Katerina's blog

For past few weeks, my class has been making a character from font.  Don’t get what I mean? Okay, so let’s take the font, Comic Sans for example.  If you were to make that font into a human, what would it look like?  I can imagine a character from Marvel comic books.  So, you draw your character with a bit of idea from the character that already exists to create your original character of fonts.  Each person in my class was chosen which font they will be drawing.  And I was chosen to draw Futura.

The font of Futura itself, doesn’t really look like ‘futuristic’ font, if you know what I mean.  It looks kind a bit of Arial Narrow.  Okay, maybe it’s slightly different, but I think it looks alike.  I mainly focused on the word, Futura.  It sounds like Future (Doesn’t it sound like it?), so I made my character look futuristic.  The first step I took to create my character was some ideas.  So, I’ve researched my thumbnails to get a grip about how to draw Futura.  And pictures below shows which character gave my an idea of Futura:

Monster High  (Frankie Stein)

Tron Legacy (Girl in White)

These two characters on top gave me a quite good idea in which characteristics and features that I should give Futura.  What I had in my mind after researching up my thumbnails, was a tight suit with a bit of ‘glowing’ outline around the body line (from Girl in White) and long skinny legs, eyes, and nose (Monster High).  To start off with my character, I drew each body part to make things easier.

I started with face.  As you can see, I decided to cover her head except for her bangs.  And to make it look like she’s from the future, I kind of made the bangs ‘wavy’.  Around the ears, I added a earmuff with a tiny circular microphone so that people will think that she’s kind of a ‘spy’ type of Futuristic girl.  Now, the eyes.  Okay, let’s face it:  I think the eyes of Futura is slightly slanted.    So, when I finished with the face, I made a note to myself, “Don’t make the eyes slanted too much.”.

Next, the body.  I made the body slender since I wanted to make my character tall and skinny. 

So, as I had already mentioned it before, around the body line of her suit, I wanted to make a ‘outline’.  And you could see that there is a line right next to the body line.  Why I put a heart on the right side of her chest?  Because to show that Futura isn’t just any other people: this motherboard heart shows that she has feelings, memories, and opinion, except that it’s all kept inside the motherboard.

Oh!  And I almost forgot!  Her legs.  I made sure that her legs are long and skinny like Monster High’s legs.  And I also made the boots near the thigh wide so that it’ll look Futuristic and too look well… cool.  (I’m sorry that her leg has been cut off)

Even though I put my effort into this ‘body part’ draft, the part that I put my most effort into is Futura’s eyes.  Eyes are very important for my character since eyes also shows a lot of emotions too.  The iris’s eye color is my favorite part of the eye, so I have already made up my mind that I’ll make her eyes crystal blue.

So the drawing of Futura’s eyes are next to this sentence as you can see.  I think I’ve already mentioned it before, but I didn’t want to make her eyes slanted.  What I really ment was that, I make the eyes little slanted so that she’ll look beautiful.  But, not too much or else, the image of Futura would be different.  I also added eyeliner again, for the same reason why I wanted Futura’s eyes a bit slanted; I want her to look beautiful.  During the draft, I actually thought about making her iris a gear.  And this is the picture:    I though it was pretty smashing idea to make Futura’s eye gear-like.  Because she’s basically half-computer/robot and half-human since she live in Future.

So, the sketch of each body part is done.  And I combined all of those sketches together, and this is the draft I ended up with:  Not bad, right?  At least I think so.  Her hair is very long, cool high-heeled boots with matching glove, mother board on her right chest, and tight suit that covers her head with headphones.  Overall, I think I did pretty amazing for a start.  But, I still had to work on eyes.  So, I practiced and practiced until I was satisfied w/ it.  And the second draft (Before the finals) turned out to be…

  (Sorry for her hair)  I think eyes are much better than before.  Now that I had finished the draft sketch of my character, I had finally drew my final draft.  After that, I traced it with thick black pen to make the outline of pencil bolder.  Then, I put it into a scanner, and by using Adobe Illustrator, I started coloring inside the white space like coloring book.  Suddenly, when I was coloring her suit, the colors spilled out into the background!  Oh no!  With no panic, I just simply asked my dad (who is really great with these computer problems) to help from me.  I learned that I have to use the tool called Live Trace.  Amazingly, that Live Trace stitched back the opening between the lines together.  Thanks to Live Trace, I was able to color a suit separately with other parts with opening.

Now, here is my final (I am actually pretty proud of myself)

Huh, huh?  Pretty cool right?  I think the colors and almost about everything really matched my character and the font.  But, even though I say that, I can still find cons about this work:  Background.  I really wish I had added a background so that the image of future will be stronger for people who is looking at this digital art.  And pose.  I could have make the pose more like superman or something.  Just putting one arm on her hip doesn’t really click to me as ‘Futuristic’ person.  What I like about this digital artwork iis colors and face!  I think I did A-okay on that.

Overall, I think I did an amazing job on this art work.  Next time though, I’ll add awesome galaxy-ish background to fit in with Future, and make the pose as if she’s like some Futuristic spy or something.  Anyways, I am glad that I was able to humanize the Futura font.  Without this font, I don’t think I’ll be able to come up with this colorful and pop-looking girl.

