Week 5

Craft: For this week, the main objective was to add more real life appeal to our artwork in order to achieve a more three dimensional picture. The use of value is what we really focused on this week and we used the gradient, transparency, and opacity tools to do it.

I used the gradient tool on almost every part of the shoe, in order to make the wrinkles and lighting appear to be more lifelike. I had to add and remove different colors in the gradient slider bar as well as move the different colors up and down the sliders to make each section look as close to the real picture as possible. Then I used the transparency on all the gradient layers to achieve a more realistic look. For the fire I used the feather stylize with different levels of harshness for every level. This really help make the fire look more gas-like.

Composition: I used the gradient feature the most in order to make the every wrinkle in the shoe stand out. I wanted the natural curves and overlays of fabric from the actual photograph to be represented in the illustration. I also wanted the different shadowing and lighting, due to the flash on the camera when taking the picture, to also be characterized in the illustration. For the fire in the photograph, I wanted to make my best representation by adding many different color layers on the fire. With a lot of different combinations of colors, layers, and feathering techniques the fire is now much more elaborate. I started with only three base layers: orange, yellow, and white. Then I just started to make a lot of smaller layers with different variations of these three colors and put them on top of the base layers.

Concept: Simply put this illustration is, “Shoes on Fire.” There is a unique thing about fire because of the way it moves when something is burning. The essence of the fire is what I am really trying to capture, along with making the shoe look as real as possible. The combination of the shoe and the fire is what is not a usually occurrence and what makes this illustration really eye catching.