Carnival of Venice

Finally, after browsing through hundreds of festival I finally made up my mind. For my e-wallpaper, I'm choosing Carnival of Venice as my festival. I stumble upon this amazing carnival when I was searching through Google. It caught my eye because I have never seen such a mysterious and exotic carnival before. It is as if I'm watching a movie at a time where the King and Queen ruled over a country. It's truly a fascinating carnival and I would like to share with everyone about this piece of art carnival. 

What is Carnival of Venice and Its History? 

The Venice Carnival is the most internationally known festival celebrated in Venice, Italy, as well as being one of the oldest. This congregation of masked people, called Venice Carnival, began in the 15th century, but the tradition can be traced back to the beginning of the 14th Century.During those years one of the first laws made by the Serenissima was that masks cannot be used around the city at night.

Later, Venice Carnival attracted foreigners - including princes - from all over Europe, who came to enjoy the wild festivities while spending fortunes.

During the Carnival period Venice offered numerous possibilities for spending money. The choices were various, with activities such as gambling dens, brothels, theatres, cafés, wine shops (licensed and illicit) and restaurants, as well as booths where one could see exotic animals, ropewalkers and jugglers.

The streets of Venice Carnival were full of people in masks, and no differentiation could be made between nobility and the common people. Generally, the costume worn was a cloak with a long-nosed mask. Also popular were masked couples, where a man and a woman would dress as allegorical characters. In the squares street-artists and singers entertain with songs and music from their guitars, the guests of the Venice Carnival.

The Venice Carnival dissacratory nature reached its bottom when, during its last days, some masked people started to disturb the building of the preaching pulpits that were under construction for the religious traditions of Lent.



Beginning on S. Stefano Day (26th December) costumes were permitted through the entire period of the Venice Carnival (excluding the Festa delle Marie) which ends at the beginning of Lent. While the Doges reigned, costumes were also allowed from Ascension Day to 10th June, as well as for public banquets and other celebrations. However, they were not allowed to be worn from 5th October to 16th December.

Hiding personal identities was accepted by the "moral in kidding" of the aristocracy as well as by the interclassism Venice was founding its integrity of people on.

There is not much left today of the historical tradition of the Venice Carnival.



In the late 1970's a popular spirit of Venice Carnival bloomed wild, young masked gangs started to throw weethstraw and eggs to not masqued people and spontaneous bands were playing everywhere around Venice; soon the aggressivity dimmed and city authorities began what is now a celebration of the Carnival, mainly for tourists. Unlike many Venetian celebrations that remain almost unknown to the public, Venice Carnival seems to be thriving as much as it ever did.
There are many enterteinments and interesting performances, aside of the real parties in Venetian taste that are often hidden for the large public, which is morelike to enjoy the Venice Carnival on the road.

Masks have always been a central feature of the Venetian carnival; traditionally people were allowed to wear them between the festival of Santo Stefano(St. Stephen's Day, December 26) and the start of the carnival season and midnight of Shrove Tuesday. They have always been around Venice. As masks were also allowed Ascension and from October 5 to Christmas, people could spend a large proportion of the year in disguise . Maskmakers (mascherari) enjoyed a special position in society, with their own laws and their own guild.

Venetian masks can be made in leather or with the original glass technique. The original masks were rather simple in design and decoration and often had a symbolic and practical function. Nowadays, most of them are made with the application of gesso and gold leaf and are all hand-painted using natural feathers and gems to decorate.

Source: ombra.net & wikipedia 

Understanding Layers (Basic)

Today I'm going to explain a little about layers (based on my current understanding). It might be a long tutorial (more like explanation in my part), but I hope it'll be entertaining. 

Layers (Basic)

How to create a new layer? 

1) Open the canvas 

I use the setting above for my canvas. You can change the size of canvas according to your own liking. For me, I'm using 800x400 pixels for this tutorial. When you're satisfied, click the OK button to continue. The below shows how my canvas looks like: 

2) Creating a new layer 

Click the icon (that is circled with red color) to create a new layer. After clicking, a new layer will be created at the top of the "Background".  There you have it! A new layer is created, it's simple as a pie. 

Understanding the layer style, blending mode and options

Basically, layers is used to avoid you from doing your work all over again. If you tend to design, put special effects and texts on the same layer, it will be difficult if you want to change a single particular thing. In this tutorial, I'll show you what they layers could do and what it offers you. 

