So the final assignment is to design a package for cat or dog food. Well, I'm a cat slave for life, so kitties are my direction. As for packages, I'm fond of packages that are fun shapes, so I'm going for that sort of a look. . .
Well, here's my finished dragon, next to Harry Campbell's original that I tracked down from the WSJ's website. (low res image)
Lesson of the day: I hate scales.
In all seriousness, though, this was a lot of fun to work on. I got to play a lot with the pen tool andget more comfortable with it; in addition, I had to work with finding a solution for the giant mess that was the dragon's scales. I'm still not satisfied with the result, and as I slowly learned what I was doing as I progressed, I feel like I should go back and do the early parts all over again.
But alas, time constrains me and I have other work to do. The point of the exercise was largely to give a sense of where we are in our level of comfort with Illustrator, and I think I've given it a fair shot.
I spent a lot of time agonizing over the simplicity of this piece, feeling guilty for I not putting more detail into it. When it came down to it, though, I realized that the reason I couldn't come up with a better way to go about this piece was because this is what build is to me at this point. A precarious structure, something that has taken a lot of effort, but something I feel is unstable, ready to fall at any time. When I think of build, I think of how I want the structure to be stable. I want to feel calm, safe, like I can trust what I've built up. I've been going through an incredible amount of anxiety lately, mostly for no obvious reason, to the point where my body is constantly in pain from the stress. Everything in me is crying out for some serenity. I guess that's more or less what this piece was for me.
So our latest assignment is to recreate an editorial illustration from the Wall Street Journal. Mine is a dragon from Saturday/Sunday, October 26-27, 2013, for the "China's Coming Slowdown" article. The original image was done by Harry Campbell (website: harrycampbell.net). I am not worthy of such awesomeness.
Thus far, I have been freehanding a sketch with the newspaper clipping next to me. Drawing is haaaaard and the one thing I want to do with my life, so this is good practice. Once I am satisfied with the sketch, I will import the image into Illustrator and start vectoring away. Yay pen tool!
The planning stage of this project was really difficult for me. I wasn't crazy about the word I drew because every image it gave me was depressingly geometric, architectural, and stiff. I spent a lot of time experimenting with other words and halfheartedly putting together letter blocks. . .
Luckily, I found an alternative image that really caught my eye. This pile of stones was a fountain, but I followed up my discovery by looking up a lot of cairns. Rocks just have a much more pleasing form that I got excited about. At first I was going to make a pile of rocks and have the word "build" show up in the shading. . . but this proved to look really weird when I tried it out.
So I switched over to spelling out the word "build" with the rocks of my cairn, but with a twist--the rock pile is upside-down as far as the word is concerned, defamiliarizing it and adding some visual interest to the piece. Instead, the cairn's shadow formed the actual word. Then I started shading. Remember that glowy mushroom tutorial? I've been putting it to practice a LOT.
I made the mistake of shading my cairn without the background visible, which gave it some incorrect shading. That has since been corrected. Also, I was a little nervous about how faint the word "build" was so I sharpened and darkened it a bit. . .
Just added a couple of finishing touches--I had missed a couple of highlights on the torso, and had also completely forgotten to shade the knife sticking up from behind his leg. Those have been fixed! :)
This was a really fun project to work on. I learned a lot about the pen tool, about line work in Illustrator, about brushes and various different methods, and more. Mostly I have learned that the pen tool is my best friend. :)
So we picked the Sacred Rain Arrow sculpture for our project, partly because Native American heritage is a major defining feature of Tulsa and of Oklahoma as a whole, and partly because the sculpture itself is extremely striking and memorable.
For the art style, we have chosen to try and emulate John Hammersveld's work. We found his bold, bright colours and his clean, crisp style very appealing. In addition, there is a clear synergy between the Olympic athlete in Hammersveld's mural and the warrior of the Sacred Rain Arrow sculpture.
For our general idea sketch, we found a gorgeous, dynamic image of the sculpture that we thought worked very nicely for a tabloid size poster. However, it has been pointed out to us that the angle of the photo sacrifices the skyward pose of the statue, which has a significant cultural meaning. In addition, the impressive physique of the sculpture is largely lost in this image, so while we love the dynamics of the angle, we are going to have to use another image.
At this point we have tentatively cropped the original image we found. We will be live tracing it to get a sense for the light and shadow, the mass distribution, and the basic shapes involved. Once we have those in place we will be able to begin simplifying towards Hammersveld's clean style.
So we have started vectoring the image. Laura is putting the background together, and I am working on the linework and fill for the warrior. However, when I started trying to colour and shade, I ran into some trouble. Dealing with the separate shapes of everything is turning out to be much more involved and difficult than I realized, so I have spent the past few days trying to figure out the program and looking for help.
I ended up finding this video tutorial, which has offered some methods I am going to be employing in class today. Basically, I have learned a bit about using Live Paint, Expand, and the knife tool. Hopefully this should make it easier to paint and shade our warrior!
Shading progress!!
After speaking with my professor today, I am going with a pen tool process rather than the knife, as the linework for this project was produced differently and responds differently to the knife. I shall try the video's method another day.
Well, I've gone and finished the shading and highlighting! My partner put together the background and shaded the bow and arrow. Overall, I think we are pretty happy with this!
[[starting a new post because the other one is getting unbearably long]]
SOLUTION FOUND:
Talked with my professor about my dissatisfaction with the colouring and background aspects of my portrait. I couldn't find anything that didn't just add to the busy look of the piece, and when the focus is a lot of complex line work, I can't afford to put a lot of detail into the background. She directed me to Charles M. Schulz and Charlie Brown. I haven't read Charlie brown in years and I am absolutely blown away at how beautiful it is. I don't remember this at all! :)
Anyways, Schulz is my new inspiration, along with Jon Foreman's own album covers from his independent work.
I've been wanting a really organic look for this project the entire time, but just haven't been able to figure it out in Illustrator. All I know is clean vector lines. I don't know how to do softer things. I've been directed to a couple of tutorials and will be working through those of the weekend.
So. . . many. . . gradients. . . This whole thing has been quiiiiite the journey. I think I may be done. Peer review later today, so we shall soon find out!
