From the course: Creating Art with Your Desktop Scanner

Unconventional scanning techniques

From the course: Creating Art with Your Desktop Scanner

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Unconventional scanning techniques

- Alright, let me admit something right up front with this video. I didn't really plan on or plan through anything that you are about to see. I just got a general idea for an art project, and I turned on my scanner, and I went for it. And you know what? That is very often how it goes with scanography projects. You just wing it. And that said, this video has two kinds of jumping off points to it. There are some directly usable project ideas, and there are also prompts, along the lines of hey, just 'cause you're not sure an idea will work, that is no reason not to give it a try. Okay, let me start out by describing a little project that's not too radical, but it's still in the category of something unplanned. It's simply this. Okay, I came across a torn up old baseball in a dirt alley near my house. A minute later it occurred to me, like hey, maybe that's not a torn up old baseball that belongs in the garbage. Maybe that's a work of art just waiting to happen. And that's where my scanner came in. And scan it, I did. And from many angles. And yeah, to my eye, I'm gonna go ahead and call this art. So the lesson here, well, it's just that there's always room to expand our definition of a scanography photo op. And next, okay, I like paints, and I like abstracts, so I got to thinking, now, what if I protected my scanner with some plastic wrap, and I sprayed on a little water, and painted right on top of the glass while my scanner scans. And if it looks like I'm just winging it here, well, that's 'cause I am. I mean you never know what to expect when you're working on the fly like this. So, I did another pass, and this time with yellow, and I added some green for this one. And how about some black, I mean why not? And what about some more black? And here, I grabbed the nearest tube of acrylic paint, and I got that into the action too. And I do like how the plastic wrap, it does add a little bit of visual texture to these images. I'm okay with that. Okay, now that was fun, seriously. So now let's go ahead and move on to yet another improvised project idea. Okay, got some bubbles at the grocery store, and it got me thinking. So, after protecting my desk with some towels, the first challenge was to get the bubbles to stick to my scanner. And this did get easier once there was a thin layer of bubble juice on the glass. And then with some practice and some patience, I came with a technique of kinda blowing the bubbles carefully downward, and just letting them attach themselves to the glass. And every time I got a bubble, I made a scan real quick, and there you go. And again, I wasn't sure what to expect from this project, and I did get some nice surprises. So, maybe give this one a try yourself sometimes, and see what you can do with this approach. Now, for this last one. I take no responsibility for the safety of your scanner, 'cause it not only involves taking it out into the yard, and scanning directly from real life, and it also involves, like, holding it at all kinds of weird angles, or even using it upside down, all of which may or may not be good for your scanner. But yeah, some interesting results are definitely possible when you take that scanner off the desk, and out into the real world. It's something to think about, you know? Especially if you're open to taking some risks with your scanner. Alright, that is just the tip of the creative iceberg here. It's a look at just a few rule stretching, and rule bending, rule breaking ideas for your desktop scanner. And I hope you'll try some of these ideas, and that they'll lead you to some outlaw scanning ideas of your own.

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