Photoshop and Illustrator Explorations

Artist's Statement:

Jillian Wight

Medsker

2D Design

7 November 2020

In the piece, a few ideas are immediately visually evident. First, it gives off a very playful vibe. This is due to the subject’s facial expression, and the bright, simple colors utilized. I really love this aspect of the piece, and I think that this is one of the ways it really connects to me as the artist. Another clear theme is personality. The piece is a self-portrait, so it illustrates me the way I see myself, and the way I want to be illustrated. In this way, it conveys the idea of confidence and self-recognition. Beyond this, the piece illustrates the idea of complexity through simplicity. The lines and color blockage is quite basic, but it comes together to create a cohesive and stand-out final product. This illustration relates to my life in a few ways. First, the obvious, it is a portrait of me! It portrays me the way I decided to be portrayed, and so it reflects how I see myself and gives others an idea of my identity. As well as this, I tried my best to convey personal style in the color choice for the background, which I think was effective. The piece also relates to me because it challenged me a lot. I am not a huge fan of digital art, but in this case, I was so happy with the outcome! I also challenged myself while creating this portrait because my natural instinct was to make the background extremely complex by adding a variety of lines and colors, but I decided to step out of my comfort zone and let my portrait speak for itself. I recognized that a busy background may be distracting, and made the choice I thought was best even if it was a little less fun!

There were no physical materials used to create this piece. I started by using the Photobooth application on my computer to take a few selfies. I then chose the one I preferred, and uploaded it to Acorn. From there, I used digital editing to crop and center the photo, add layers, trace the significant details, highlights, and shadows, and add color to these places as necessary. When I had finished, I set a background color and then saved the project to my desktop as an image. This served as a fantastic introduction to Acorn, and to digital art as a whole. In the past, it is a type of artwork that I have avoided, simply because I found it difficult to control the results and to produce something I loved. This project allowed me to overcome this hurdle and get comfortable with using my computer as a tool. To update my logo, I used the Adobe applications Photoshop and Illustrator, and practicing on a simpler application such as Acorn served me well! I was able to navigate a more complex program with very few difficulties. Going forward, I am excited to experiment more online.

I used a number of processes while creating this piece. First, I had to choose a photo that I felt reflected my personality. I lined my favorites up and deleted the ones I wasn’t excited about! I then had to navigate Acorn, and play around with layers. I created 1 base layer, 1 photo layer, and 1 drawing layer. This enabled me to focus on specific parts of the drawing. I then had to nail down a system for adding lines and color blocking to the piece. I settled into a rhythm of drawing the line, erasing the photo layer, making sure the line looked okay and connected to surrounding lines, and then adding the photo layer back in to continue. Color blocking was fairly simple, but I had to double-check a few times to make sure each space was filled. Overall, there were a lot of new processes I had to master. However, now that I have experimented a bit, I am really proud of my abilities! I also utilized many elements of art and principles of design when creating this portrait. First and foremost, line was essential in illustrating the figure that I wanted. Although on their own these lines may have appeared cluttered and hard to process, the addition of simple color to fill empty space made the piece more unified and balanced. I also created unity by centering my face so that attention would not be drawn to less relevant pieces of the work. Shape was also really important to this illustration. I had to select which shapes were the most impactful, and which of those I should actually include. I wanted the shapes to be very intentional so that the viewer could easily imagine what the photo must have looked like. In the end, I highlighted basic facial features as well as prominent shadows and highlights. I’m really happy with how this came out, and I think it contributed to the successful form of the portrait. The lights and darks I added gave my figure a level of depth that made it really stand out! I created contrast in the background by adding a color that complemented but did not overpower the portrait. This also had an influence on the visual success of the artwork. Overall, my project evolved from a selfie that took me seconds to compose to a really cool representation of the photograph! I think my next steps should be to play around a bit with photoshop and make myself even more comfortable than I am now. There is always room for improvement!

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