Photoshop for kids – Penguins: lessons 2 & 3

Isabel spent 3 weeks in South Africa and visited Cape Town where we lived when her Mum was at school.  She went to the very famous Boulders’ Beach where you end up swimming with little Jackass Penguins.

We decided to re-create the scene using the beaded penguins she bought and some pretty pebbles.

First we painted the sea when I popped in for tea on Saturday.

I did a demo piece step by step and Izzy did her background.

• We drew a horizon line with a ruler. Sea horizons have to be flat!
• We wet the whole sheet of paper and brushed in Cerulean in the top third with a touch of Ultramarine blue at the top.
• We used kitchen roll to lift out clouds.
• Next we brushed yellow ochre over the bottom half of the paper for the beach, so that the waves would overlap it.
• Izzy dried this with a hair dryer.
• For the sea we used Paynes grey on the horizon and by working quickly and with lots of water, blended it into turquoise (Phthalo turquoise and lemon yellow) When it was almost dry Izzy flicked water over the sea to make puddles.
• Izzy photographed the penguins and the pebbles on her little digital camera.

The official Tuesday lesson:

We had photos and a scan of the sea. Isabel had to cut each penguin out using the magic wand, the eraser (for when the white background ‘leaked’ into the white beads) and finally Ctl X.

Yes, she is learning the computer shortcuts and (I think) she knows Ctl S (save) Ctl C (copy) Ctl V (Paste) Ctl Z (go back) and Ctl D (deselect). How cool is that?

She is using layers and loves closing the little eye to see which penguin or pebble it is that she wants to move. It is hilarious watching her do ‘Constrain Size’ with Ctl-shift because she dances the penguin all over the show making it thin, fat, tall, squat and flip! By merely lifting a finger…

To get the transparent effect of the boulder half under the water, she had copied the boulder and then cut both in half, keeping a top half of one and a bottom half of the other. The bottom half was given an opacity of 50% and voila!

Izzy is learning lots by repetition – by the time she had copied 10 pebbles (Alt-move) and cut out 4 penguins and three pebbles, she had had lots of practise.

In case it all seems too idyllic at Boulders to be true…here is the proof.