Class 3 - Selections

This week we took some time to review the basic tools in Photoshop along with a number of the menus we covered in week two. After a little time with the workspace and pallets, we headed straight into what I consider one of the two foundations of Adobe's flagship program - selections. Photoshop Tool and Menu Selections, once learned and understood, offers the creative digital explorer a direct link to mastering the power of Photoshop, regardless of what version one is using. If you know how to select an object well, Photoshop, along with a variety of support applications, such as Corel Painter, will offer up a treasure chest of options for the creative mind to explore.

Speaking of the creative mind, next weeks reading assignment, for class 4, is to read an article written by Jeannine Ouellette titled The Future of Creativity. Though not the definitive word regarding the condition of creativity in our American culture, I am hoping people in the class can use this article as a simple introduction, maybe a stepping stone, towards the idea that creativity is valuable in our society and that part of that value is fading due to how we manage our lives, which includes the use of technology when making art. I realize that's a stretch from the focal point of the article, but it may get the conversation going in a direction that includes the real issues concerning the move towards using technology more and more to make art. 

This class is titled Technology and Fine Art - but, here's a question; what is fine art? Who gets to define that? Using digital tools for creativity, if allowed, can easily shortchange one's own thinking by fooling the operator into believing they are creating real art. But then again - what is real art? 

I'm not interested in teaching people how to shortcut and "cheat" their way in to making art by using a computer. I want people to use this digital TOOL called a computer as a means to open up and explore their minds, their ideas, their guesses and know every guess and experimentation is valuable - that all that comes from those efforts are not to be attributed to the computer alone. The computer does not make art, the user masters the computer to make art.