Our first unit for art was Abstract painting.  I was very excited for this unit, because I already had some images of my finished work in my mind.  But, it wasn’t as easy as I thought it woud be.  And I could tell you right now, that I have learned a lot of things from this unit about Abstract painting.

Of course, before we get started on our real project, we had to practice and check out few other ways of abstract painting.  We did couple of paintings such as black and white abstract painting, splatter painting, cubic abstract painting and so on.  It was pretty simple and easy when I did those things.  Then, finally to our real assessment.  We had to choose our inspiration to paint/draw our own original abstract painting and to actually paint/draw your art.  Most people in y class chose their inspiration from artist that we were introduced by and tried their techniques with different colors.  But, me.  I didn’t choose my art from other artists.  The reason for that was because I was too afraid that I would copy their original technique, and make it exactly the same.  Also, I just thought that making my own design and abstract painting from my imagination, or from the other daily thing’s inspiration is better than taking ideas from something that has been already made.

I got my inspiration from the image of the dreams and ocean.  I wanted to start immediately.  Just take my paint brush, paint, and crayons, and just get started on it.  But, in order not to make any mistakes or failure on the real art, we had to sketch a little back-up plan.  I had few thing in my mind, so I sketched it all.  Each had different designs, and symbols, but there was this one item that I didn’t miss out on any part of my sketches: An eye.  I needed that design of an eye or else, my image of my abstract painting won’t be the way I wanted it to be and not the one I had in my image.  That eye just had to be perfect.  So, in my mind, I was thinking to draw an eye in the middle with pencil, and around the eye, is a painting of wave, with neon-colored background.  I realized that it won’t be an abstract art if I had to add more design into it.  So, I decided to change the whole layout of my first idea, and changed it into totally different piece.  I kept an eye (of course) and the wave to make it look dreamy.  And what I mean by dreamy image, is the imagination I have in my mind.

So my next idea was an eye in the middle, and 3 huge waves on top and bottom of an eye… attached.  You can see what I mean by ‘attached’ with a screen-shot of my project on the left.  That also won’t be enough!  Then, light bulb shined on top of my head.  That’s it!  Then, I pulled out my pencil first before the pen, because I didn’t want to mess my practice art up.  After drawing with pencil, I took out my pen and traced over the pencil line.  Yes, yes!  That is how my final project is going to look like!  And my practice painting had an eye in the center of the paper, 6 wave in total with an eye, then… awesome doodles inside the waves!  I knew it would be absolutely, 100% perfect for my abstract art.  And of course. the background would be mixed with pale colors, neon colors and dark colors to interpret and show how dream is like inside my mind.

The picture on the left shows the draft of my abstract art.

The superb part of this draft, was the color of the wave, the background, and the black ‘doodles’ drawn inside each 6 waves.  So, I was thinking to keep that good part for the final piece.

The inadequate part of this draft was the eye and some colors filled into some doodles.  I think the doodles are better without the color fillings.  Also, I think the eye are too dark compared with the background and designs around it.  Especially the outline of the eye is too black.  Don’t you think so too?  The thing I could improve while finishing off my eye on the final art, it that I could make the color of the eye much more pale.

Finally!  Starting on the final piece!  I was very nervous, all right.  I didn’t want to take a risk of failing and mixing up the color.  With my blood rushing through my body fast, I started on it.  Grabbed bright, dark and neon colors of the paint, got started on it.  I swiftly slid my paint brush across a blank paper.  Within 10 min. that boring, white paper was stained by paints of many colors!  Next, the pencil outline of the eye, the wave and the doodles.  I did it very carefully, so that I won’t get the real outline messed up by a pencil line.  The sweat came across on the palm of my hands.  My hands quivered as I made those lines.  Phew… I was able to make a eye line, wave line and doodle line without erasing any pencil line, which might have scraped off some of the paints off.    Next, I would have to trace the pencil line with a crayon.  Now, this is the most important part.  If I spoil this part, basically, I would ruin my every single part of my abstract art.  With my thick crayons, I traced the pencil line cautiously with many different pale colors.  When I finished the last long eyelashes of the eye, I looked at my art work with a bit of glitter in my eyes.  So far, doing pretty good!!!  Now, to the wave.  This was a piece of cake.  I followed the faintly drawn pencil line with colors of the category of blue and green.  I think I’ve made a pretty beautiful wave for this.   Finally, to the doodles!  I am almost finished!  I took out my thin black pen called, Posca.  And I’ll tell you right now, that that pen, Posca, is extremely useful!  Easy to fill in the colors, outlining stuff and all those kind of tricks.  Point being, I traced the pencil line with my favorite pen.  It was a breeze to outline the pencil line with Posca.  It felt so good, that I could just as well draw more doodles… inside the blank part of an eye!  So… I did!  Same doodles, of course.  It would be strange if I change the doodles for the blank part of an eye.  Oh.My.Gosh.  I am officially finished!  After all those weeks of planning, color-testing and all, I finished one of my top 10 best art!

