure it fits. And then we're just going to find that line again wherever we think it is here, all the way up like that. And I don't know if that was quite right. Well, I'm sure it wasn't because I didn't even have the whole thing in. So let's do it again. It was a slightly bigger brush. I'm going Thio, click and hold shift and all the way up. Okay, let's see how we did. This won't always be perfect. And we have to create a a little bit of shading in the corner of the wall because it is a wall corner. So it would be naturally shadowed there. And this is so much of compositing is just figuring out what you know, what works and what doesn't work and how we can maneuver that just a little bit just moving that other piece of wall down and then noticing that this doesn't match up. So again, click and shift and just making sure it works. I think it looks pretty good. So we've got a corner of the wall, right? Okay, Now I'm gonna actually take these pieces that we just did duplicate them because we know the wall is exactly the same, right? It's exactly the same and transform them to flip horizontal wonderful. And now we can take this over here right into the corner, just like we did the other side. Now it's not perfect, but it's a quick fix, isn't it? We're able to go in there and really see if we can sort of blend this in pretty well. And I'm just taking the hardness down in bringing that back and obviously a lots going to have to happen here. This is not just blending perfectly. Of course it's not. There's gonna be a lot of work that goes into that, but it's doing a pretty good job for now. I'm gonna take advantage of having a little bit of space to work with here and clone stamp that up and out so that we can fill in that gap. So I'm just going to clone stamp here and I'm on my layer to which is the subject that we've added in. So just using that wonderful I can see where there are harsh lines, so let's get rid of those harsh lines, always very important to get rid of any harsh lines in an edit. Good and same with the side there. And I know that this is really much too bright. So let's find that layer, okay? We're gonna darken them down. So let's go ahead with our curve. We're gonna pin it, and we're going to darken it considerably on that side. If we wanna make sure that we're really creating a dynamic look in this room so that part of it is dark. Part of it is bright. It can't just be totally uniforms. It wouldn't be realistic that way. But the wall facing the light, the lights coming from the left so the right wall has to pick up more light than the other. So something to think about when you're working on the composites is where would the light naturally hit? If you don't have the opportunity to photograph it as it is, I'm going to do the same thing for the others. Keeping in mind where the light is coming from this wall would get a little bit less same with us, just a little bit less. I'm just bringing it down too much There we go. Not too bad. Okay, So what I can see is that there's a discrepancy right through here more than anywhere else. But we're going to see what happens when we start to add hair onto this picture. We also need to fix the baseboard in the fact that I am actually floating in this picture. So let's do that first, Okay? We'll go down to the room and let's see if we could do a curve layer that affect all the layers below it. Just to make it overall quite a bit darker down there. I think that already looks so much better. Then we're gonna come in and create some shading so little teensy shadows under my feet just like that. I don't know if this will look good. We're just practicing. We're just trying, saying, What's the next logical thing to happen here? I'm gonna have to have some shadows. I just did 25 pixels on that feather. I don't know if it will be too much or not enough. We're just testing, right? So it was too much right to soft. So let's make it a little bit harsher this time really gets um, good shadows underneath there, maybe even the whole way across. I'll do 15 pixels this time and see if that looks good. And this is just a game, right? We're just trying to see what looks right. What doesn't look right. And we can always finesse it later. So now I'm creating a bit of a softer shadow, which is a bigger shadow. Go 40 pixels with that. And this is why I said that shadowing is really just a lot of layers. It's just practicing to make sure that I'm grounded.
Class Description
AFTER THIS CLASS YOU’LL BE ABLE TO:
- Beat “creator's block” by practicing exercises to help you overcome it
- Conceptualize a series that nails story, emotion, and connection
- Execute a low-budget, high-impact photoshoot for your series
- Edit your images for series cohesion and seamless compositing
- Brand yourself and your art into a story that others can connect with
ABOUT BROOKE'S CLASS:
Creating a fine art body of work can be daunting when you consider that a great series has innovative ideas, cohesive editing, and an undeniable connection to an audience. During this class, Brooke will walk through the entire process of creating a fine art series, from conceptualization, shooting, and editing to branding and pricing. The success of a body of work comes from the artist’s ability to go beyond the connection to an audience; it must land in the heart of the viewer and then instill a call to action within them. Brooke will lead you through not only how to make your work relatable, but how to take that extra step to become unforgettable, and ultimately, sellable.
WHO THIS CLASS IS FOR:
- Intermediate creators who want to focus on personal work and find a deeper level of creating.
- Creators who not only want to tighten the cohesion of their work but ensure that the full depth of meaning is communicated.
- Artists who want to learn simple yet effective ways of creating a body of personal work.
