Brief 8 Hand Lettering

This session I feel has been one of the most beneficial to me as I gained more knowledge of tools within Illustrator which is my weaker area. I found that the image trace tool is one of the most important as it increases the clarity of lines and produces a smoother finish. For my final brief I intend to produce an illustrated quote which I will edit with the trace tool in Illustrator.

I found this quite challenging as initially I had problems ordering the layers to achieve the desired effect.  Eventually I was able to resolve this and achieved positive results. I think this would be a suitable method to use when considering type for my final brief. I can apply suitable textures to my font that suit the theme of my chosen book.

Week 8 Catch-up & Formative Feedback Session

In the catch up session I decided to focus on completing my second digital painting. I particularly enjoyed experimenting with the different brushes within Photoshop. I was able to see which brushes worked best when trying to achieve a particular effect. My knowledge of the effects will be particularly useful when producing illustrations for my final brief as intend to include some form of painting within these.

Independent Study Task 7

The curvature tool was initially quite challenging to use as it was hard adjusting to drawing with shapes rather than the pen/paint tool. I found it harder to produce a realistic portrait based on my chosen photograph. After several edits I produced a portrait that I am happy with, I would consider using the tool in the future when aiming to achieve smooth and bold lines.

Brief 7 Digital Portraits

Although I have experienced using Illustrator before, I found the software challenging to use. I think the image trace tool is one of the most useful as I can achieve a bold outline of my fine liner drawings. Editing colours and shapes was very easy to do, using the effects with the trace tool I was able to reduce the amount of colours in my photo creating a pop art style portrait. In order to improve my first portrait I would apply more colour.

Brief 6 GIFS

I am pleased with the result of the GIFS I have produced. Although time consuming I think my paper plane GIF worked so well because of the number of frames produced. In order to improve my ice cream GIF, I would work back into the original artwork focusing on the droplets melting away from the ice cream. They seem to just disappear off the screen which is not very realistic, I would continue the motion of the droplets dripping down the page until they are not visible.

Brief 5 Making & Using Patterns

I enjoyed creating patterns using my sketches, it was easy to create multiple copies of my swatch with the block pattern and repeat pattern method using the offset filter tool. I was able to use brushes I have produced in a previous session to add to my animal print design. I think this method would be effective in future work when designing backgrounds for my artwork or when applying blocks of pattern to certain shapes. I think my designs would be suitable for giftware such as wrapping paper or cards. Wrap from companies such as Paperchase often include some form of handmade illustration. I looked further into pattern examples on a recommended blog, it was interesting to see the variety of styles produced by different artists, the below right pattern was produced by dot dash studio.