Two months. Ouch. A fair amount, work wise, has changed since then. The major thing being a change in my final project. As my original plan didn’t cover the grading criteria, my tutors felt rather than trying to force it to fit these, I should change my idea entirely. I’m now using articles from the Guardian’s g2 magazine, and a handful of articles from BBC Focus magazine, to come up with alternate illustrations (or simply images). As it happens, the g2 seems to be only using photographs now in its articles, which I think is unfortunate as I seem to recall some fantastic illustrated articles in the past.
With my phoenix-like renewed interest in digital art I decided this was the perfect opportunity to experiment with some new styles and ways of drawing/colouring on Photoshop – with the help of a highly recommended (by me) book on digital art: Digital Painting Techniques, Volume 2
So far I have the following final pages to take to a critique group when the new term starts:
An interesting article on the so-called ‘Death of the landline’. Here an old-fashioned phone rings pathetically from the bottom of a wheelie bin (though I’m aware this may not be immediately obvious, not all wheelie bins are green for a start).
And the image for the inner article. A more modern landline phone being answered by… well a rat, after being discarded. For some reason I have a fondness for rats and mice in my images, they feature in a fair few on my projects. Here I was playing about with textures – a variant on the tutorial book which suggests making one’s own brushes for these textures (unfortunately my Photoshop Elements isn’t kitted out to make nice custom brushes so I had to improvise).
Both of these use a new technique that involves painting and shading in grey scale before adding a Colour Layer over the top. This has it’s good and bad points, good in that it adds simple colour quickly, bad in that often the layer ‘filter’ changes the orignal colour from what one might assume so involves some experimentation.
Here we have a dragon. Shoe Shopping. As you do…
The original cover was, in my opinion, boring. it was a pair of shoes on a red background with the headline underneath. This cover does come across as a little bit cluttered, I have to say, but gives more interest to the eye and suggests the headline more than a pair of classical Clarks shoes.
I do feel more fond of this article, oddly enough. I live about 15 minutes drive away from Clarks village and used to go to collage in the town (Street). The college was in fact started as a school to educate the workers of the first Clarks factory. STRODE COLLEGE PRIDE!
And finally, a simpler, somewhat tongue-in-cheek image for a Focus article on reintroducing mammoths to the world through cloning. I know they have badger- and frog-crossings in rural areas where said creatures are in danger of being run over while they cross to favored areas either side of roads. If mammoths were introduced, and protected, they can have crossings of their own. Complete with zebra markings and flashing globes. Not that a mammoth needs such warnings, they’re pretty obvious after all.
I could be known for having what’s been described as ‘trippy’ images: a rat answering a phone, a dragon shoe shopping and a mammoth crossing a road. Next possible image involves a wolf and a fox out on a date.
I do like obscure things like this.