SOFTWARE USED:
Adobe Photoshop 2020 (v21.2.4) and Adobe Bridge CC 2020 (v10.1.1)
ABOUT YOUR INSTRUCTOR:
Brooke explores the darkness and light in people, and her work looks at that juxtaposition. As a self-portrait artist, she photographs herself and becomes the characters of dreams inspired by a childhood of intense imagination and fear. Being the creator and the actor, Brooke controls her darkness and confronts those fears.
After studying films for years in college, she realized her love of storytelling was universal. She started photography then in 2008, excited to create in solitude and take on character roles herself. Brooke works from a place of theme, often gravitating toward death and rebirth or beauty and decay.
Ultimately, her process is more discovery than creation. She follows her curiosity into the unknown to see who her characters might become. Brooke believes the greatest gift an artist has is the ability to channel fears, hopes, and experience into a representation of one's potential.
While her images come from a personal place of exploration, the goal in creating is not only to satisfy herself; her greatest wish is to show others a part of themselves. Art is a mirror for the creator and the observer.
Brooke's passion is storytelling, and her life is engulfed in it. From creating self-portraits and writing to international adventures and motivational speeches, she wants to live a thousand lives in one. She keeps her curiosity burning to live a truly interesting story.
*This course contains artistic nudity.
Lessons
- Class Introduction
- Overview of Brooke’s Journey
How Brooke went from creating only for herself to building a multi-faceted career in fine art photography.
- Your Timeline is Nonlinear
How to incorporate the idea of wealth into your journey as an artist.
- Using Curiosity and Intention to Build Your Career
Too many people rely heavily on either intuition or goal setting as a means of propelling their career forward. Brooke believes that there is a blend between the two that sets most professionals apart.
- What Factors Dictate Growth
A look at how improvement in the categories of technique, conceptualization, clarity of voice and vision, and impact all work together to create growth.
- Organic Growth vs. Forced Growth
The most successful artists are able to use inspiration strategically to create innovative works that regularly impress their audience.
- Niche Branding
If you brand yourself into a story, you will be less likely to fall victim to boredom within your branded niche.
- Brooke’s Artistic Evolution and Timeline
Watch as Brooke shares every important event in the past eleven years as an artist to see which were the most helpful in propelling her career forward.
- How Can You Get Ahead if You Feel Behind?
When you learn to celebrate small successes like they are big successes, you will rewire your brain to find optimism in the journey rather than pessimism.
- Ideation and Conceptualization to Identify Meaning in Your Art
Walk through several categories of meaning to figure out how you create and how others perceive your creations. You will learn how to layer the concepts of your art, create controversy in your ideas, how to make viewers feel something, and figure out where you land on the scale of fixation.
- Idea Fluency
Learn abou how your ability to generate many good ideas in a short time is directly influenced by brain science, and then learn how to control your own idea fluency through exercises.
- How to Represent an Idea
Ideas are represented by four elements: visual, symbolic, experiences, and emotions. Learn how to control those elements in your work by figuring them out in your work.
- How to Innovate an Idea
By examining your sense of style, sense of idea, and sense of innovation, we will walk through exercises to not only create what is in your mind, but to take it further to stir yourself and your audience.
- Creating a Dialogue With Your Art
Dialogue comes from provocation and response. Take a look at how to provoke an audience through visual and thematic clues, and then how to issue a definitive call to action.
- Conceptualization For a Series vs. a Single Image
Find out the differences between coming up with ideas for a single image vs. a series and see examples of series Brooke has created to deconstruct how they work.
- Transforming a Single Image Into a Series
A look at how to take a single idea and transform it into a cohesive series by focusing on visuals, theme, and through-line.
- How to Tell a Story in a Series
Storytelling can unfold thematically, abstractly, linearly, and/or concretely. Here you will look at how story structure can help create a more impactful series.
- How to Create Costumes From Fabric
Look at which fabrics work best for costuming, how color plays a role in costume selection, and how to tea dye or coffee stain costumes.
- Brooke’s Most Useful Costumes
See which costumes Brooke uses again and again and how to build a costume wardrobe with a few essentials that won’t break your budget.
- Using Paint and Clay as Texture in an Image
Brooke will demonstrate how creating texture on both skin and costumes can create a more dynamic look in the final image.
- Create Physical Elements in an Image
Brooke will share ideas of how to create sculptural elements in your images, like using wire, paper mache, and more.
- Shooting for a Fine Art Series
How you can create cohesion and conceptual flow across images in a series.
- Conceptualization: Flowery Fish Bowl in the Desert
A description of the image being created and why it is conceptually and visually relevant to the rest of the series.
