VANESSA HO
Singapore-based Vanessa Ho is a leading digital artist with a unique style of work that is truly inspiring.
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR WORK?
Emotive/emotional portraiture with a sense of romanticism and nostalgia.
WHEN DID YOU START CREATING ART USING PHOTOSHOP AND WHAT ATTRACTED YOU TO THE PROGRAM
It was after I joined Flickr (around the beginning of 2006). I was fascinated by some of the images I saw over at Flickr and for the first time thought it could be possible to produce such rich, artistic images myself. So the interest kept me digging deeper into the program, as well as photography
WAS THERE ANY PARTICULAR STYLE OR ARTIST YOU WERE DRAWN TO OR INSPIRED BY?
Over the years I’ve been inspired by many different styles including vintage, painterly, fashion, cinematic, and black & white. Most of my inspirations come from the artists and photographers on Flickr, before them I had never been familiar with any famous photographers.
HOW DO YOU START ON A PARTICULAR PROJECT? WHAT DO YOU BEGIN WITH?
It usually starts with an idea inspired by something, e.g a song that gives rise to certain feelings, and an image develops in my mind. I like to picture everything like a movie, which kind of explains why I tend to like the cinematic style. But I got to say a lot of times a piece only becomes something special midway through what I’d call an organic process. Sometimes the initial idea won’t materialize and something else completely different turns up instead. The processing stage for me involves quite a bit of trial and error, and that’s what I like about it – the pleasantly surprising effects I get when I mix different layers and techniques. That also explains why I don’t use actions.
In terms of the technical, during the initial RAW process, I may already have an idea what I want to do, which will affect my adjustments at that stage. For example if I plan to do a lot of blending later at photoshop, I will tone down the colour saturation and also bring up the fill light to compensate for any lost of details later.
WHAT TOOL OR TOOLS IN PHOTOSHOP DO YOU USE THE MOST? ANY TOP TIPS?
Like most others, I use tools like clone, patch and healing for touch ups. Colour adjustments are usually done using curves, colour balance, black & white adjustment layers. I do use a lot of dodging and burning, often on a blended layer as a way of painting the light. I always work by blending layers together, often a lot of layers. And with that, masking is always involved to paint in and out different portions. I also do what many call the orton process, where you blur a top duplicate layer and switch its blend mode to something else, e.g soft light, hard light or overlay. However this process is never the same from one image/stage to another, as different effects call for different settings, and for me one single process can contain up to 4 layers and one image may go through several similar processes before it’s finalized. Hence it is impossible to say how much blur and what blend mode and at what opacity should one go for, except to say for more flexibility and options, I’d suggest to switch the blend mode before applying the gaussian blur so that you can preview the results of different blur levels. I’ve developed a habit of using the shadow highlight adjustments on at least one of my layers involved in this process so that I wouldn’t lose details so much, though there are many other ways to go around this.
I’d say knowledge on the different blend modes does come in handy not just in the way one applies layers, but also in other techniques such as brushing/painting and cloning. I do use textures at times. A blurred out texture blended over an image can sometimes give a great colour tone and dreamy effect. Finally, one of my most favourite things to do with photoshop is painting the light. In addition to dodging and burning on layers, by blending in a layer in a darker mode and then masking it out, I can create dramatic lighting effects to an image.
WHAT ADVICE COULD YOU PASS ONTO OUR READERS FOR USING PHOTOSHOP TO CREATE ART?
I think it’s important to understand what the different tools and adjustments actually do. By familiarizing with your tools you have more control over your process as compared to relying heavily on actions or plugins (which will save money too!). Other than that, just have fun. I don’t think we need to know every single tool that’s out there in the program to make a awesome piece of artwork, but it’s important to have a good grasp of those we do use.
WHAT ARE YOUR THREE ART-RELATED FAVOURITE WEBSITES?
WHERE CAN PEOPLE VIEW/BUY YOUR WORK?
My portfolio site: www.hovanessa.com
Prints of my work can be purchased at:
RedBubble: http://www.redbubble.com/people/hovanvan
Imagekind: http://hovanessa.imagekind.com/
The best products at the best prices!
