Digital Media

Mandala: “I’m Still Here, Did You Forget About Me?” and “Love Bug”

For those who don’t know what a mandala is, a mandala is a “geometric configuration of symbols.” Usually symmetrical and/or repeating in a circle. It’s used spiritually, but in this sense and most other senses is used for meditation or self reflection.

My mandala was made in Adobe Illustrator, as you can see by the magnificently clean lines. To get that perfect repeating look, I did some technical stuff like transformations, effects, mirroring, all sorts of masks, and the like. Then after getting the base done, I used a Wacom drawing pad to draw in the lines and all of the details. The drawing pad had pressure sensitivity so I would get those varying widths in there, which is something that I’m still not that use to. I’m use to more cheaper equipment back home, so I’m glad that freestyle gives me that chance to test these things out.

Artist Statement for “I’m Still Here, Did You Forget About Me?”

I had a pretty hard time with this project since this is geared more towards making nice looking patterns instead of recognizable figures. Either way, I still made this using things like eyes, mouths, noses, people. The title mostly derives from the feeling of being left out, or forgotten. Like the way you stand awkwardly while most of your friends are talking about something and you don’t really have anything to say. I tried to focus on making very human aspects, but as I moved along I just had fun with it. I like how it turned out, but not something that I’ll go out of my way to say that I’m proud of it.

Artist Statement for “Love Bug”

To be honest, this was mostly made to have fun. I didn’t know what I wanted so I just played around with gradients, making it look like a shoddy 3d effect. I made a bunch of spider eyes in purple and then I Immediately thought of a “love bug”. So I just moved along with that. Originally the middle was going to have a fly, but I didn’t really find a way to make it the way I wanted to so I opted for a heart. You can also see that it isn’t a colored version of “ISH,DYFAM?”, that’s because I wanted to utilize the color and I just couldn’t see a colored version of “ISH,DYFAM?” being good. I was made with it being black and white in mind so I made something else with color in mind.

Time-lapse video

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Photoshop Art

I feel like Photoshop and digital art go hand in hand. It has an unlimited amount of brushes with different effects and gives hundreds of tools at your disposal. I don’t know what else to say since I feel like photoshop is one of THE digital drawing/painting features. Of course it comes with it’s set of drawbacks, but it’s a lot of fun to use.

For the most part, These sets of projects were super fun and relaxing. The pastel project being my favorite to do, since it was something that I have semi-vague experience with. As a whole project, It was really fun and I hope to expand my skills in this department in the future.

Photoshop Pastel Painting: “02-26-2019”

Artist Statment

This is just a panel redraw of a Garfield comic. The title is the day that this strip was released. For those too lazy to search it up, it’s Jon saying “You see a problem, you deal with it” and the gag is that Garfield puts on the shades in the end. Why exactly I choose this one, I have no idea. I’m not even that big a fan of this strip, my favorite is June 24 1998 which I was going to add as a picture frame but ran out of time. I still have it in the photoshop file and it will be on my website. I really like pastels, I use it a lot even before this project so it was nice.

Photoshop Watercolor Painting: Hollow Watercolor Head Portrait

Artist Statment

This Painting is based off of the (I personally think) better head sculpt. This is based of a character that I hope to use in the future (even though I’m kind of shooting myself in the foot here). I really wanted to give off that creepy look with that deep red in all of those crevasses and I think and hope that I achieved that. I am really not a fan of watercolors, It changes too much which makes it difficult to control. However, I decided to use a lot of layering because I think it fit water colors a lot. In the end, I think I used too much which gives it too much noise however I think it still kinda works. I got a lot of “Woahs” while I was working on it so I think that’s a good sign.

Photoshop Watercolor Painting Effect

Artist Statment

I have no idea what do say about this project, to be honest I have no idea why we write an artist statement for this piece. It feels more like practice than it is an actual piece, I didn’t put that much effort because if didn’t feel like there wasn’t much creatively that I could do. Of course there was some things, like I could have make it look like “true watercolor” but that still isn’t much. I guess I’m just confused why their really anything to write about.

Practice Photoshop Composites

Photoshop Surreal Art: The Halls of John Doe High School

Artist Statement

I really love this piece, even though it has a history. This is in relation to world building, but just not the one that I’m working on for English (I have no idea if I want to showcase it). This is a representation of a High School in a world with freaky monsters. There are a ton of secrets and texts that you cannot read because it’s super small, I have the blown up versions on my website. Anyway, a lot of fun it was great.

To the eagle eyed viewer, This project should look very familiar. Yeah, I reused it. I just really wanted an excuse to work on this more because it was so much fun. Some of the differences between this version and the old version (if you want to see the full in-depth look, take a peek at my Narrative 1 part of the website), is some basic “Quality of life” upgrades and a new item. Other than that, not much has changed