The Arts and Crafts Computer: Using Your Computer As an Artist's Tool - Softcover

Ashford, Janet

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0201734826 ISBN 13: 9780201734829

Publisher: Peachpit Pr, 2001

Synopsis

The Arts and Crafts Computer shows you how to use your personal computer, scanner, digital camera and color printer as artist tools to create beautiful graphics and artful objects for your home, school and work. You'll learn how to:

• Understand the basics of digital image-editing, typesetting and graphic design.
• Gather the right tools, both digital and traditional.
• Use the new inkjet printing media including cloth, decals, stickers, magnets, transparencies and more.
• Work with art materials safely, avoid computer-related stress and find environmentally-friendly materials.
• Create unique greeting cards and envelopes, artist books, games, toys, home decorations and gifts.

If you're a crafter looking for computer ideas or a designer or teacher looking for hands-on projects The Arts and Crafts Computer is for you!

About this title

About the Author

Janet Ashford is a free-lance writer, artist and musician who has written seven books on computer graphics, including Start with a Scan: A Guide to Transforming Scanned Photos and Objects into High-Quality Art (Peachpit Press, 2000). She has worked in graphic design and desktop publishing since 1986 and has written regular how-to articles for many computer and design magazines. She lives in Mendocino, California.

From Library Journal

Someone once said, "To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer." Whether computers will dehumanize art or free up our creative impulses remains to be seen, but these two books are worthy additions to the discussion. Illustrator Ashford's career was completely changed by the computer. The result was six books on computer graphics, including Start with a Scan: A Guide to Transforming Scanned Photos and Objects into High-Quality Art, written with John Odam. In this follow-up, she enters the arts-and-crafts world. She begins with an excellent chapter on understanding digital tools (bitmaps, PostScript, software for graphics, resolution, etc.), then adds sections on working with photos and scans, using type and design, and gathering the art supplies needed for projects. The second half of the book takes computer-generated art and applies it to the making of cards, small books, and other decorative projects. The book as a whole is packed with historic facts (on typefaces, the development of color greeting cards, and the politics of paper) and usable information (on computer safety and the varieties of binding methods). While Ashford has created images solely within the machine, Pollard and Little seek to use computer-generated images only as reference tools for traditional art media. The authors present over 40 demonstrations that show how to use image-editing software to improve one's drawings and paintings. Each of the 30 artists included uses the computer to develop photographs or sketches into fully developed ideas. They combine photos, apply textures, crop, and edit, and they vary perspective, color, and scale as they create studies. After working out compositional problems, each study is used as the basis for artwork in watercolor, pastel, acrylics, or oils. Each of these books can be used with a variety of available graphic programs, with either a Mac or PC/Windows. Both are solid additions to this rapidly morphing field.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Peachpit Pr
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0201734826
• ISBN 13: 9780201734829
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 143