Cristiano Siqueira Master Study

I decided to do my second master study based on a portrait of Leonard Mlodinow by Brazilian artist, Cristiano Siqueira. He deals mostly with vector art, which I consider to be my biggest weakness (i.e. worst nightmare), so I felt like I should give it a go.

Here is his original:




Here's my copy:




1) First I put down all the areas of flat color with the pen tool. Here's a start:



2) I did the line work with the blob brush.



I added a gradient to some of the lines and increased the transparency in some spots so that not everything read straight black. I used the blend tool to do the upper lip.



3) Last, I added the hair (random numbers) and the background (transparent formulas, numbers, symbols, etc.). I warped the background and the characters on his jacket with a wave. Blend tool is used for the top of his jacket and the lines in the background. Gradients are added to the white lines on the left side of the jacket.


It took forEVER to complete but I suppose I'm happy with it. Kind of. On second look, some of the lines could definitely be a lot smoother and a lot thinner (should have used a smaller, more oval brush probably) but overall I suppose the idea is captured.

Original #1

This is my original based on the Mario Belem master study.




I felt like long, straight hair was kind of safe, so I decided to try and draw my friend, Keely's, curly hair. The background is mostly hand-done and the text is kind of an inside joke but I made sure to incorporate the gradient like in the original. Drawing in grayscale and then adding the color gradients later (thank you, Mr. Babcock, for that video) helped tremendously vs. drawing all the lines in their specific colors like I did in the copy.

Mario Belem Master Study

I decided to do a master copy by Portuguese Illustrator, Mario Belem. I really liked how loose and colorful this particular portrait of his is, and I like that he incorporated text that played on the same colors as his drawing. I think I can probably learn a lot more from this artist in the future as his collection is extremely diverse.

Here is my copy:

1) I started out with the background. First, a layer of flat color on bottom and then a random texture I found online that I duplicated and rotated. I applied a linear burn and decreased the opacity to both texture layers.

2) I noticed he had a few subtle, swirly designs in the background as well, so I found this retro, swirl image online and isolated the part I wanted to use (the orange).




3) I changed the color to brown, chose "Darken" from the effects drop-down menu, and lowered the opacity. I then duplicated, rotated, and transformed to fit the original the best I could.

4) For the next part, I switched to Illustrator. I didn't know the exact typeface he used so I found one that looked close enough after transforming it a little bit. I made a box of color and applied a gradient mesh (Mr. Babcock's video helped a lot) filled with the colors I sampled from the original.

5) I copied both the text and the box 'as pixels' back into Photoshop, placed the box directly on top of the text, and applied a clipping mask. I repeated steps 4&5 for the paragraph of smaller text below.

*Looking back, I probably should have first applied a brush stroke to the text in illustrator to give it that "handwritten feel".

6) Next, I drew the woman in a series of layers, starting with white. I applied really loose, long brush strokes and found it necessary to draw with my entire arm instead of just my hand, otherwise the lines didn't come out straight.

I didn't take a screenshot for each color because that would be ridiculous, but I will say there were 30-something layers, many with different opacities, some with layer masks, etc.

7) When I finished drawing, I grouped all the layers that made up the portrait together and masked out the parts that spilled over the text.

Oh, and then I drew the little, pink bird (not pictured here).

Overall, I had a lot of fun with this study. Lots of trial and error. I'm still semi-new to the wacom tablet so as you can imagine, while drawing the portrait, ctrl+z became my best friend.

Question:

Is there an easier method to apply a gradient to an entire phrase or paragraph of text instead of the clipping mask method I used? When I tried in Illustrator at first, even after creating outlines, the gradient would apply to each letter separately instead of gradually across the whole group. And that's no good.

Any other criticisms?

back

Hi again. So, I have been absent for a good five days or so. The reason is: my brother is leaving for the Army in less than a month so my Mom planned a small, family trip so that we could all do something together one last time before he goes to basic. I thought that I was going to have Internet access at the place we stayed, so I brought my computer to at least try and get some research done, but the connection was down for the week. Needless to say, I have a lot of catching up to do.

Anyway, I just thought I should make a post explaining that no, I'm not dead, and yes, I'm going to be working really hard the next couple of days to get caught back up :)

Thanks,
Jess

edit:

Oh, P.S.! If anyone is ever in need of any cloud/sand/seashell/water/bubble textures, I was able to take a few pictures this weekend. My camera isn't the greatest ever but just as a background or as effect layer textures, they might be kind of helpful in the future. (most are at 180ppi/ 10x14in.)

post numero uno

Hello all. I'm really excited to be taking this course. I feel like I'm going to learn a lot from such a diverse group of talented classmates. There are a couple of directions I want to go in personally this summer -- I feel like vector art is where I'm lacking the most, but I'd also really like to improve on pieces that include both vector elements from Illustrator and textural, raster-based images from Photoshop. I mean, yeah, anyone can slap a smart object into a Photoshop doc., or vice versa, but doing it effectively so as to create a great piece of work is where I'd like to improve. I'd also like to improve in the way of typographical elements. Since my major is Graphic Design, I feel like I definitely need to spend some time in that area this summer.

Having said that, I'll now dump a few images from some illustrators and designers I really like. They all possess different skills and elements I'd really like to learn from this semester.


Olaf Hajek:
(I actually recently added this guy on facebook and we had a nice chat - really cool guy). I really like the use of texture and color in all of his pieces.
For a closer look, go here.


Mario Hugo:
This guy does a lot with letters and words. I feel like I could learn a lot typographically from him. He also does some really great vector/line work. I also just like the overall, general vibe I get from him. A lot of his work is pretty dark and that's the direction I sometimes tend to lean toward.
For a closer look, go here.



Oliver Weiss:
Weiss is probably the most diverse of the three. He does anything from spot illustrations to comics to photoshop collages, you name it. I really like some of the vector work he does, and then he's able to incorporate halftone dots among other textures without letting his work get too cheesy or cliche.
For a closer look, go here.