Donate Life

DONATE LIFE

FEB. 23, 2018 — digital

In this project, our goal was to make a poster that encourages being an organ donor. This was part of a competition.

I had a bit of a hard time getting started on this project. I'm not a fan of projects like this—my brain seems to think that it should stop working when we're given this type of assignment. However, after a while of thinking, I decided that I wanted my caption to be something cheesy about flowers—it ended up being "give others the chance to blossom." With that in mind, I started to sketch the image out on a piece of paper. I intended to use watercolor to fill it in but decided that this was a project better suited by digital coloring. I took a picture of the sketch and then traced over the lines digitally and then colored it in using the flat base colors. The portion of this that took the longest was the grass—drawing out all of the little strands proved to be time-consuming—but once that was done, it was pretty easy to color everything in and then make a few layers for shading and highlights. Finally, I went back in and added some smaller details to each of the flowers (such as the lines on the tulips) and then I was done.

I feel okay about how this project came out. I tried to experiment a bit with my usual style, taking the detail-oriented part of it and applying it to a less gory scene. In that aspect, I think that I succeeded. I also think that I did a good job creating a well-matching color scheme, and also making the flowers the center of focus without just placing them in the direct center. I cropped them out a bit, and I also added flowers into the background to create a better image of a full scene. I did have some trouble creating proper shading and highlights, and while they're still a bit off perhaps, they aren't horrible. Additionally, I like the way that the grass turned out in the end (which is good, considering the fact that I spent so long on it). Overall, while this obviously isn't an award-winning piece, it's not the worst thing I've created.