Today’s ffffound: Channels

This one is pretty straightforward, but more than 3/4 of my time was spent wrestling with Photoshop’s gradient system. Every gradient I made looked more like a donut and less like a gradual progression of color.

1. Pay attention to both colors at the ends of your gradients, the color affects the gradient even if it’s set too 0% opacity.
2. Use clipping masks when working with vector shapes and gradients or other non-solid color fills. Using pixel based selections and fills will bite you in the ass when you need to resize the whole document.

Original on top, mine on bottom.

Original flickr page
original ffffound page

fffffound: ffffound in five minutes

I belong to an inspiring social image collection site called ffffound and I’ve grown tired of looking at piles of amazing shit and every day saying to myself “Why can’t I make that?”

So instead of answering with a guilty huff I’m attempting, as an exercise, to recreate a ffffound piece in 5 minutes each day. I spent around 12 minutes on this, and tried not to look back at the piece that often. Actually getting it down to 5 is going to be fun and tough.

The idea isn’t to plagiarize or idolize any specific artist through mimicry. It’s practice. It’s gesture drawing. I need to get it down to just 5 minutes, and not worry about how it looks.

Original on top, my gesture on the bottom.

Original Ffffound page
Original link