Interterm!

Tomorrow is the last day of interterm, so I thought it'd be apt to talk about the work I've done in my four-week class. Unlike last interterm when I took Precalculus, a course that's obviously not for my major, this time I took a class on digital illustration techniques. It's essentially a crash course in the Photoshop techniques most commonly used by digital artists. As a beginner in Photoshop, I learned a lot of new things in the class and I'm happy I took it.

Here are some of my work that I think turned out pretty well:

This is an assignment on displacement mapping. I thought I'd combine two of my most favorite things in the world: art and cats. The painting is by impressionist Pierre Bonnard and it's actually a really interesting piece of art. It's a painting of Bonnard's cat whom he called "Nood", thus the painting was entitled Nood Bathing when he finished it in 1937.

This next one was probably the most fun to make. The assignment was to swap two different faces and put them in the same background. I chose two amazing yet very different characters, Michael Scott and Daenerys Targaryen, because don't you think it'd be insane if they were put it in the same world? I mean can you imagine how many seconds it'll take for Daenerys to set Michael's obnoxious mouth on fire? 

And here's my first stab at making a logo in Photoshop. I always appreciate a classic and well-designed logo when I see one, but I've never seriously studied graphic design. This was just a small assignment on using the intimidating pen tool to create clean shapes and typography. Most of the class made a personal logo, but I opted to make one for a fictional candy house.

This isn't actually how my logo looked like at first. I made this wonky looking chocolate bar as my initial design, but I realized it's kind of confusing, because people instinctively think the top is the chocolate and the bottom is the wrapper, because that's how chocolate bars are commonly portrayed. After spending some time tweaking it, I decided to just start a new one, just to refresh my mind. And voila, I came up with a candy house that looks cuter and better. 

Lastly, here's my favorite project all month. It's the one I got the best feedback on and also the one I feel most great about. The assignment was to create a 1930's travel poster. I spent a significant amount of time looking up actual posters to get the colors and the layout right.

That's about it for interterm. Spring semester starts next week and I'm really excited! I'm going to take a class on production design and also design theory, along with four other art classes (including another figure drawing class), and I'm just so excited and eager to make more art! 

TV and Michael Scott

I was never really a big fan of television and TV series; sure I'd watch some How I Met Your Mother or The Big Bang Theory when I was bored, but I wouldn't call myself a big fan of these shows. So when one of my roommates last year--by some voodoo or miracle--got me into Supernatural, I was astonished by how big of a fan girl I was capable of being. I quickly became obsessed with the show and its amazing(ly good-looking) cast, and before I knew it, I watched seven seasons within two months (or something like that). I loved the show for Sam and Dean's relationship, but I stopped watching  it halfway through the seventh season because I honestly didn't care about the leviathans. Anyway, this isn't a review of Supernatural so I'll leave it at that.

After my Supernatural phase, this year, my new roommate introduced me to The Office. She's a huge fan of the show and we get a long extremely well, so I figured maybe I'd like the show too. And I did. I got into it pretty fast; I couldn't stop watching it not only for the jokes but for characters like Jim and Pam, and of course, the great Michael Scott. My roommate and I always talk about how Michael would be so unbearably obnoxious in real life, but in the show he's just hilarious and actually endearing sometimes. His character just works well. So when I finally got to "Goodbye, Michael"  in season seven, I couldn't help but cry me eyes out. I felt like I knew this man and how much he loved the people in his office.

When I finally stopped crying, I figured it would be fun to draw something for Michael Scott, because why not? So I spent an hour in Photoshop playing with new dry brushes and voila:

It was inspired by my favorite of Michael's hilarious malapropisms and also by a certain cat who cannot be pleased. Steve Carell just does this look sometimes that reminds me of Grumpy Cat so much.

I haven't really done a lot of painting in Photoshop, so I'm still getting around using brushes and layers and other features. Hopefully I'll get more and more comfortable as I go along.