Final Project Progress Report - 3

I had to open my drawings in Photoshop and erase the background paper that showed in my book layout. I couldn't get rid of all of it, but I cleaned them up enough to use in the rough dummy. I laid out as many pages as I could, with text and sketches. My goal for this project was to learn how to get a book far enough along to be submitted as a proposal for publication. Naturally, I could not complete a book, but I was able to work through and understand each part of the process. I am much more comfortable with InDesign, which was the most difficult step for me. I learned a lot doing the project. 

Final Project Progress Report - 2

This has not been as productive a week as I would have liked. I did work on some of the 2-page spreads in InDesign. I didn't save them on my flash because I had some trouble with the background that I wanted to resolve first.  The paper from my original drawings scanned in and shows on the pages. I'm not sure how to fix that.  I also tried working on a digital illustration. I thought I could do it using Corel Draw, which of friend of mine has. I was hoping it would work something like Photoshop, but it doesn't.  My friend has only used the program to edit photos, so he couldn't help me, either. I tried to find some video tutorials, but they all gave instructions for very specific projects. So I'm back to having to wait to use Photoshop. It's been a real hindrance living so far from the computer lab. 

Final Project Progress Report - 1

I am working toward making a rough dummy and one finished digital illustration for a children's story book. I have been reading through two books: Illustrating Children's Books by Martin Salisbury, and Writing With Pictures by Uri Shulevitz. After reading some things in Shulevitz's book, I decided to revise my story. I pretty much rewrote the whole thing.  Publishers prefer a 32-page format for story/picture books, so that's what I am working with. I sketched out a 32-page story board, so I could map out  the way the story will fit onto the pages. The story board consists of thumbnail sketches of all of the 2-page spreads for the book. They are all laid out on one page. The story board also helps to organize where the illustrations will go. I have a small, very rough paper dummy to use as a model for my good rough paper dummy. I hope to complete the paper dummy this week, and begin scanning in the illustration sketches for the rough dummy using Adobe InDesign.

Student Art Show Ad

This is my completed ad implementing the suggestions I was given in class.

Ad I Really, Really Like--A Lot!

I was first drawn to this ad because of the beautiful design. When I looked at it more closely, I realized that I couldn't read it. I thought that it wasn't much good as an ad if the viewer couldn't figure out what it was communicating. Then I read about the ad and realized how very creative it is.

This is a help-wanted ad. It's far from the typical (and boring) help-wanteds that you usually see. This agency was looking for an expert typographer. This ad uses a contemporary color palette and a graphic style that references the Bauhaus school. The text is set in all dingbats. They did a series of these ads using Webdings, Wingdings and Zapf Dingbats. Only a real typography geek would be able to read the ads, which include all the info a person would need to apply for the job. This company is obsessed (their word) with typography. They wanted to hire a typographer who is, too. So this ad communitcates perfectly well to the target audience. I think it is top drawer (to coin a phrase from the Bauhaus era).

Another Ad I Really Like

What's the old saying about how the hat makes the man? These two men couldn't be more different. I don't know what kind of company is identified in the upper right corner, but if they sell hats, then how clever is that? I think this is a smart ad. It's clean, very simple, but communicates so much.

Ad I Like

Most of the ads that caught my eye stood out from the rest because they were so clean. They communicated a point, but did not contain superfluous information. This ad is simple and direct. It directs the viewer to choose between two options. There is no grey between the black and white here.

Student Art Show ad copy

Actually, this ad is not quite finished. I want to add original art in the large space at the bottom. In real life I would choose the work of a student. I'm not sure how to incorporate, say a drawing, into the piece. When I did this kind of work in the olden days, I would make a photostat copy of the original art and paste it on with sticky wax. In the case of a photo, I would tape the exact size red transparency film onto the paste-up, mark the registration, and give the photo to the printer with my camera-ready copy. Something tells me that it isn't done that way nowadays. Anyway, I still need to add the drawing. Also, I chose a font that had a magical feel, "Herculanum." It doesn't have lower case letters, but the style fit the sort of magical spring, Walpurgis feel I wanted.

Another thing--I learned from working in public schools that if you really want people to turn out for an event, you have to offer free food. Door prizes make it even better.

School Logo

 This text is making me crazy. It's all perfectly aligned when I type it, but it spreads out when I post it. This is my last try. I had to abandon the eagle I was working with. I got to the place where the more I worked with it, the more I disliked what I was doing. So I decided to redesign my high school logo. Harrisonburg High is the home of the Blue Streaks. The school colors are blue and white. The old logo has the v-shaped lightening bolts. I wanted the blue streak in my design to make the horizontal on the h's. I would like to play around more with this same idea, but using different fonts, different streaks, too.

Lena

I worked with a photo of Amy during class, but I somehow lost it in the great expanse of the computer universe. That happens sometimes. So I reworked this photo I took of Lena. I cropped it, zombied her up a little and added a ghostly figure in the window.

I thought that learning about how to use 3D text might be helpful.
There were some small areas that I just could not get color into, even when I ungrouped the text more. I don't find that the tools work exactly the way they are presented in tutorials. Could just be me, though.

Magic of Machu Picchu

Playing with Illustrator

This wasn't hard, but I never could get the blend tool to work.
Ah, well, tomorrow's another day!

