Finished

Maybe finished is a bad way to describe this because I only was able to do two out of the three portraits.

Ah . . . He gave me so much trouble in the face area . . . His hair is supposed to be red. I hope the shade of grey I used conveys that.

This one was the easiest. I don't know why . . . Maybe because it's actually a profile and not a portrait . . .
And this one didn't make it . . . I was really trying too! I busted myself over break to get the other two finished but then I just couldn't fit this one in. I'll probably finish it later though as gift art for a friend. I actually like the way her face is progressing right now too. Probably because she's the last out of the three that I worked on so all of the things I learned from the other two came together better with this one. Oh well . . .

Progress

I've made a little progress since last time. I feel like I'm almost done with the first one and with the second but the last one has a lot left to do. It's really just tedious filling and shading but I think I'm getting a lot out of it. Expecially since I'm going for photo-realism, this is really improving those set of skills. Which was the point really.

The first two don't have the pencil lines underneath because this is what they looked like when I was working on them last. I would have taken a screen shot but I havne't figured that out yet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:President_Theodore_Roosevelt,_1904.jpg The picture I'm using for lighting reference. The actual pose and clothing idea came from a different picture.

http://flickr.com/photos/cyanalab/2977724002/sizes/o/in/set-72157608409587405/ I think it's a 1920's ad or something. Very professional though.

http://www.all-art.org/history658_photography2-4.html You have to scroll all of the way to the bottom of the page for the reference photo.

description

Haha. Forgot about the 150 words for the last post.

The way I am approaching this assignment will hopefully help me with my photoshop skills. I sketched out the picture in my sketchbook and transferred them onto the computer. The first picture that I started on was the 1920's one. Her name is Janus by the way. I thought I would start by laying down the main colors on separate layers for each thing. I kinda got frustrated doing that though and I couldn't figure out why so I moved on to the next picture. Instead of filling in the base colors on the 1900's portrait I decided to take each part one step at a time. For example, I started with the jacket because it seemed like the easiest. I filled in the base color but then went back in and did all of the shading and rendering. Then I continued to the dress shirt then the tie in the same manner. I found this a better way to work. I don't know why but it's just better for me.

I plan on starting on the third portrait soon and working through it the same way.

first update

First post for my portrait project. I would post this later and work on it some more but I don't have the power cord for my laptop.

2knitstitch.blogspot.com

if you want to learn how to knit.

You can't just delete a post on here can you? Blah


fillerfillerfiller

Logo ad

If you read the post below, just ignore it. I opened Illustrator about half an hour ago and it decided it wanted to work. YAY! And here is the ad I created.

I think it looks rather traditional in the layout with a few twists. The only thing that is center aligned is the heading and you can't really tell because it's off to the side. For the heading I used um . . . not oldstyle but . . . modern! And for the rest I used uh . . . I want to say sans serif with a decorative style both bold and regular. The body text is left aligned with the little bars to break up the text. And as I go down the text gets smaller and smaller but I kept the bars the same size except the first one. It's not outstanding or anything but it's simple and I like the fact that it's simple.

Illustrator hassle!

So . . . making the second part of the logo project has been a hassle. Illustrator didn't want to save because my laptop had been worked on to get some bugs out. I took it back and now Illustrator saves but the text isn't working. It was working before when it wouldn't save! I guess you win some you lose some.

I'm thinking I wont be able use Illustrator for the project even though that's the program I'm supposed to be using. The alternative is Word.

I know I could just use the computer lab but my parents are coming into town tomorrow (Sunday) and I don't even know if the lab is open on Sunday. And then, if it is, what if the building is locked? I know it locks after 5 pm on weekdays but I've never tried getting in on the weekends. If it is locked my card doesn't get the door open.

Excuses, excuses, excuses.

Complain, complain, complain.

I'll get it done. I always do.

High School Logo part 2

The new logo for Grafton High School! I didn't use the school colors (red and blue), well, there is blue but there's no place for the red. I chose this design over the others because I like the look of it. It's straight to the point: school name, mascot name and a picture of the mascot. The other designs either weren't strong enough or the design didn't work or both. This also has a very traditional feel to it and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing for a school this new.

I'm very proud of myself as this is my first project using Illustrator. I thought I wouldn't get it but finally today it just started coming together and I pretty much did all of this today. Except the rope, I did that a couple of days ago.

High School logo

My ninth grade high school logo. Oh goodness, I'm so happy to be redoing this thing. It's bad enough it's a boat but it looks like they didn't have enough time or money to make a proper mascot or logo for the school. I mean, it is only ten years old but still . . . I have my work cut out for me, eh?

Here's my four drafts for a new logo.

I'm partial to the first two but I've been persuaded to create the first one. We'll see how it goes!