1) Putting on texts

You can put texts by clicking on the red circle as shown above. The text will create a new layer automatically on top of the "Background", so you don't have to create a new layer when you want to put texts on your design. You can change font types, the size of the font and the font style as shown above. 

2) Organizing the layers and their differences 

I created a new layer on top of the text layer. With the Brush Tool, I draw a wavy blue lines, cover almost half of the text. It's difficult to read the text now. Therefore, if you wish to put the lines below the text, you can click and hold the text layer (in my case "Layer Practice") -> drag it on top of Layer 1 -> release it. For example, you can refer the below image: 

3) The layer blending mode & opacity/fill

With a new layer, I draw another wavy lines but this time with a slightly darker colour. You can change the blending mode of the layer or the opacity and fill as shown as above. For me, I change my blending mode from Normal -> Hard Mix. Here's the outcome of how the layer would look after changing to Hard Mix:

If you're not satisfied with the change, you could always choose another blending mode. You can also delete this layer by dragging the "Layer 2" to the dustbin icon circle with red. 

4) The layer style 

With a new layer, I draw grass and leaf (humor me, I don't have an artistic hand!).  By clicking the icon circled in red, you can choose all types of layer style. There are a lot of layer style to choose from but don't choose too many. Around 2 - 3 would be suffice for me. Here's what I have decided to choose:

I choose the "Drop Shadow" and "Stroke Style". After you're satisfied with what you have choosen, click the OK button to continue. This is how my style looks like after it's applied: 

If you're undecided about a certain layer, but you do not wish you delete it yet, you can always choose the  invisible option by clicking the eye icon circled in red above. You can refer the below image to see what the layer looks like after clicking the eye icon: 

There you have it, a basic tutorial about understating layers. You can always "Try an error" method when you're not certain of an effect and style. You can just press the Ctrl + Z button to undo anything, or simply browse the History option provided in the Photoshop. Good luck and happy trying~ 

Getting to know the workspace

Currently, I'm using Adobe Photoshop CS5. I'm planning to change to back to CS4, so that there won't be a problem for Madam Lydia to open any of my assignments in the near future. For the meantime, I'll show you around the workspace of Adobe Photoshop CS5. 


There is no dramatic change in the CS5 compared to CS4, but the top 13 differences include better selections/masking, content-aware fill, puppet warp, automatic lens correction, HDR imaging, 64-bit cross-platform, faster performance, better/easier UI, CS Live, and more. 

Inside Adobe Photoshop CS5

1) Getting to know the workspace 

For starters, it might be quite confusing for you to start doing anything in photoshop before getting familiar with the workspace. The above image shows the basic panels and options you can use in the photoshop. Getting familiar with the workspace helps you to move around easily and efficiently. You would not face any difficulties when handling your work if you understand what the panels offer you. 

2) Tools Panel

The tools panel is one of the most important panel in photoshop. There are a lot of tools in photoshop, but the above image shows the most basic tool that are used regularly.The Tools panel arranges some of the tools in groups, with only one tool shown for each group. The other tools in the group are hidden behind that tool. A small triangle in the lower right-corner of a button is a clue that other tools are available but hidden under that tool. 




This is just a basic introduction to the workspace of CS5. To learn more,  you can purchase the Adobe Photopshop CS5 Classroom In A Book to get more information regarding the workspace and many more. 


I'll be introducing the Layers Panel in my next entry, before then, signing off with a quote from Daniel J. Boorstin: "Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know."

The start of the new beginning

Welcome to my humble blog...

This blog will be use to document my progress in Computer Graphics 2 (2010), which will be guided by Madam Lydia. Photoshop is an alien word for me, therefore, my works might be a little distracting... (in a bad kind of way). So yeah, I'm hoping to improve as much as I possibly can. Here's short introduction about me: 


Given Name: Adibah Hanim Binti Abdul Rahman 
Nickname: Diba or Dibby 
Student ID: 1102702362
Hobbies: Doing random stuff 
Obsession: Anime, Manga, Sushi & Cheesecake


That's all about me. As for my progress in Photoshop, I'm currently in the brainstorming process for the e-wallpaper assignment. My ideas are still blurry, but I'm quite interested in the Japanese culture festival (like the cherry blossom viewing) or even the Light festival. I'll be posting my progress soon, if I manage to find a suitable picture and colour themes. 


Signing off with an intriguing quote: "People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world" :D