Week 8

Craft

To make my illustration, I used Adobe Illustrator. I opened the program and started with a new document, using the letter size 8.5 x 11. I wanted the orientation of the paper to be portrait for the to coinside with the position of the sunglasses portrayed in my illustration.

I began by using that Bamboo pen and pad tool. I chose to use the rounded rectangle tool and carefully created about nince different rectangles that would piece my illustration of sunglasses together. The actual eye piece that one can see out of was made up of two rectangles and connected by another. Each ear piece was created using two different rectangles as well. And lastly, the nose pieces were created with two more rectangles.

I used a 1 point, splash stroke tool for the majority of my piece. After carefully creating each rectangle to fit the correct dimensions that i wanted, i then pieced the shapes together. The eye piece was originally placed toward the front, but i wanted to show all aspects of the sunglasses so eventually i sent it to the back. The original fill of the sunglasses was a hot pink that i found in the "kids" brush library. I copied the illustration and then pasted it and chose a new color, which turned out to be green, blue and yellow. I scattered the illustrations all aroung the 8.5 x 11 page and came up with my final illustration. I rotated the different sunglasses in different directions. Toward the end i began to move pieces around and put one colored eye pieces with another colored ear pieces, just to mix things up a bit.

Composition:

I composed my illustration using the Bamboo pen and pad provided to us. It took a little time getting used to but eventually i came to like the tools. After I became comfortable using the Bamboo I began to play around using different shapes to form my object.

At first when i started the illustration i wanted it to be straight forward and real. So i worked hard trying to get the rectangles just how i wanted them. In later illustrations i began to think outside of the box. But for this specific illustration the shape and colors to be just so. I wanted the audience to be able to tell what it was that i was illustrating and i wanted the bright colors to show my style.

Craft:

My style for my illustrations took some time to find. I did not really think about it at all before working on the different illustrations. I just began testing different colors, shapes, sizes, etc. to see what i liked. I tried different backgrounds and different ideas. But for each illustration i kept coming back to bright colors and dark backgrounds.

My style is called "SOU-SI POP." I took the idea of the place it was created in, the south side of chicago, and the idea of how the colors POP out from the page.

The splash brush strokes are another big part of my style. I like the idea of the illustration looking painted. Like i did in previous illustrations, i used the brush library and found different brush strokes that add a little something. Lines are all fine and dandy but i find myself always using thick brush strokes, that are dark or light.