AP Digital Art Tips
List of Colleges and Art Schools can be found on the National Portfolio Day website.
List of Majors and Concentrations can also be found on the National Portfolio Day website.
List of Majors and Concentrations can also be found on the National Portfolio Day website.
Hints for creating better art
- Make sure you have a focal point
- Make your focal point off center
- Use a full range of values
- Overlap, overlap, overlap... have a foreground, middle ground and background
- Crop! Decide on what's important and get rid of everything else
- Never set objects or people on the bottom edge of the page or have them leaning on the sides of the page.
- However, don't be afraid to have elements of type (if the word is understandable) or unimportant picture elements bleed off the page.
- Use complementary colors in the shadows and dark areas (be subtle)
- Don't use every color known to man in one piece of art (unless it's Fauve!)
- Stand back from the monitor and LOOK.
Rotate your art until it's upside down and LOOK. Squint so the picture is fuzzy and LOOK- is there a full range of values from light to dark?
Is an unimportant area grabbing your eye first, and not the focal point? is the composition unbalanced (in a bad way) so that it looks off-kilter?
Is one color in an unimportant area grabbing your eye when it shouldn't be? Is the overall look bland and boring and in need of a pop of color? - Watch your edges, inappropriate hard edges of a cut and paste in digital art catch the eye and ruin the illusion of one integrated piece of art.
- Don't force your pixels. If the image is too small to work, take another photo.
- Image area should be: 8 1/2" x 11" (Letter), 11" x 17" (US B), or 13" x 19" (Super B)
-You can work in either Landscape or Portrait mode.
-Vector images can be larger. But, printing may not be as good on larger paper, unless it is sent out for printing. - If in a raster program (Photoshop, Fireworks, Painter, etc)
-Start with a page that's 13 x 19 inches, 300 dpi, RGB. You can always resize the image smaller at a later time.
-It's always better to start out big and then save a copy as a smaller file. This will reduce your chance of pixelation, blurring and artifacts showing up.
-Each picture will end up with three files,
1. the .psd working file
2. the printing file as a .tiff
3. .jpg file used for digital submission.
Make sure you label the files so you know which is which. - NEVER delete your art in Photoshop/Illustrator/Painter, even when you're done and have saved a copy for submission.
- Always work on a copy of the original photograph.Start by saving and naming or renaming your new file.
- Save early, Save often.
- Back up your work on the Google Drive when it's done. This is your backup in case your network folder crashes.