Fourth week of Introduction to Digital Art

The fourth week of class had us finish our album artwork. It was fun, but I would be lying if I said I didn't have any difficulties. I wanted to make a cover that was reminiscent of the Luke Vibert Big Soup cover, since I really like the album. So, having the idea in mind of how I was going to create this, I went and drew and inked the center focus of the artwork, a Gundam space warrior. Then I took a picture of it, removed the background, and imported it into my Photoshop file. I knew it wasn't going to be easy, but I also thought it wasn't going to be that hard. Well, it wasn't that hard, but it did take a long time to do. I thought that I could use the remove background feature that was in Adobe Express in order to make the process quick and easy, but when trying to do so. I had a lot of difficulties in removing the background since the remove background tool kept removing both the spaces inside and outside of the drawing, which is not what I wanted. What I wanted was to cut out the character but still have the paper space and texture in it. Overall, I had to manually cut out her using the magnetic lasso tool in Krita. I did use Photoshop for everything else, but felt that it would be easier for me to use a program that I was already used to for that. The thing that convinced me to do this was when I wanted to transform the title for the album artwork. All I wanted to do was make the title seem like it was going towards a one-point in perspective, but when trying to achieve this in Photoshop, I couldn't do it! I spent a couple of hours trying to figure it out, and I couldn't. So, instead, I opted to use Krita. 

Honestly, everything else besides that was easy for me since a lot of the stuff that we had to do on Photoshop was already old information for me. Although I didn't know there was a shortcut to resize the entire image, that was cool, and I can see myself using that in the future. I would mostly use it for just studying references. It's great to have the image right next to your drawing. Although in case I'm doing any photo editing, like stitching together different parts of an image, I can see that being a time saver for me as well.

                  Before and After:

Lastly, I forgot to mention this, but the character that's on my album cover is a bit of a Frankenstein creation of mine. It's not the original drawing I did, since, when doing the inking process, I messed up on the proportions of the legs, and I didn't know whether to just continue or trash the drawing. I couldn't give up on it, but I was also unsatisfied with the result, so I remembered that we were using a photo editing software! So, I edited the drawing in a way where I manually cut out the leg, copied and pasted it, and used that copy as the other leg. Photo editing software is really like magic sometimes.

Third Week of Intro to Digital Art

 

The third week of class was pretty nice. We did peer critiques, which were really helpful for people who got them, since one of the main ways an artist could improve in their craft is to get feedback from other people. A lot of times, we artists are our worst enemies. Some have egos about their artwork and don't notice obvious mistakes. Others may have self-appreciation for their art that's so low that they tend to criticize every little thing that they do, leading to constraints in their creative endeavors, which is why receiving feedback and critiques is incredibly important. In general, discussing what speaks about an art piece and what we feel could be improved on was a bit of fun for me. I don't often speak in this way, using art terminology with a lot of people. Although sadly, we ran out of time, so I wasn't able to show my artwork and get feedback for it, which was a shame. Hopefully, next time I'll be able to do that.

This wasn't the first time I've participated in a peer art critique, but I'm still new to it since I haven't done it that often. I didn't really feel anything when I shared my work, because I wasn't able to :(. One element of art that was discussed and was personally brought up by me was the choice of colors. There was one piece that had a lot of cool colors, so I said that it gave it a calmer vibe. 

This is a placeholder sketch for the main subject of my next art project for this class, which is an album cover. I wanted to design and draw a character that screams futuristic warrior.

Second week of Intro to Digital Art

The second week of class was nice. I have been enjoying it, and I honestly can't wait to learn more about digital art. I'm especially excited for the illustration assignment that is to come near April (I wonder what it is?). One thing that stood out to me, and honestly, was shocking for me, was when we were assigned the copyright assignment last week, and I didn't know that copyright laws applied in that way! Everything that I've drawn, according to the law, is under my copyright. I've always assumed that you had to go to the courthouse to sign a document to have your stuff be under copyright or something similar to that. This honestly makes sense since I have seen people, especially those abusing the copyright system, be able to use their copyright, even if they have never set foot in a courthouse. 

As well, the digital self-portrait was pretty fun to do and was definitely a new experience for me. Not in the sense of making self-portraits, since I've made plenty in the past, but more as using Adobe Express. Adobe is one of the leading companies for art programs, I think, and since their services are very popular, many professionals use them. I feel that learning Adobe Express is going to be a benefit for me in the future because, while I probably may not be using Express, I might use other programs that are similar in nature to it (not only from Adobe), so learning how to use its tools and controls would be good for me.

Here's a comic that I've been working on recently. I'm trying to create a scene where a pair of adventurers are tasked with fixing something, so the man with the long chin (lol) asks his partner if she has put everything in place correctly. She proclaims that she did, but it's found out to be not true, so she starts to panic. I've done the line work with pencil and a 0.30-micron pen, and the reason why the image looks weird in the middle is that I used the stitch feature of my scanner while scanning, since the original paper for the comic was too big.