Painting in Photoshop

This series of paintings started off with a tutorial. I learned how to make brushes according to the texture I was aiming for. I also found that it was helpful to work in layers. Once my brush was made, I used this paint palate below to experiment with mixing dry brushes with wet brushes as well as  heavy mix with light mix. I also had to adjust the load, blend, and opacity percentages. With certain brush tips, the path would get wider the longer it was used (as you can see in the palate below). Cleaning the brush, in Photoshop, basically means that you sharpen the tip of the brush. In my landscape, I used a mixer brush to create the variety of shades in the grass, trees, and sky. It was cool to see a digital piece of work look almost hand made, and I would love to learn and get better at creating brushes and brush presets for certain situations.

PowderPuff Tshirts

PowderPuff is a very special event for Junior and Senior girls at Olathe Northwest. It is an annual event that takes place during homecoming week, where the Juniors verse the Seniors in a flag football game. The game draws in a large crowd; the excitement is always high as people anticipate the bonfire, carnival games and food trucks that follow. This year I had the honor to design the Junior girls' team shirts. I went with the orchid colored shirt because it was unique. No other school shirt has been printed on such a lovely color like this one! I vectored a twist on the NFL logo to fit the Junior's graduating year- 2016- to take up the left chest design. Then on the back, I created a design inspired from a sorority event shirt on Pinterest. I enjoyed this project mostly because I was able to make it super girly with the font and color of the shirt! I faced some challenges with the two-color ink limit in order to keep cost down, but I got really good at using the Pathfinder window to subtract the front.

Raven Logo

This was a fun project I choose to do in my free time by helping out a teacher at ONW. Mrs. Potter is the interior design and fashion design teacher here at ONW. She addressed me about making a raven logo for her to use on a T-shirt in her boutique. I gladly accepted when she promised me a free shirt once it was printed! She really wanted the full raven body, which our school logo is the head only. Potter then sent me an old KU logo she really wanted it to look like, so in order to avoid copyright issues, I changed the direction of the bird, changed all colors, smoothed and changed the notches of the body path, and made different shoes. Then, in order to avoid copyright issues from the chuck tailors, I've added a NW in the logo circle for Olathe "NorthWest". The final project is shown below...

Gradient Mesh with Custom Graphics

I followed a tutorial to expand my skills with gradient mesh by creating the apple you see below. First, I traced an image of an apple with the pen tool. Then, by using the eyedropper tool and setting the gradient mesh, I was able to pull colors from the actual images to create a vectored apple that closely resembles a real one! I feel that this new skill set will expand my ability to stray from the cartoon like designs of solid colors (although sometimes solid colors are cool). Creating the gradient mesh was a lot easier than I was expecting, and I think I would be more willing to incorporate it into my future projects now that I know how quick it is.

The Anatomy of Font

Learning the anatomy of font is important when using typography skills, kerning, and communicating potential pros and cons of a certain font. The characteristics of these parts of text are what gives typefaces their character. My font is best described as rational, assertive, progressive, and disciplined. This happens to be a direct reflection of my personality. I am very articulate; everything needs to be even, symmetric, in its place, etc. I am reasonable and everything I do has a purpose. Assertive can sometimes carry a negative connotation as aggressive, but I also think its a great way to describe my positive, self-assured, and confident self. I like improvement in order to keep up with trends. This font reflects my personality with its clean and modern feel. I find the discipline in the tall, straight, symmetric, and constant shape throughout each letter. I like the predictability because I like feeling prepared.

Cubes

The first project assigned this school year is to master creating and manipulating cubes. My sources for learning everything there is to know about cubes is video #241 and #242 on lynda.com. This is what I learned to create using the tutorials:

Then, using what I learned and my previous knowledge of Adobe Illustrator, I extended the project to create the following:

And finally, I combined all skills and knowledge of patterns. I included light medium and dark tones in the color, used a repeated element of cubes that were made using primarily the line tool, rotate tool, copy, and stroke panel. It took a little bit of thought to figure out how the shapes would all flow together nicely, along with color (see below):

From this skill work, I learned three important things:

1. Since these cubes aren't literally 3D, in order for them to appear that way on a 2D screen, we manipulate lines, angles, and shades of color (lighting/light source). A 120 degree angle is used to appear as a 90 degree angle. 

2. Use cmd + J to join paths. It doesn't matter what angle or shape the paths are, as long as they connect at only one point on both anchors.

3. Use cmd + Y to put your computer into "Preview Mode" so that you are able to check that your lines are properly connected and lined up. It takes the stroke away momentarily.

A few other important things that I noted was that the eyedropper can be used to transfer a color pallet to the artwork by holding alt. Alt click while selected on the rotate tool is used to set the angles of lines. For this project specifically, it worlds best to turn align objects to pile grid "OFF", turn the bounding box "OFF", and turn smart guides "ON".

What is Graphic Design?

What: Graphic design is art with a purpose. The visual communication and expression of concepts and ideas is produced through various elements. Art.

 

Where: EVERYWHERE! Graphic design can be found everywhere: logos, websites, business cards, advertisements, book design, brochures, billboards, product packaging, posters, magazines newspapers, greeting cards! 

Why: I enjoy graphic design because it develops my creative abilities. There is always something new to learn or observe. It challenges me to keep up with trends in design, and often work on tight deadlines (even possibly for clients). There aren't many boundaries with graphic design. I can draw inspiration from just about anywhere, and transfer ideas to sketches, onto a computer, and manipulate the Adobe programs in order to achieve the desired effect. After discovering the world of graphic design, I can't go anywhere without noticing it.