take my dreams with you

[Kari]

image
www.deviantart.com/deviation/48317088/

Interpretation
All I want is for you to take my dreams with you so that they'll fly high in the sky and keep me looking up so I know that I have somewhere to keep my gaze pinned to and I can reach high and even if I miss the stars, I can still hit the moon.

Explanation/Commentary
I've been pushing the realism in my works lately. Yes, this is another image of my usual style, realistic surrealistic photomanipulation. I've been utilising light and colour to push the eye around the canvas by placing elements at certain places so that the eye isn't wandering everywhere trying to search for a focal point. I painted in all the shadows and did a fair amount of cleaning up and so forth on the model.

Realism in an image is hard to pull off and it's something that I'm still trying to work at. If you can find anything in here that you think can be improved upon, please let me know.

Thank you in advance. <3

[VvaderV]

I love your work Kari, your manips are excellent with plenty of emotion that always tells a story. Theres not alot I would do to this manip, im trying to do manips myself unfortunately with little success I have just one question that I would like to ask you tho, where do you get your images/stocks from as they are always so emotive and telling?
V ;D

[dude]

You never fail to stun Kari The colouring is exceptional and the combination of stocks works perfectly always providing something interesting to look at. The use of bright colour on the balloons and candy canes is great and the happy and almost euphoric feeling is nicely balance with a hint of evil with the gravestone. Only got too constructive critisms - the border kills it a bit, I would've preferred something that was white and a little more simple and perhaps it would've looked nice if you had of used more than one stock for the balloons so they don't all look identical. Incredible work though.

[Kari]

sydl49 said:

I love your work Kari, your manips are excellent with plenty of emotion that always tells a story. Theres not alot I would do to this manip, im trying to do manips myself unfortunately with little success I have just one question that I would like to ask you tho, where do you get your images/stocks from as they are always so emotive and telling?
V ;D

Hey there, Vader. I usually get a lot of my stocks from the stock exchange and deviantART. I spend a lot of time in the stock chatrooms and the people I use stocks from are either people that I've communicated with in the past or have been featured somewhere or are people that I've found when browsing through the stocks that other people have used in manipulations. Sometimes when I come across a stock image that I like, I'll save it to my harddrive with the name of the stock artist with it so I remember who I have to credit too. If you check in my description, you'll find a link to the stock artists on deviantART that I've used.

I do a lot of manipulation to my stocks though. I clean them up with apply modes and painting to get rid of blemishes and so forth to make everything smoother. A good trick to find where there's stuff to clean up is to add a hue/saturation layer on top of all of the work so that the whole image is desaturated back to greyscale. It means that you can work on lighting without being distracted by colour. I find the three most important things in photomanipulation are lighting, composition and perspective. If you've nailed those, you're halfway there. The rest should either flow or fall into place. Colour is something that you learn as well. Usually the human eye for colour contrast and harmony is quite good, but it's something that you can develop and fine tune too.

We usually associate certain emotions with certain icons too. Cross = sadness or evil. Butterfly = hope. I associate balloons and the wide sky with dreams and flying. The key is to find what you think communicates your concept most effectively and arrange it in a way that is pleasing to the eye and isn't overcrowded. Lighting is one way of directing the eye and also one of the most effective. If you work at that, then you should be fine.

Colour and lighting is what I use to influence mood, atmosphere and emotion.

[VvaderV]

Thank you Kari your thoughts and tips are most appreciated I will do what you say - and hope someday ill get it right, any more tips you can give me please dont hesitate to pm me.
V ;D

[dude]

I've never done a proper photo manip LP yet but I think I'd better have a go some time soon so thanks for the tips Kari.

[Kari]

dudelicious said:

I've never done a proper photo manip LP yet but I think I'd better have a go some time soon so thanks for the tips Kari.

I promise I am getting to replying to your critique but I'll have to reply to it tomorrow afternoon because I'm rushing off to work in a few minutes and won't be fully home until Sunday night. Rest assured, I am working on it though. As you can see, I tend to write a lot.

[dude]

hehe yea. Dw I'm not expecting a 10,000 word essay