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I've got a burning question on my mind and i would like to hear your opinion about this too.
I am wondering where do YOU guys put the emphasis on technical skills or the creative part, or where did you start with..
I don't want to start a war on this but i do appreciate your honest opinion.... [excited] [righton]
In my opinion they go hand in hand, how can one create ones idea without the the know how, and what's a person to do with all the know how and no ideas? myself I'm reading everything I can get on lighting techniques.
As long as you think about technique, the freeflow of your inspration is hindered. That's why one needs to practise and to do tutorials. In fact, it's like driving a car, or even coming down the stairs: the moment you thinks about what you do, you make mistakes and are prone to accidents.
Digital stuff needs more understanding than traditional media. Yet if you don't know the anatomy of a face, no digital app (not even Poser) will fill that gap. If you have no eye for composition, no app can compose for you.
As for how people start: there are two extremes. One is to start on the mental plane and stay there untill the image is mentally finished and then execute it in your medium, the other extreme is starting from scratch and doodle 'till something turns up. Most people are between those two, and most people sometimes doodle, and sometimes know exactly where to go.
That's life.
I started out doing tutorials, literally hundreds of them. After I got some knowledge under my belt I started reading Photoshop books - New Masters of Photoshop is a great read. This book has some of the top PS designers in the industry, all expounding on their own particular style and slant on design.
Photoshop books help me to learn more skills and aquire new insights into the elements of both the program and the work. Even something as mundane as calculating pixels helps to add to the width and breadth of my own skills. Lighting is a big aspect of graphic design work. Cast the wrong shadow or highlight the wrong curve or angle and it throws the reality of the whole design off.
I was born with the talent to draw, design, and illustrate, and while this talent is not altogether dependent upon technical knowledge, learning from others who have mastered the craft expands my own creativity of how to apply it.
I came at Photoshop from a different direction, that of already spending 40 years as a creator in all sorts of different media...including viewing construction as an artistic medium. To me, the drive to create is all important. Learning the tools is vital to be able to realize your creations but if the initial drive is strong enough time, money, or learning is not an obstacle. I spent two years spread out over a 17 year span to create just one sculpture. Along the way I had to learn, blacksmithing, welding, chemical etching and a several related skills to pull it off. Did I become an expert in those fields, no. Was I able to create a highly refined sculpture which almost exactly matched the original inspired visualization? Emphatically, yes!
I've never been a great fan of the concept that one must learn first, without the context of doing, and then apply the learning. That divorces learning from the reality of its purpose. I prefer to start creating and learn in the context of actual creation. Of course that means that one's initial efforts are crude but, as you have a contextual need to learn, it makes sense and is stimulating. For example, think of participating in the monthly challenges which Gare proposes. The couple in which I've participated have been fun, I've learned new skills and had to practice older incomplete ones, and had my horizons expanded by seeing and appreciating the creative visions and differing abilities to express them which other participants have shared.
Any set of tools to create is just that. When one has gained mastery over them, they do become 'transparent' to the user as one doesn't particularly have to think about them...and yet all that means is that you are using the tricks you have already learned. You can even be an expert and have a big bag of tricks at that, however, if that's all you are doing, you've become a technician and it might be a practical and lucrative situation in which to find oneself but real creation is a dynamic state of constantly expanding horizons.
I'd also like to rephrase one of Erik's thoughts about the motivations of the creator. It seems to me that one can view a spectrum of creative intent as being anchored at one end by Discovery and the other by Invention. Most often the practitioners of one of the extreme ends, tends to disparage the other. I think any creative soul can use both ends of that spectrum to good purpose (and any where in between the two ends for that matter). You can begin creating with an exact internal visualization and then make it happen. It does behoove one to be open for discovery during the process for a degree of flexibility will embellish the creative Invention during the process. I consider that a type of responsibility... the ability to respond. Starting from the other end of the spectrum, one can just start rummaging around in ones bag of tricks and imagination to bring form to an inchoate feeling. The resulting voyage of Discovery can be a total delight. I would hope creative people would find themselves at different points of this sliding scale of Discovery and Invention at the beginning of each undertaking.
