My final project for painting class was of our Persian cat, Nicky. He wouldn't sit still of course, so I worked this from a photograph. My instructor later told me that if i had said I was going to paint an animal that she would have discouraged me.
This is my first time painting a portrait. I actually enjoyed doing this more than any of the previous painting projects. I was surprised at how easy this was. I feel like my past experience in portrait drawing has served me well here. As well I did a little research and found a wonderful artist's site. His name is Berkeley and his blog, A Berkeley Daily, has some very interesting videos showing him at work (in fast motion) on various paintings including portraits. These and a book called "Art Class" really helped me put the lectures together with actual practice.
Much has happened since my last postings. I started a painting class and finished it. At first I was apprehensive, thinking that there was no way I would do good in a painting class, as I am not at all used to this medium. It turns out that it was allot of fun and I quickly changed my mind as the class progressed. Painting, it turns out, is very time consuming. I chose to use acrylics for these works due to time restraints (mostly in terms of drying time).
These first images are all basically warm ups and studies in color and form. They include traditional still life setups of fruits, bottles, and other ordinary items.
After these simple paintings came multiple still life objects...
Then came flowers. I found these to be a weak point for me.
These are a couple of things I came up with while playing around with text effects in Photoshop. The fire was a standard that we were shown in class. After seeing that I found an ice tutorial and took some shortcuts to make it simpler. The fireworks was inspired by a radioactive effect I found.
One of my pet (pun intended) names for my wife is 'Katie Kat'. This one was inspired by that...
I've been wondering what to work on next outside of school. Out of a number of projects I started, I was sidetracked by a photo of our front lawn. After some playing around with it I settles on this rendition. Influences from the likes of Stephen King, Creepshow, and H.R. Giger were running through my mind I suppose.
I have a thing for stuff that is creepy and haven't worked with it much lately. My next projects may or may not be along these lines...
Here is one I did while practicing layers in Photoshop. The original pictures looked nothing like this of course!
My wife just started a new blog. This is the first one she has done and she seems to be enjoying it.
The link is katiedance.blogspot.com
This blog is actually my second, since I accidentally erased the first one! (DUH!) It has been a cool way to share my experiences and thoughts about things. It has also been interesting to see all the people who check out the site and where they are from. I have had hits from all over the world, some who actually looked at my website first or did a direct search for this blog. Some of the hits have been from family, some from fellow posters in forums and some from random search hits, where they were looking for something else but found this!
After all these hits I have actually only had 3 or 4 comments. Thats karma for you (I never comment on other peoples blogs!). Oh well ;)
Anyways, check out her blog, she is a fun girl and I love her!
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I went ahead with the website I was working on for my friend. The name we wanted was taken and the people who bought it wanted $14,000 for it! I had to laugh and told them to take a flying leap! We settled on www.dkconstructionpro.com
It was done as a layout in photoshop originally, so putting it to html was a bit different than I am used to. It took about 5 hours to get the basic layout and to set up the email accounts and server settings.
Not too bad...
After showing my "customer" the magazine ad, he stated that he thought it would look good as a main page for a website. When given the assignment to design the layout for a site, I used the magazine ad as a (very) rough draft for the layout. This was the resulting front page:
I designed a t-shirt container about the size of a container of tennis balls for a promotional give-away item at trade shows. This was done in Illustrator and then finally rendered in Bryce as a 3-D object.
The actual assignment was rendered in Illustrator with an example label (below).
Magazine ads are much more fun to work with for me. They are in color! Although the newspaper ads were in b&w, they were quite challenging due to the nature of the format restrictions and type restrictions. All of the ads were created with InDesign and Photoshop with prep work in Illustrator.
These are the three newspaper ads I came up with for my class. They are laid out in accordance with newspaper column standards. They are in order: 1, 2 and 3 column ads.
Ok I have been AWOL for over a month now (as if anyone noticed!). I have been working on projects for my Electronic Design course. Mostly logo work, newspaper ads, magazine ads, and web layout.
I have included a sample of the logos I designed for a local company int his post and will be adding more posts containing other types of examples shortly.
This company is belongs to a friend of mine. I figured since I the projects would be of this type that I might as well make them useful! So far he has liked everything I showed him from the class. Most of the class was intensive use of Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.
This was done for my typography class. It was a pain in the @$$ as you might imagine. I discovered that the best glue for putting together clear plastic is Testors Clear Parts & Window Maker cement. Takes awhile to dry but dries like glass, no residue or fogginess! Had to learn that the hard way after trashing the first project due to cloudy residue in the globes.
This was a project for my typography class. My first use of Adobe InDesign ( a wonderful program by the way).
The subject matter does reflect my personal views. Check out this former Seattle Police Chief's article.
This one is for all of us who have a dell with that "lovely" factory wallpaper.
Another drawing for the Paizo art challenge...
This one was to include a mummy, ice, and a potion. What better place for these than the local undead tavern!
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