- Wardrobe and Texture
How to choose wardrobe based on the concept of the image, and how to add texture to make the image more visually appealing.
- Posing for the Story
Brooke will photograph three different poses, each one changing the story of the image, to demonstrate how pose can alter the viewer’s perception of the series.
- Choosing an Image
Brooke will explain why she chose one image over another to demonstrate the need for angles and dynamic movement within an image.
- Conceptualization: Rainy Plexiglass
A description of the image being created and why it is conceptually and visually relevant to the rest of the series.
- Posing for the Story
Brooke walks through poses that become more and more complex, from posing the model behind a Plexiglas sheet, then adding water, then adding syrup.
- Creating Backlight
Using a portable LED light, Brooke moves the light from the side to the back to create a more abstract image.
- Photo Shoot #1 - Creating a Simple Composite
- Photo Shoot #2 - Creating a Dynamic Composite
- Photo Shoot #3 - Creating a Storytelling Composite
- Shooting the Background Images
- Editing Samsara Shoot #1 - Working With Backgrounds
- Editing Samsara Shoot #1 - Retouching the Subject
- Editing Samsara Shoot #1 - Color Grading
- Editing Samsara Shoot #1 - Floor Replacement Texture
- Editing Samsara Shoot #1 - Final Adjustments
- Editing Samsara Shoot #2 - Cropping and Editing Backgrounds
- Editing Samsara Shoot #2 - Selective Adjustments
- Editing Samsara Shoot #2 - Adding Texture + Fine Tuning
- Editing Composite Shoot #1 - Compositing Models
- Editing Composite Shoot #1 - Expanding Rooms
- Editing Composite Shoot #1 - Selective Color
- Editing Composite Shoot #1 - Selective Exposure
- Editing Composite Shoot #2- Masking Into Backgrounds
- Editing Composite Shoot #2- Creating Rooms in Photoshop
- Editing Composite Shoot #2- Compositing Hair
- Editing Composite Shoot #2- Global Adjustments
- Editing Composite Shoot #3- Blending Composite Elements
- Editing Composite Shoot #3- Advanced Compositing
- Editing Composite Shoot #3- Cleanup
- Materials for Alternative Processes
Brooke shows some materials she uses for alternative processes, or applying texture to an image after it is printed. She shows oil paints, wax, and more.
- Oil Painting on Prints
A look at applying oil paints to canvas prints and how that adds value to original prints.
- Encaustic Wax on Prints
A look at applying encaustic wax to canvas prints and how that adds value to original prints.
- Failure vs. Sell Out
Brooke shares how the most successful artists straddle a line between personal work and consideration of audience.
- Create Art You Love and Bring an Audience To You
When you identify areas of your process and craft that are non-negotiable vs. negotiable, you begin to identify how you can work best with clients and what you need to keep sacred.
- Branding Yourself Into a Story
When you consider that branding is a mixture of personality, art, storytelling, and business, you can feel more at ease with your brand not just being one single thing.
- The Artistic Narrative
Defining what stories you want to tell about yourself directly influences how you tell the story of your brand through your business.
- Get People to Care About Your Story
Your brand must inherently bring interest and value to the people who are viewing it. Take a look at how you can begin down that journey.
- Get People to Buy Your Story
From identifying your clientele to figuring out how you can meet their needs, shifting someone from an admirer of your art to a patron of your business is important in becoming a full time artist.
- Getting Galleries and Publishers to Take Notice
Steps we can take to get representatives to pay attention, like the importance of regular interaction and becoming a resource.
- Pricing For Commissions
- Original Prints vs. Limited Edition Prints vs. Open Edition Prints
Brooke goes through the benefits of selling original prints and how they can be done simply to add to your arsenal as an artist.
- Class Outro
- Live Premiere
- Live Premiere: Layers of Depth 1
- Live Premiere: Layers of Depth 2
- Live Premiere: Q&A
- Live Premiere: Photo Critique
Reviews
a Creativelive Student
Brooke never fails to deliver. I found this course superb from start to finish. From exercising your creative 'muscle', demystifying taking self portraits, and showing that they don't have to be perfect before you begin editing, to walking you through her editing process and how to price your work. Brooke's enthusiastic personality and excitement about the work shines through it all. Definitely recommended!
Søren Nielsen
Thank for fantastic motivating an very inspiring. The story telling and selling module was very helpful - thanks from Denmark
Rebecca Potter
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Brooke for this amazing class. Inspired and so full of practical knowledge, this is the best class I've ever watched. You have given me the confidence to pursue what I've always been afraid to do. Watch this space!