The Magic of Machu Picchu

It's really hard to magic-up Macchu Picchu. It is naturally magically beautiful. So that part proved to be a challenge. In the first picture I played with colors in areas that I selected by color. It was interesting, but the original photo seemed more truly mystical. So I decided to give myself magical modes of travel in Machu Picchu. I thought arriving in a Glinda, witch of the North, bubble ball would be fun. I put a shiny reflection on the bubble, but somehow saved the one I made before adding that. Oh well. The moth wing came from a photo of a moth taken in the botanical gardens below M.P. The last picture was taken in the Temple of the Moon at the base of Huanapicchu, the tall mountain behind downtown. I painted myself to look like a storybook princess there, because I felt like one (even if I was probably sitting on an alter where human sacrifices were performed). The guides there will tell you that the Inca only sacrificed llamas, but I don't think that's exactly the whole truth.

To save layers, I had to save my work as an xcf file in the GIMP program. I did that, but for some reason they did not save properly. I was unable to separate the layers. The changes I made are pretty subtle. I toned down Lena, so she does not come forward from the background quite so much. I also toned down the leaves around Tristan and added some shadows. I think it helped a little.

Digital Self Portrait

The pool near Beecher Ridge is a two-hour hike down the mountain from Matthews Arm. I chose this mountain woodland setting because I grew up in the Shenandoah Valley and I love the mountains. That is where I feel the most grounded, most at peace, and the most connected to a universal unity of life. However, not just any mountains will do. Last year I was able to visit the Andes Mountains in Peru. As breathtakingly beautiful as they are, I didn't feel the same sense of belonging there that I feel in  my little blue mountains.

The imagery I chose for this self portrait is deeply personal. It represents change, recovery, and the powerful importance of people in my life. Three years ago my fiance died suddenly. It is his reflection in the water. I first put only his reflection in the stream, but that didn't express the whole of the loss. So I added my reflection to his. 

Right after his death, I felt profoundly disconnected from life. The reality, which I had come to know as my life, had suddenly ceased to exist. That is an indescribably strange place to be. Being translucent and drifting in the water might come as close as anything to describing the feeling. Fortunately, I had my son, Tristan, and some wonderful friends.

Tristan was five when he sat under the sugar maple tree and tossed handfuls of leaves up in the air. He is twenty-two now, and finishing dual degrees in English and philosophy. He and I have frequent, engaging, long talks. He has been an anchor for me. My friends have also been anchors for me. They kept me company, kept me involved in things, and made me eat. I have represented all of them in the picture of Lena, who is seated on the rock in the background. Another anchor for me is beauty, the beauty of Nature: wild columbine, harvest moons, katydids, the smells of rich, wet earth and fresh-cut wood, walking barefoot on carpets of plush moss, listening to wind in the treetops--all things I love.

The image of me in the foreground is a more recent photo. I decided to use an oil paint filter on it because I've had to, in a sense, re-create myself. It's an ongoing process. The image of me in the center of the picture was part of the original photo. When I started the project, I had planned to cover it or remove it. Later on I realized that it could represent my emergence from a dark place into the bright world of possibility. So I decided to leave it in.

SOME TECHNICAL STUFF:  I actually did this project twice, because I let a friend (who insisted he knew what he was doing) talk me into using a lower resolution to save my photos. That turned out to be okay, though, because I really need lots of practice doing this stuff. One thing that I did on my first attempt that I forgot to do on the second was to slightly decrease Lena's opacity. Doing that made her blend in better with her surroundings. I also wanted to create a gentle swirling effect in the water to break up the reflection images. I couldn't find an application in the GIMP program that would do that. The filters in GIMP are not nearly as nice as Photoshop, either. I would like to have done a better job of fitting Tristan into the scene. He looks too pasted on. That kind of finishing touch will just take more practice, I think.

Color Sketch

This is much more fun to me. I don't feel so much like the technology impedes the process. Of course, what that really means is that I need to keep getting more familiar with the technology. I am intimidated by the technology stuff. I can do more with a stick in the dirt most of the time. But I actually like drawing with the tablet.

tablet drawing - eye

My very first tablet drawing... 

You have much more control than I expected.

I like it a lot.

I just love to draw.

It was fun to try drawing with something new.

Relic

One might be put off by her gingham and ruffles. There is a primitive
awkwardness about this woman. She is out-of-style, but she is not
outdated. Her talents can be approximated, but never replicated. Her
feet are in two worlds. Her kitchen has both a wood cook stove and
a microwave oven. Radium is no more or less to her than an ingredient
in her tonic to cure angst. She is a book of old stories, whose brittle
yellowed edges are migrating inward on the pages.

A small disruption in a major power grid might one day bring things to
come. Her stories could be rewritten on clean, white, pliable pages. No
more Abercrombie and Fitch on that day. She will teach you how to
grow and harvest flax, then how to ret, dry, seed, break, scutch, heckle,
spin and weave it into sheets of linen. She and the few others of her kind
will be the wellsprings of hope in a desolate age.

SOME TECHNICAL STUFF:  This looks like a six-year-old cut it out of a magazine and put it together with glue stick. I hope I can figure out how to do better than this.

superhero