Week 8

Craft: To make my artwork I used Adobe Illustrator. Within this program I was able to use the drawing tablet connected to the computer in order to draw from my hand onto the computer screen. I started to create these pieces of art by first opening Illustrator and opening a new print document. I choose to use letter size paper 8.5x11. I wanted the orientation of the paper to be portrait for the bottle illustrations and then I changed the orientation to landscape for the candy illustrations. Starting with a blank page I first created about 10 layers in the layers window and then grouped 9 of them into the top layer. I then would label each layer, i.e. outside lines, product name, style lines, color, touch up. This made each illustration easier to work on because every layer was preset for me, creating a smooth workflow throughout each illustrating because every illustration looked exactly the same in the layers window. Next, I would open the brushes window and then go into the brushes library and open Hand Drawn Brushes Vector Pack and Artistic Ink brushes. Then, I would get the bottle or candy that I was going to draw and set I on the table in front of me. To start each drawing I would use the paintbrush tool and use the 3 pt. round preset with no fill and a black stroke. I would use the drawing tablet and tablet pen, then I would click on the first layer of the group and then draw a rough outline of the product. After the outlines where finished I would click on the second layer and start the inside lines. Then on a new layer and I would draw the letters in the name or the logo on the product. Every individual piece had an individual layer. This allowed me to have a lot of control on each individual piece of the illustration. After all the drawing was completed I would choose any layers in which I tough I might want to keep white in order for them to be readable on the finished image. I would then take all of these layers and make a copy of them. Then I could change the copied layer(s) to 2pt. oval preset with no fill and a white stroke. Next, I would select every layer, except the white oval ones I just changed, and then transform them into the Hand Drawn brush. Next, I would move the white oval layers on top of all the black hand drawn lines so they would be visible. If the white 2 pt. oval could not be easily read then I would use the brush tool and draw behind the white with the black hand drawn brush. Then I would go to the color layer and start using the ink drop brush to create the color in the illustration. I would use anywhere from 2 pt. to 10 pt. size of drops in order to cover the entire image. After the I filled the whole image with ink drops I would use the color picker and color guide to choose the color that best matched the product. Finally, I would save my image and the get started on the next one.

Composition: Although I am a really bad drawer on paper, by using the tablet and very rough outline edges and letter is was able to cover up my poor drawing ability by converting my small round lines into hand drawn brush strokes. The hand drawn brush makes the overall object look very good and gives it an artistic feel. Due to my own personal abilities I did not want my final illustrations to look profession or an exact replica of the product. I wanted a final image that had abstract characteristics. The reason I choose bottle and candy was because the first assignment was to create a personal style using 5 different things. I though it would be easy for me to get five different bottled drinks from the cafeteria in a short time frame. I wanted each bottle to be a different shape as well as each bottle to have a different colored liquid inside of it. This way each illustration could be difference in terms of style of bottle and color of liquid. After my style was established I created 10 illustrating of bottles. I then wanted to continue making illustration but wanted a different product. Thus, I started with candy; I used the say exact style and created 10 more illustration with candy and candy bars. I wanted the scale of these illustrations to large in order to fill the entire page with color. So the bottles had to take up a lot of the paper because the only color that would be on the paper was the black from the brush strokes and the color from the ink drops. For these reasons I decided on letter paper size 8.5x11 because this size of paper could be full and the bottle image would be almost the same size on paper as in real life. I decided to use the ink drop brush to apply color because it works hand in hand with the characteristics of liquids. When the liquid is poured out of a bottle the first thing that hits the ground is a drop then more drops and finally every bit of liquid poured hits the ground first as a drop. I figured this would be a great way to put color on my illustrations, like I was using drops of the actual liquid of the bottle poured onto by illustration to color it. I wanted the outside lines to be as dark black as possible and then I wanted the color of the ink drops to be very bright. The contrast between the dark outside lines with the light color drops really creates a vivid appearance of the liquid color. Because I used an ink drop brush the colors where a little bit like the watercolors. I really had to play with the hue and saturation of each color in order to make it look like the actual color of the product.

Concept: This style of illustrating was something that I had to first conceptualize in my mind before I could start drawing anything on the computer. I wanted the images to look like I drew them by hand. The name of my style is “Splatoure” and the rules of my style are as fallows. My first rule was of the subject matter, every picture had to be of a plastic bottle or piece of candy. My second rule was using only the “Hand Drawn Brushes Vector Pack” for every outside line. My third rule was to only use the “Ink Drop” brush in the “Artistic Brushes” set and only one color within each entire artwork. The name of my style, splatoure, comes from two words combined, splatter and capture. The reason for this word is because my style uses splatters of color in order to capture the image. I feel that being so basic in my rules that my style is really easy to be identified. When I developed my style I wanted it to be really apparent so that no matter who saw my pictures they would quickly be able to understand the style. I felt that the more simple the style the easier I would be to recognized and the more fun I would be able to have when I was creating the artwork. Within these images of plastic bottles and candy I wanted the message to be about bright colors. I also wanted the viewer to immediately know what each images was. For these reason I only incorporated enough information of each bottle and each piece of candy so that the type of product would be distinguishable. One part of my style in which I had to work on a little was something that was brought up in a group critique. In one of my original five illustrations the cap of the bottle was left white while all the rest where colored in. The one with the white cap stood out and looked different than the others. Therefore, I decided to change my other four illustrations to have white caps as well. I liked the over theme of the illustrations better with the white caps so I kept white capes as another rule in my style. Consequently, every bottle illustrations have white caps, for the candy illustrations there was no good way to incorporate a white part into every candy image so I left that rule out for those illustrations.