Shooting the Abstract Imagery

When considering the design of beauty noted, I knew I wanted to include abstract imagery of plants, paint smudges and illustrations, to supplement the editorials and overall enhance the design of the magazine but knew I didn't want to use stock images, as it takes away the originality of the magazine, and I want to feel that I have created as much as I can myself. So, I spent a day experimenting with oil points and various different plants to see what I could create.

PAINT

I often use different brush tools on photoshop to create paint smudges as I love the effect it creates, but wanted to try to shoot some of my own for the magazine. I chose oil paint for the thick consistency and buildable consistency and mixed up a few colours from white, down to a dark nude and blush pink. I played around with different shapes, using a spatula to smudge the paint onto a piece of card. One thing that I wish that I had tried was the white paint on a darker background, but overall I'm pleased with how this went and will definitely be using the images to supplement some of the blanker pages in the magazine, for example the contents page or editors note!

PLANTS

 I really wanted to shoot with eucalyptus as I love the pale green colour of the leaves and delicate shape of the leaves. However, I couldn't initially get hold of eucalyptus so took these of some tiny white blossoms instead. Although they are nice images they didn't create the lovely green colour that I was hoping for, so I will save them for use as extra content on the Beauty Noted Instagram.

I managed to get hold of some Eucalyptus and mixed in some of the blossoms to create a spring like feel. I really wanted the images to have a soft focus effect and look almost abstract and blurred, so used a very low aperture to shoot these images. I simply used a white wall as a backdrop and placed the plants quite far from the wall to give a nice depth to the image. I'm happy with the way these turned out and will use them as part of my page design for the 'Seasonal Update' article.