Pen Tool Self Portrait Cartoon

When I first started drawing my cartoon I didn’t know how to approach the task because I’m not great at drawing. But after taking my time and using pencil I was able to draw her. I decided to include a soccer ball because I play soccer. Drawing the pentagons on the soccer ball were difficult but I decided that it didn’t have to be exact because it is a cartoon. Drawing the eyes and eyebrows were also difficult because I struggled to make them symmetrical. When I went into Illustrator to draw over my cartoon with the pen tool I struggled a little tracing the eyes and eyebrows. I took my time on this part of the assignment knowing that it would be important when I went into Photoshop and tried to color things in. When I was finally done I created another layer to add color to and added a white back ground. I used the paint bucket tool to fist color everything in. I used a picture of myself and the pipet tool to use the actual colors of her skin, hair, lips and eyes in the cartoon. After getting the basic coloring done I added shading. I shaded using burn under her eye, under her neck, and to the left of the ball on her shirt to create shadows. I also used burn on her stomach to create a belly button. I also used dodge to highlight her pants, shoes, side of her face, top of head, right arm, and under eyebrow to imitate the sun shining down on her. I then copied the color copy of my cartoon and colored her black and then lowered the opacity and blurred it. I placed this layer next to and behind the color copy of my cartoon to look like a shadow. I also added a blue background and sun in the upper right corner. I then added grass and clouds. I also took a picture of a cartoon dog from the internet and placed it in the sky. I locked the layer and used the paint tool to draw over it with while to create a cloud shaped like a dog. I then deleted the picture and filled in the cloud. I am happy with the way my cartoon came out and like the background I chose to include.  

Corners & Curves Practice

Mixed Media-Polaroid Collage

The strongest area of my work is how everything flows together. I like that the background matches the color of my shirt in the photo and the green of the grass and yellow in the background compliment each other. I also like how I was able to include text in my own handwriting. The quote, which is by a well known soccer player, also fits in with the soccer photo I chose. The area of my work that can be improved upon is my use of the tools to alter the photo. I changed the color of the grass in the photo but didn't want to change the color of my shirt. I didn't know how to erase the changes from part of a photo but keep it in other places so I just duplicated the photo and cropped out the parts I wanted to show through.

Placing the Polaroid boxes was the only easy part about this assignment. I had an idea of what I wanted to do already and was able to do it when I started. I put the Polaroid boxes in the right upper corner and bottom left corner and created a kind of tunnel effect where they became larger as they approached the upper right hand corner. The most difficult part about this assignment was trying to include some mixed media or art. I struggled with this because I am not good at drawing at all. However I was able to include a scan of a quote I hand wrote. I liked the way the scan came out and was able to use tools to move around certain words and manipulate the scan to make it look the way I wanted and fit in my piece. I also found it very cool that I was able to remove the white part of the background from the scan. Another difficult part of this assignment was choosing a background for the piece. I was torn between 2 on the internet. But after getting some help from Miss Cabral I found that it was possible to combine the two and merge them into one. I didn't that this was possible prior to this assignment and playing around with the different effects until I found one that looked best was cool. 

As far as materials go I used a photo my dad took of me playing soccer last year. Finding a photo that would work was also very difficult because I needed one that would be big enough and not blurry when I opened it on Photoshop and everything I had on my phone was very blurry. I also used 2 backgrounds that I merged from the internet. I used a Polaroid box which I turned and changed the size of using the transform tools. I also used a scanner to scan in a quote by one of my favorite soccer players that i hand wrote. I learned to use auto select tools and show transform tools while doing this assignment. I also used the transform tools to alter the size of the Polaroid boxes(I held shift while changing size). I also used the lasso tools and layers tools a lot. I was able to try a lot of things I haven't worked with before in this assignment. I demonstrate the objective in this art activity by using a self-portrait and original image for my picture. i included a foreground, mid ground and background as well as a scan in for my form of fine art on the foreground. I also included typography when I included the scan of my quote. If I could do this art activity again I would want to do it with a picture of a favorite artist or someone other than me. I feel that this would allow me to be more creative with the background and piece of fine art I add. If I were to do this activity again using the same photo I would try and place the Polaroid boxes in different places because the placement of some of them could be a bit awkward. Overall though I am proud of my piece. 

Typography

9/21/16

This assignment allowed me to be creative in that we were able to create whatever we wanted using Photoshop and one letter. Choosing a letter was easy for this activity because I knew I wanted to do the first letter in my name. I like how open ended the assignment was and we were able to take a letter and Photoshop and create whatever we wanted. However, the same things that were easy about this assignment were also difficult in that there weren't very many guidelines so how we wanted to approach the assignment was really up to us. Thinking of where I wanted to start and how I wanted to incorporate color and font in my piece without making it too busy was a challenge.The strongest area of my work is the way my piece flows. It is visually appealing because the text(letters M and m) gradually fade into the gradient background. I did this to make my piece look smooth. I also put the smaller M's and m's in the other text to give my piece originality. I thought this was a nice touch. 

I only used Photoshop for this assignment. I first started by playing around with the font of the letter M to see which ones I liked best. After deciding on Myriad Pro I played around with font colors trying to find 2 colors that complimented each other. I ended up choosing a lighter color(blue) and a darker color(blue). I also thought it would be cool to put a gradient in the background because I wanted to incorporate both colors into the background. I adjusted the gradient to fade from dark to light and placed my lines of letters in a place where it would look like they were fading. I used the transform tools to turn the lines of letters to face the direction I wanted and change the size. I also used the folders a lot on the right side of my screen to keep myself organized. For this piece I used more basic tools because I wanted the piece to be simple.

I demonstrated the objective in this art activity by using about 34 Ms to create a unique piece in Photoshop. Although my piece was simple I am proud of it because I find it visually appealing and think simple is better in this case. I played around using tools in Photoshop that I haven't in a while and refreshed my memory a bit. Adding more to my work and using different tools can be improved on. Adding a bit more to my piece and my work could make it less simplistic, however I was unsure of what else to add without making it too busy so I decided simpler is better. If I could do this activity again I would try and be more creative and use different tools. Although I am proud of my simple piece if I did it again I would make it more colorful. I would try and use more than just 2 colors and maybe use a couple fonts.