An Eventful Day Pt.2

Leah C.

January 25, 2010 - 7:00 PM

I just woke up from a 2 hour nap, and I just want to say 8am classes are awful. Especially since my Digital Illustration class is 3 hour long. I will begin my "part 2" of "Am Eventful Day" after wushu practice. Tired and nervous about my deadline, I spent the entire afternoon and evening adding finishing touches to my illustration project. I am still relatively new to the Illustrator software. My strongest skills are in Photoshop. I am unfamiliar with the short cut, and the settings in Illustrator which is why I've always avoided it. I am really grateful for my professor, Mike Bray, who had started this term with basic software tutorials. This was something I really something I needed to learn.

Illustrator is commonly used in vector drawings and tracing photographs. The professor instead teaches us to use these tools as a sketching and drawing tool. We focused on working with strokes, and was encouraged develop our creative skills. We had to turn in 4 examples of our exercises. I chose turn in a texture example, which I had done with overlapping lines. I also created a gradient in this sketch by making more lines overlap each other where I wanted the illusion of a change in value. The second assignment was the deconstruction of the rubiks cube. This exercise helped us build our knowledge of all the basic tools in illustrator, such as the pen, scissor, gradient and paint bucket. This project was a step by step process, and it was interesting to see all the variations that students had choose to approach this simple piece. There were 4 steps total in the cube sketch:

1. Make a rubiks cube
2. Take out 5 blocks from the cube
3. Color

4. Add geometric shapes onto the cube.

Mine was fairly simple compared to other students. One person had put a miniature stairway in their image, and another covered their cube with a floral texture. The 3rd submission was a still life of a plant. I found a branch from a tree that grew tiny yellow flowers. I just fell in love with the gnarled branch, complimented by the delicate petals. This was a line practice drawing. In order to show depth I filled the figure with lines of different distances to create depth and texture.

The last piece was a larger drawing. We were supposed to create a vanitas illustration. Vanitas images are still life's consisting of 3 important elements. Usually it is of a skull (representing human), flower (short lived), and time (a watch). Instead of a skull, I choose to do a helmet. What inspired me to use a kendo helmet was that I had a friend who had just joined the kendo club and had talked about the different equipment that they used. The butterflies was a representation for a short lived object as well as the grace and movement of a person who does kendo. The hour glass is a representation of time and I was also told by my friend that timing is very important in the art of kendo.

So... I had mentioned about being frustrated so here it goes. The vanitas image was 11'‘x11, a size that could not be printed with a house hold printer. I also had a 2 blogs due at 8am, the same time as my Illustrator class. I had finished my illustration a little after midnight and found that none of the art printing services were open. Even if they were open they only accept campus cash which I, at that time, did not know where and when I would be able to deposit money into my student ID card. I needed my images to be printed and trimmed before the class so my last bet was Kinkos. Kinkos, or shall I say Fed-Ex is open 24 hours on weekdays, I was so happy when I found out that they were open. There was no bus service during that time so my friend and I walked there in the rain, just to get the assignment printed.

As far my blog submission, I had to ask for an extension on the blogging deadline since I could only finish one. Tiah reassured me that school came first. So I thank you for extending my deadline!!! I always underestimate the time it would take for me to complete an art project. There is always something that is missing, or can be changed. I must have said this a thousand times, but I don't think I have ever considered any of my works to be complete. This is the reason why many art student tend to finish at the last minute, and in my case, tired, stressed, and in the rain.