And this is my work:

Over all, I think I did pretty good.  The use of colors, the designs and my ideas were unique and creative (Not, trying to brag or anything).  But, I do admit at some parts, I do realize sometimes that it’s not really an abstract art, but just regular pop art.  I think I could have chosen my inspiration from the artist, to get an image of the ‘real’ abstract art.  As I’ve mentioned it before, in general, I think I put a lot of effort, and energy to finish this piece of artwork.

It took a lot of time to choose what kind of line will match my picture.  So, I’ve tried many different types of techniques – light sources, scumble, hatching and cross-hatching.  And I decided which techniques fit my scene the best.  So, I think my line drawing had changed big time.  Plus, to make my grades a bit higher for my project, I had made my own original lines and stipples and making my drawings more detailed.  My sky includes staright lines, and a boring one dot in the middle of the line.  But, what I did was that I made the line and dot closer to show that it’s the darker part.  Plus, I used different types of markers.  For the top part of the sky, I used a thick marker to show that it’s dark.  Then, gradually, I changed the markers into thin markers to show that sky’s color is light. 

I think I should not have brought the lake up.  Only reason why I did it was because I made a mistake on the lake – I made a weird crossing lines.  So, I thought that the lake would fail unless I hide it.  So, I’ve decided to bring the lake up.  One more imrpovement I think I could do better next time is not to make the mountain too dark.  I bit failed on the shadows since I drew the line over and over again.  Which gradually became darker and darker.  Perhaps, if I haven’t done that, the mountain would be easier to see.

First of all, think carefully and deeply about the layouts.  Check whether you want the forest to be in the horizon or not.  And I did that.  Second of all, do the first draft in pencil.  I’ve done mountains, a boy, a dog, and docks in pencil.  And I made it very detailed stippes, lines and made a different types of texture.  Although, for some reason, I didn’t practise the lake in pencil.  I just got a marker and made those cross lines.  But, now I’ve learned those lessons, next time, I can be careful and do the draft in pencil.

I definitely think that my line drawing have gotten better then before.  Although, I do think I was pretty good at first shot of line drawing.  But, I only used the basic lines and stipples.  My first line drawing was the scenary of Van Gogh’s neighbour… By Van Gogh.  The balance of the human and the building was a bit off, but other than that, I think I drew pretty impressively.  My second drawing was a scenary in Thailand or Malaysia.  Now for this one… I have to admit:  I rocked it!!!  That time, I used varieties of lines and dots.  Also, I’ve made the leaf look like leaf by making it as diagonal and crooked spiked line.

My 2011 Visual Journal + Reflection

I really enjoyed the visit at Hakuba, and making this fantastic visual journal was very awesome.  I especially like my new techiniques of my-point-of-view drawing and realism.  So, I would like to keep up the great work that I am doing.

Thank you for reading and checking my link to my Hakuba journal.

- Katie Lawrence 7A

Q.1:  Describe the design of our print.

My design is an original design.  I made an equilateral triangle in the center and repeated that triangle until to the corner.  And I drew 2 circles on the side with swirls going down.  By the corner, I drew a line along so it will look like a triangle. The triangle that is diagonal from left to right, is the same pattern.  And that goes with another 2 triangles.

Q.2:  What areas have been easy or challenging?

EASY: Curving straight lines and thinking of design.  Straight line was easy to curve because all I needed to do is to use the tool correctly and just push it forward until the line ends.  And thinking of design was easy because I was able to make a design that I think it will be simple and nice.  Although it didn’t turn out to be simple, I think it’s still nice and cute.

DIFFICULT:  Curving swirls and wavy lines and rolling the paint.  Curving swirls were challenging because it’s hard to keep it to the line of the wavy and swirly lines.  Rolling the paint was difficult because I did’t know how much paint to add and I put too much.  And turns out that some paints went into the curves.

Q.3:  Describe the strengths and weakness in your work.

Strengths:  My strengths was thinking of design of pattern.  Because at home, I use my imagination to make a story.  And if I have time, I draw a lot.  So, I had confidence in my pattern.

Weakness:  My weakness is curving the design.  It was hard to hold it, and sometimes, I curved the part that wasn’t supposed to be curved.  I think I need to be more steady and careful.

Q.4:  What you think you learned or improved?

I learned that I need to be careful with those sharp instruments.  I almost cut my finger when holding the pattern.  So, I learned not to rush on curving or else you’ll get your fingers chopped off.  I think I improved on working in details.  I thought that I couldn’t curve the thin line by the corner, but I was able to be really steady on small parts.

I chose these videos because I want to make my drawing better and more cartoon-like.  Each videos and each animal had a different techniques. And additionally, the video’s director, doodlekat1, makes many more how-to-make-cartoon videos than these which I have shown you.  I hope you enjoy it.

watch?v=59QGexKdFUI&feature=player_embedded

This video made me think of which color will match the best if I mixed it together.  Normally, I will just use similar color to mix the color.  But, now I know that if I use triangle, rectangle and square on color wheel, it can match a texture of color.