Delicious Colors

20100110 Delicious colors

Eyes can feel and taste colors, nice color combination are feast to eyes. Colors will stimulate the feelings. Designing is like preparing meal; here in design colors are ingredients which give taste. So choosing the color and combining it is important like selecting ingredient to make delicious dainties.

Colors of love are the taste of life. To add colors to these kids, yesterday’s class I taught them about colors; both theory and practical.

When pure white light is passed through a prism, it separates into all of the visible colors. Light could be combined to form other colors. For example, red light mixed with light of yellow color creates an orange color. Some colors, such as yellow and purple, cancel each other out when mixed and result in a light of white color.

Our perception of color in the world can influence our mood. Red color will increase the appetite. Blue is pleasant and also, the color of sky and the ocean, blue is supposed as a constant in our lives. Green is growth and abundance like yielding plants. White is purity, simplicity, cleanliness, peace and humility. Black is void of light, a drop of light in it will give hope. Black is also authoritative and powerful. Like the yellow traffic light, yellow signals caution.

Photoshop uses several systems of color representation. These systems — Bitmap, Grayscale, Duotone, Indexed Color, RGB Color, CMYK Color, Lab Color and Spot Color. I explained about this to the kids.

I made some brushes for the kids and I installed that brushes in their computer. I gave them two examples of using that brushes. I asked them to paint as free as like their mind goes and choose colors as their mind likes. The kids made some nice and colorful designs.

More time I spend today on lecture. Only some kids get sufficient time for their practice in my presence. Prem Kumar did an artwork; he used the water color brush- used colors of orange, green and yellow and also he cut-out the face from his photo, applied brush stroke filter and made the artwork, which is his freedom of expression.

Manoth did a design with some paintings using green, yellow and other colors he like. He also gave plastic wrap filter with his cut-out photo, which is merged with that painting.
Yesoda painted ‘Girl of colors’, depicting her expression of joy within barriers. I was wondering their minds flow in the brush stroke and selection of colors. Deboki’s red color painting is nice which expressed open hands, open mind and open happiness.

Something they learned from me today and many things I learned from them. The kids made the Sunday with delicious colors like Sun which gives color when it touches the land with light.

Light rings and sparkles

20091212 Light rings and sparkles
For yesterday’s class I took lot of flower pictures with me. The little girls, when they look at that lifted their eyebrows. I asked them to choose one picture. I opened that picture as a Photoshop document and from that only a rose was cutout and placed in a new document where I created a gradient background. I filled a layer below the rose flower and above the background layer with clouds filter, reduced the opacity to 50% and using skew, transformed it like a cone shape – duplicated a copy and kept each one on both sides to give a falling light effect.


In a separate document I taught them ‘how to use Photoshop brushes?’ also I explained how to create custom brushes and setting the properties of it like scatter, roundness & fade. Student’s eyes are fixed on the screen while I create some magic sparks and stars around the rose using brush tool. I also created some light rings circling the flower. An aura of white and bright light orbited around the rose. As yesterday’s lesson involves many steps I taught this lesson again one time and again one more time.

Now they want to do that designs by their own, using the picture they like and with their own imagination. I succeeded by creating an interest in them to do that things with their ideas. I sat relaxed and my directions were instant whenever they needed. The experience I got till this age is one thing that makes them learn easily and happily, other things are the support & encouragements I get.

The first student who made a tryout in this design was Yesodha. She created her own brush and gave it her name. She Sprinkled light sparkles over a bunch of roses in walls with the brush created by her. And she also did one more design.


Bhavani selected a butterfly brush and scattered it over the flowers in her first design and then started the other one. She selected a photo work done in one of the previous class in which she looks in black & white and with green eyes. She placed three light rings around her and sprinkled some stars around her photo.


In a black document Deboki kept a pair of flowers. She gave to those flowers an aura of green rings. I remember what I studied about human aura in books. An aura is a field of subtle, luminous radiation supposedly surrounding a person or object. And in short a green aura denotes that person has love of nature, out of door life, travel in the country, sympathy and charity. Deboki also scattered some maple leaves using brush. And she tried with different kind of brushes in the document. At the end she wrote her name over it and set that picture as desktop wall paper.

More: https://writezenith.com/article/dance-of-light-rings

20091010: One more batch started and now 9 kids were learning

A new batch with three students started on 10th Saturday and for those students I taught the basics of using a computer. For the other two batches I revised the lessons of previous class first and then new things. Naveen who is an older boy from that home is helping me to conduct the classes. I asked him to take care of the students' to practice the lessons all the other days.

The students were not well in typing. So to make them learn typing in an easy and interesting way I had to find some typing tutor software or games that can help them improve their typing skills.

Moreover I want every student to be happy while learning and therefore I'm not pressuring them to learn fast. I spend more time on chatting with them, so that I can know their interests. All the students took photographs and they learned more on using the camera.