Artastic

 This exercise follows an old tradition. The old art schools would have students do drawings and paintings of casts made of plaster. This allowed the students to learn how to see changes in values without the distraction of colours.  We did this exercise digitally this week. This is the first part of the exercise. Next week there will be a sun face to paint.  

 This week we had to populate a sketch of an office with textures on several surfaces using Photoshop. Then we had to apply lighting and shadows. I have spent a lot of time working in offices. I wanted to use a colour scheme that included some relaxing colours. Then we had to create several 3D assets using Adobe Illustrator. Then we had to add a pattern to the objects.

 This assignment was to create a surrealist anthropomorphized caricature of a famous person. I chose Steve Buscemi, who is a really great actor and has done a number of roles in animated movies. It had to be a small nervous dog to match the types of roles he usually plays.   Here is the finished result:

 I was really excited to learn about Cell Shading, the process used to colour comics and illustrated books. Because I want to illustrate children's books this is a very important skill for me to develop. I had fun posing for the sketch I used as a starting point for this exercise. I took off some weight (I am NOT going to say how much) and modified the facial features, using a book cover featuring this character as a reference.  Mercedes (Mercy) Thompson is the main character is a series written by Patricia Briggs. She is an auto mechanic and a coyote shape-shifter who tends to get into scrapes with supernatural creatures.

  The new movie remake of Dune by Frank Herbert was one of the two options for this assignment. We needed to design a LEGO character that meets the brand specifications. I chose Duncan Idaho for my final poster because his pose and expressions turned out so well. We had to use our own logo for the project. Since both my first and last name are so common I used a play on my first name.

 This week was our first group project. We were asked to satirize a famous work of art. We chose Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci combined with a modern "supermom". I think that the end result turned out very well. It will be interesting to see the sketches/collages created by the other members of the group.