Camilo Valbuena

Surrealism Project Review

I was satisfied with my collage because it looked like a painting and I thought the fire looked very realistic. I think it is successful in introducing lots of useful feature in Photoshop and allows you to be creative. I think that because my collage is not plagued with many images its easier to see what was done to each image and part of the background. My collage contains 5 digital elements without counting the copies of the fire image that are also present in the collage but placed in different places to make the fire look realistic. To ensure that the images were placed in a unique and original way I started by just finding the background first and then thinking what I could do to make it a surreal landscape, so once I had the idea I looked for the different images I was going to need and altered them to fit as one piece. The tools that I used for my collage using Photoshop include: Magic Lasso to take the parts I needed from pictures, Layer Effects to make the images blend more with the landscape, Clone Stamp Tool to erase the fire image in the edge of the wave, Opacity so that you can see the water through the flames, and layer arrangement. The use of this tools added depth to the collage because without them the collage would not have looked like a landscape but more like a collection of images. Also without the effects it would not be as surreal as it is with them. I know this because my first attempt at the collage ended looking like a collection of images with cool effects but not really surreal. If I had more time I would try to add a few more images to the collage and play around with different combinations of the layers. I think that the only thing that went wrong with the project was not planning because that led me to do another completely thing in my first attempt. If I had to do the project again I would plan better my idea and check it does what it is supposed to do in a unique and more original way. The only thing that I think could make this project more successful is having a few lessons in Art were you sketch your idea first.