Book Illustration

"Love like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with soaking joy. But sometimes, under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots, keeping itself alive."

-Mitch Albom, The 5 People You Meet in Heaven

I wanted this quote to be understood without taking a completely cliche approach. I did not want to merge two couples into some root system and call it a day. Instead, I chose a willow tree. I have always felt that weeping willows symbolized extreme emotion. Every since I heard the song when I was a child I thought that everyone who was heartbroken sang about weeping willow trees.

To make the tree I made my own brush and had at it with the paint brush tool. I am impressed with the outcome of layering different colors.

I traced in the roots and used a gradient to show the ground giving nutrients and nourishment to the tree. However, these roots have proven to be the most difficult part of this project. I wanted to hide something in them without appearing too cliche and I feel that I did it pretty well. Adding the glow to the roots really helped them stand out from the background.

Overall, I am satisfied that I was able to get this illustration from my imagination to the computer screen.

Music Poster

We had to design an illustration for a beach music festival that featured one genre of music. When I chose the Blues I had set it out in my mind to use any muted color palette but blue. However, you can see how strongly I kept to my convictions.

This project required a lot of planning. I must have changed my idea 12 times before settling with this. Even after getting a solid idea I had to incorporate the beach theme. That task alone was the most difficult aspect.

I like playing around with the textures in this one, and I like how the background contrasts with the solid piano and trumpet. I am also really glad I learned how to do a wood texture. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever learn what every feature is in Illustrator, but that is a good problem to have!

Photorealism

Photorealism is quite the intimidating term! However, since I have grown to become so dependent upon the pen tool, this project was way less "hard" than I thought it would be. I still can't say this was an easy project because it has proven to be the project that has taken me the most time.

Here is the original raster photo:

And my vector rendition.

The most difficult part of this image was the splash and ripple of the soap on the box. To achieve the correct look I ended up using the pen tool to trace out similar color regions and then adding a Gaussian blur and a feather to those shapes.

Overall I am incredibly satisfied with my work. I plan on doing more work with photorealism on my own!

Symbol of Me

How do you design a symbol about yourself without making a logo? That was the most daunting question that I asked repeatedly throughout the assignment. The criteria for this project made me realize the significance of planning. When I first sat down to make this I just started clicking away at my mouse and got a horrible result.

After much thinking this is the product!

The hare was chosen because I like to run and, given my track record (see what I did there?), I'm pretty fast. This hare in particular is white, matching my paleness. Bunnies tend to have big floppy and awkward ears. I am known for being awkward in the way I handle myself. The hare is jumping over a hill made of a question mark. I like to ask a lot of questions simply for the sake of getting deeper in my knowledge about something. I question my faith but never to the point of recounting it. I ask a lot of questions but I never let them overwhelm me, which is why the hare is jumping over the question mark. I do not feel that we should ever hide that we have questions.

As every good teacher says "There are no such thing as stupid questions."

LIFEPROOF Designs

When taking math classes I would always question the importance of learning a certain method, so my teachers would pull out a word problem to explain a use for the function. This assignment is the word problem of the semester. This was a very challenging but practical assignment requiring everyone to reach past their comfort zone and design a product that was well designed.

For the feminine approaches, all I had to do was create a design that I could see myself carrying around on my phone. The most difficult aspect of these concepts was getting the correct head-to-hat size ratio for the first design!








I tried to keep my design very urban for this assignment. The most difficult aspect for this concept, aside from not understanding the male mind, was not being able to design over the logo. Many guys enjoy a nice grunge look, and that is not always easy to get without a gritty texture.

When the time came to turn this assignment in I realized that I wouldn't mind having any of these designs on my cases!

12 Different Ways

The instructions to this assignment were simple: illustrate an object 12 different ways using different methods. I had such a hard time deciding what object to use. I wanted to choose carefully considering I would be looking at it for a while.

I'm glad I chose hot air balloons. While doing research for this assignment I found so many different angles that could be used.

I was thoroughly impressed that I used the scribble effect for the water reflection illustration. I had never thought I would find a purpose for that option! That particular illustration is one of my favorites.

With this assignment I realized that the somewhat realistic versions and the simple minimalistic versions can take just as much work as the next and should also require the same amount of planning.

Live Trace Assignment

 Good thing I've taken my drawing class! This assignment relied solely on drawing. It was really fun to see how different mediums of drawing utensils effected the live trace. I found out the hard way that pencil is almost never a good idea for live tracing. I have always been told that I'm a light writer, and that became very evident for this assignment. The sketches that were done with marker came out with the cleanest auto-trace. Even the pictures that were done in pencil will salvageable, it just required a little more time in preview mode tracing options!