23
May
Creating a Fashion Collage in Photoshop – Video Tutorial beginner level
A fun little exercise that I give my beginning Photoshop Fashion Students is to pick their favorite designer and city and create a Fashion Collage based on those two research topics.
For the example in the picture and the video below I choose MaxMara and Paris. If you are new to using Photoshop this should be a great practice session. Simply go through
* magazines (scan at 150 dpi/ jpg) or
* websites(right click/ ctrl click for mac and save image as> onto desktop)
and find great images that you would like to mash up in Photoshop. The images should be saved as jpgs in a folder somewhere easy for you to remember, like your desktop.
The video is split into two segments just under 10 minutes each. They are a quick summary of what I had to do from start to finish to create the Collage. Obviously your images will be different, but you will see how easy it is to sort of draw selections on any image if you practice the polygonal lasso tool, or select high contrasting backgrounds with the use of the magic wand tool.
You need to know the shortcut for free transform: ctrl+T for PC or cmd+ T for MAC
Create Fashion Collage in Photoshop part 1 of 2 Runtime: 07:16
Create Fashion Collage in Photoshop part 2 of 2 Runtime: 08:57
19
May
Fashion your Font coming soon to our website
Last night I taught a online session on how to create your own font, by hand, in Illustrator and in Photoshop. The exciting part to me was that I was able to demonstrate it right here on FashionChalkboard.com, well in a not-yet-public test part section of this site.
The way it works is simple, you download and print the template. Then you can doodle all letters in your handwriting on the template. Then scan it and upload it and our website will create the Font for you. You can preview it, test it, buy it and Voila, ready to download and install on your computer to use in all programs that use fonts.
Okay, so there are a couple of things that you need to pay attention too as well, but I will post a couple of video tutorials once it is up and running and you can begin to have fun trying it out and testing it…for freee… You will be able to test as many fonts as you want, once you like one you can then have our site convert it for you for $7.00 and then it’s your to use and even resell if you like.. it will be your working font.
This is the mandatory template page#1
This is a font created during the demo with the blob brush tool inside of Illustrator.
Click on the picture to see a close up:
This is a font that was created by hand by a 9 year old girl!
Click on the picture to see a close up:
17
May
A Fashion Designer’s summary of Disneyland
So it’s been our daughter’s birthday and we spent a wonderful mini vacation day in Disneyland. I always take tons of inspirational pictures hoping that they will end up in one of my designs, prints or graphics.
But honestly most of the time the disappear into the deepness of my computers documents and might only resurface during a very specific moment of need. In order for this not to happen this time I made a couple of mini collages in Photoshop so-that at least some of you can feel a wind of Inspiration. You can click on the images to see a bigger picture. Let me know what it made you come up with?
The Collages will most likely become some sort of Fashion Tutorials, especially the one called “Animal Kingdom” since I am creating Animal prints and will make them available inside Flat Sketches (like the giraffe post). And then I have a great surprise for my website that has to do with FONTS..can’t wait!
Here are my fashion collage titles of choice:
ROMANCE
FONT GALLERY
PIRATE STYLE
GIRL POWER
ANIMAL KINGDOM
DEDICATED DISNEY FAN
Okay so the last one is not a collage but a fun story, the guy looked really tough and scary until I saw his Tattoos and I then asked him about them and he was all nice and giggly and proud to have a picture taken of them.
15
May
Sit comfortably
Wandering the classroom, I often cringe at my student’s posture. Their laptop screens are below their eye level and especially during my Saturday class which is 6 hours long, I hear an occasional growl and a see a lot of stretching.
On the job I have had similar experiences myself where the computer’s were setup to fit everyone the same. Sometimes it goes unnoticed for a while, until I find myself feeling sluggish and not very productive. But it does not have to be that way.
I suggest that you can easily adjust your computer screen at home or at work by putting a book, box or any other strong object underneath it so that you can sit comfortably. Ok, you might earn some disapproving looks by your collegues or boss, but hey maybe you inspire them to do the same. They might even thank you ! Below I posted some behind the scene pictures of an office in the garment district in L.A. You can see that I used a box to elevate my screen, the other two pictures are just there to give you a glimpse into a design studio.
Haha: Dear husband says to tell you guys to bring a pillow and a coffee? I guess you can pick and choose which one works for you. On a more serious note: What makes your workday more comfortable? Let us know what gets you through the day?
4
May
Fashion Design graphics and brushes
Photoshop Class for fashion design
You can download 2 brush files here
SO we did a little bit of splattering images or rather symbols that are right inside of Photoshop, we used the splatters that I created with watercolor and the stains from my book cabinet.
We made a selection of the splatters and turned them into working paths, whch we then used to create selections to color or delete parts of the symbols.
Illustrator Class for fashion design
Here I gave these images to play with:
And created fashion brushes and seamless prints with the help of new tools like live trace and blob brushes and eraser tool:
3
May
Splatters and antique stains for apparel graphics
While it is past midnight, I thought it would be interesting to post about the preparations for tomorrow’s webinar. I have been in absolute ZEN mode painting and splattering like a little child
Then I went on a treasure hunt to find anything that resembles antique stains and have been delighted to find these around the house. And of course they came from one of my favorite pieces of furniture in our home, one of our many book cabinets.
In class we are going to take the splatters into Photoshop and make them into vectors to save them as paths and make selections that will roughen up some graphic symbols. And for the brush strokes… mmhh maybe create some romantic borders after defining them as brushes??
3
May
FashionChalkboard.com completely re-designed webpage
New home for FashionChalkboard.com, Finally after months of planning and scheming the new face of FashionChalkboard.com has been published. The website is now displaying the energy and colorful live that Computer Aided Fashion Designers experience everyday 