I made a button! I did one of those easy tutorials. Actually, the one I made was orange and when I uploaded it here it 's blue. Which is ok. It's probably in CMYK.

Part of the coloring didn't work. The white elipse is supposed to be more transparent on one side but Illustrator didn't do like the instructions said it would. I also had to save it in Illustrator but then save it again in Photoshop because Illustrator doesn't have JPEG options.

Self Portrait take 3

I changed a couple of things in this picture. I had to redo the background because I did something wrong with the layers. I made the figure smaller and the note she's hanging onto. I made her shadow going the right direction. Some people didn't like the shadow on the sheet music but I really like the way it looks. I added a couple more notes so the figure wasn't by itself floating away. Oh! And the gradient of the background.

Self portrait take 2

Project assignment: Creat a self portrait that syas something about yourself, either in photo manupulation or painting (or something like that).



I started with the music note that I found online. I croped it and put it on a new canvas, and resized it. I drew myself in my sketchbook and photoed it. Once it was in photoshop I outlined it black, got rid of the pencil photo, and put it on the same canvas as the note. I colored it there. Last thing was the background. I found a stock photo of sheet music and blured it and then did a dry brush filter. Added a little shadow for interest.

Why did I choose music? I loooooooove music. I love playing it, and listening to it. Almost any kind of music will do if I can sing along or dance to it. I hate sitting around in silence so I am constantly listening to something: the radio, cds, music on my computer, my mp3 player, even my records. Sometimes it's an escape if I dont want to think about something, I just turn on some distracting music. It makes the time go by faster or if I'm in a certain mood it helps me get in or out of a funk.

When I'm playing music and I'm doing it well I get this fantastic feeling that I can do anything. I might not be the best but I love my viola and the piano. When I listen to other people play and I know they love what they do I feel like a have a connection to those people because we get the same feeling playing music.

I could probably go on forever about music but I'll stop here.

Today we learned about painting in Photoshop. We had to do a self portrait in pencil, scan it, ad paint over it in Photoshop. Thankfully, my friend Erin showed me how to us photoshop a couple of days ago so I've been doing this before we did it in class. The way I did it was different then the way the teacher showed the class.

The skin color's a little off I think but I tried to blend it like you would with oil paints. Blue then yellow then red. I think it looks good for my first try.

Practice

Shopping Trip

The title for my photo essay is Shopping Trip.

With the first photo selected the background and blurred it and used the artist tool and cubed it also. It would seem she doesn't like the way it looks in here.

This one didn't turn out like I wanted . . . I wanted to make the book glow and the background be dark but I couldn't find the tools on GIMP. I felt like I was going around in circles.

I cropped the side of this one to make it more visually interesting. And gave it a newspaper filter. HEADLINES READ "GIRL LOST IN STORE!!!"

The last picture I selected the background and downed the brightness and some of the contrast. This gives the foreground more attention. I think she's found what she was looking for.

I feel like the program restricted what I wanted to do with the photos and my lack of knowledge with computer programs didn't help much either.

Photoessay- pre-edit

I picked four photos for my photoessay thing. These are before I edit them.

Charlie Dragin'

We did some photo editing in class. Took a picture and played around with it.































Poor Charlie was my victim and I didn't know what o do with hi so a dragged him up a bit. Haha. I'll make another post about how I did it.

Finished

The finished project of our "superhero".













Her name is Katerina. She lived in the big, dirty city as an innocent girl. She decided one day to go on a journey to find out about life. She ends up learning about many things through the books that she collects and this helps her deal with life in the city. She ends up losing her innocents as well. Katerina becomes distant and disenchanted with the people and the city that she lives in but she decides to stay there.

Coming along.

Sitting in class developing the "superhero" character. She has a name- Katerina. And a purpose. Charlie and I are putting together a comic strip for her now. I'll be posting all of the pictures soon.

Oh, and we have to do a presentation on our superhero too. Haha. . . not I.

New superhero

Yesterday the teacher gave us the assignment to create our own superhero in groups of two the same way we made our first one. Peicing together everything from different pictures. And create a history for our superhero.

Charlie and I were like, "You wanna?" "Ok, why not."

He came up with the idea for a little girl who was really smart in a big dirty city. It's very modern and different than whay you might think of a superhero. The picture of the girl we found was in black and white so we decided to put all of the pictures we used in greyscale. Gave her a stack of books and then we thought to give her some wilted lilies because lilies symbolize purity- wilted lilies not so pure.

We only had an hour so we didn't get very far. Most of the picture is done but we still have to come up with a name and background. I don't know how much time the teacher's going to give us next class. . .

Superhero?

Second day on the new blog. . .

I guess I can put up what I did last class.

First

FIRST POST!!!!