Icon

This is my icon project. I was stumped for an idea, because everything's been done. This little fellow sits on my desk, he's a wind-up toy that unwittingly became my muse. Each part of him was created using the shape tool. I used the draw behind command to keep the shapes in the right order. I ended up putting each shape on a different layer anyway when I was working with the gradient mesh. That way I could lock the layers I wasn't working on so that I wasn't picking up the mesh from nearby shapes. The colors are all web safe.

Self-Portrait

I can't say I took a very organized approach to this project, it emerged. The brick wall background was an image off the internet. It already had the bike sculpted into it, and I had planned to use some kind of bike image anyway, so it seemed like an obvious choice. I looked it up again to find the original source of the image, but it's disappeared. I can't find it anywhere. I did discover in working with the layer blending panel that I can achieve the same effect by taking the opacity way down and applying the extrude and bevel feature. I used the mixer brush to paint the dog from an image I downloaded off the internet as well. Of course it occurred to me after the fact that I should have just used one of my own dogs, but I like the way this dog looks anyway. The fish are from otattoos.com, and are a tribal tattoo design. The shoes were painted using the mixer brush from a photo I took of my orange Chucks, then I applied the watercolor effect to them. The layer was blended using the multiply setting. I like Chuck Taylors, I have them in different colors, and I have a custom pair that I designed myself. They've become my signature footwear and generally personify any 'style' that I might have. The bubbles are from kaaz.eu, a site offering free underwater wallpaper. I used the pen tool on the wall to create a selection, then pasted the bubbles inside. I like all things water: the ocean, a river, a swimming pool. I just feel better when I'm in or near water. I was also trying to give the fish some kind of context. The welder chick was created with the mixer brush from a scan I did of a sticker that someone gave me back in my welding days. Her layer has an overlay blend and a drop shadow. For the text, or my 'tag' if you will, I used a font called graffonti.3d.drop that I downloaded from dafont.com. The word 'mutt' has two references which have meaning for me: one being to the mixed breed canine who I love to champion; and the other a tip of the hat to Marcel DuChamp, who used the signature R.Mutt on some of his work.

Children's Book Illustration

 This project was created strictly from imagination. Ergo, it was time consuming and challenging. With no goal in sight, there was a lot of staring, contemplating, and revising involved. I used the water color brush quite a bit, which made for slow saving. But I liked the effect, and rasterization results were poor. I also used the blur and ocean ripple effects, along with a grain effect for the sand. I used the flare tool for the sun. My regret is that I wasn't able to colorize it. I might have done better to use a gradient mesh on a yellow sphere.

Subscription Card

This subscription card was created based on several actual card designs by Wired Magazine. I chose the colors for their eye-catching qualities. Pink and orange have always offended my aesthetic sense, but sometimes I enjoy doing things that stretch the boundaries of what I like. The layout of the form side was my design, but the layout of the front of the card is as nearly identical to the original as possible. I used the grid and several guides for both sides. The logo on the form side was made using the shape builder tool for the block letters, and then a drop shadow on the blocks and the freestanding letters. For the logo on the mailing side I found a font that was as close to what was needed as possible, then converted the letters to outlines and altered them as necessary with the pen tool and the subselection tool, (white arrow).

Making Backgrounds in Illustrator

 This is a monochrome I created. There is a solid base layer. The fan shape is a blend of an irregular brush stroke. The shape in the opposite corner was created with the pen tool and a gradient.

 This was created with the arc tool and the blend tool. Then I duplicated and reflected it and changed the colors. The bottom layer is a gradient blend.

 Here I used text to create the background. I just played around with different fonts, sizes, colors, and opacity. I decided to have some fun with. It's hard to work with words without giving them meaning.

 This has the orange base layer, then the green layer has the halftone effect applied with a gradient transparency mask.

This has a red base layer with a halftone gradient transparency mask. The horizontal bars were made with the blend tool and a gradient. The circles were made with the shape tool and an irregular brush. They have a gradient transparency mask as well.

Color Adjustment and More Masks

Various methods of selection were used on the fries (magic wand), the milk carton (lasso tool), and the lettuce (quick selection) to create new adjustment layers and enhance or alter the colors. In the case of the fries a levels adjustment was made, and a drop shadow was used as well. For the milk carton the colors were inverted. A hue/saturation adjustment was made to turn the lettuce into red cabbage.

 This image is a composite of the background, which is an image I took near my home in the Santa Cruz mountains, and the dove. The dove was selected from it's background using the color range command, which was very simple since it was against a solid blue sky. I used the refine edge tool to decontaminate the blue out of the edges and clean up the margins. I also brightened up some of the greens in the background using a layer mask and the hue/saturation adjustment.

These statues from Easter Island were dropped onto a background with a more dramatic sky than the one they came from. I used the color range command to select them, which again was very simple because they were in front of a solid blue sky. The refine edge tool was used to reset the radius of the selection, move the edges and increase the contrast. After they were moved onto the new background I used the magnetic lasso to clean up a few spots that came with them.

More Drawing in Illustrator

Cityscape & Landscape