I'd like to add an additional term to the mix. Inspiration. Let me define inspiration simply as the light bulb going off in the top of ones head. I think all creative people know that one. At the Invention end of the spectrum, the inspiration comes first as the light bulb goes off, and the energy which enters one's being takes the ideas and points of view which you have already earned by experience and rearranges them into a new form. Thus you are given an inner visualization and the excitement to carry it forth. On the Discovery end of the spectrum, the sense of inspiration strikes after the fact of discovery and the rush of the light bulb going off accompanies the expansion of your personal horizons, a new infinity of possibilities, and your increased connection to the universe in which we are mere babes in the woods.
(Uh-oh he's gone off ranting again...somebody get the fire hose and cool him off, please)
As a final facetious aside... You can make an artist into a nerd but you can't make a nerd into an artist!
this is an interesting question for me ... and I don't really have an answer for it, but I can relate my path thus far.
I started by doing web design. Real basic stuff at first, of course. Somewhere along the way, I think, I learned that it would be a Good Thing to learn Photoshop and other related tools. Luckily, I had a friend offer me a copy of GoLive 4 and PS 5.5, both for a sharply discounted rate. So I bought those.
After playing with each of those for a while, I began to get really happy. I started to think I found my niche. I did tutorial after tutorial in PS; not always with stunning results, of course, but always learning things. I found the PSG Forum around this time.
Then my wife, who is also very creatvie, suggested that the ability to draw would help me greatly. She provided a copy of a book called "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain", the author of which I cannot remember at the moment. I started going through that volume, and getting REALLY happy.
At this point, I dropped EVERYTHING. Altogether. At the time, I attributed this to the fact that I had accepted a new, more physically demanding job, the reality of the matter was that I scared myself -- my own happiness scared me, and I was terrified of feeling fulfilled by doing art. Up to that point, I had never done anything quite so rewarding in all my life -- and I just scared myself.
After about a year, maybe more, I started coming back to it, however slowly. I came back to PS, back to the PSG forum -- I haven't yet taken up drawing again, but I expect I will sooner or later. Now I'm doing creative things, and I think they're here to stay.
I think I've always had something of an artistic bent, but it just wasn't encouraged or understood when I was younger. As I'm somewhat fond of saying, I never suffered any sort of child abuse, but I did suffer from ARTIST abuse -- my parents were NOT arists by any stretch of the imagination, and I'm not sure anyone at school understood me either. So I shut down.
Good thoughtful comments by everyone. Here's my take. I think if one is discussing art in general, creativity and inspiration reign supreme and technical is learnable along the way as Welles has described.
If one is considering digital art, then I think the technical becomes extremely important.
I love art but I never wanted to spend any time learning it. Then I discovered Photoshop I realized the technical could allow me the speed I need to create something resembling art. I do not aspire to be a great artist. Also PS offers the never ending thrill and satisfaction of learning something new, a new digital method .. through a board, a tut or a friend or reading or observing. And I love that. Its very stimulating to me.
So without injuring anyone's feelings, I think for digital art a pretty good understanding of the tools is essential. A true artist's creativity will not suffer because they have to learn the tools to create art in digital. I use Mark The Keeper (because everyone knows him) as an example, he is a find artist but he also knows the technical.
Well, my first experience with PS (4.0) was in 1996. I had a friend (hehe he still is one of many.. ) and we talked about making a homepage.
(Not so usual for privats that time). He was a Corel Draw fan and contrary as I'm [shhh] I choose for PS. Never used it but I got the programm from somebody. We made it a competition, we had create a personal homepage in 14 days and there had to be some handmade work of our own in it. So, I bought a book, read and read and read and tryed a lot. Fortunately is was my holiday and 14 days of rain....
Than I started to make my homepage in HTML, had to type all the commands, (it still exists but is undercover if you're interested I'll give you the URL ) and once it was done, I WON!! I liked to work with PS. I made several things just for fun, always make my chirstmas cards and bithday cards, but than I became a digital camera and I used PS mostly for the photo's. A few months I update my computer with XP and I installed the Photoshop Newsgroup for a question about RAW photo's and in one of the postings I saw a link to this forum.
Now I'm back to basic and forgot a lot of tips and tricks but I'm learning it again and my enthusiasm is back
Thanks to you guys!!!
Bye
Ashcat
sticky/tricky question... 
Linear Mode
