Dustin Williams' Blog

Final Week: Part II

2009-07-30T16:46:00.000-07:00

Another direction I'd like to go in for the book is something akin to this little piece that I did a couple of weeks ago:

One of the biggest advantages I learned for stuff like this is the path tool. Rather than try to change the fills of the different shapes using the magic wand>fill, the paint bucket tool, or some other weird method, being able to import the paths from Illustrator into Photoshop and using the make selection tool is extremely easy and makes all of your lines look a lot cleaner at high resolutions. I found that the best way to do this was to set the stroke on your Illustrator lines to 0 before importing them. It also makes making clean masks a lot easier. Before, I would try to adjust the magic wand settings to get the best lines, but even with the best settings it was less than satisfactory. I tended to work a lot in Illustrator before importing things into Photoshop but now I can do a lot of the same things within Photoshop, which is pretty handy.

I'm hoping that I can use this path method along with some of the texture generation techniques that I used on the last master study to create more of these geometric studies. It's nice to be able to scan your own textures in, but when that's not an option it's nice to be able to create a 300 dpi texture to your liking within Photoshop itself.

It also might be interesting to kind of fuse these two techniques (this and the last post I posted) to add some texture to the flat colors of my sketchbook drawings.

Final Week: Part I

2009-07-28T19:25:00.001-07:00

Today I continued with the research. I browsed though Etsy's zine section today and picked out a few things that I liked. Here are a few of my favorites (the rest are under my Zine delicious bookmark - which I think will become extremely helpful as this project continues):

This is My Boyfriend - cool illustrations with hand-drawn text

Lil' Laundromatic Zine - more design oriented

Life on Earth - interesting ink lines

Lickety Split - two color illustrations

Dead Letters and Rare Words - screenprinted cover (something that might be possible since I'm taking Printmaking II next semester with a focus on Serigraphy)

TAGS - based off of photos

Doodle Zine - a book of doodles

From the Ground Up - one of my favorites, I actually own a copy of this one. Lots of little drawings

White Rice Fish - block printed cover

Butts - an entire zine about butts

Art Bureau - beautiful illustrations

Hairstylist - asks the reader to interact with the illustrations

The Little Classic Sneaker Coloring Book - interesting binding method

Poor Traits - humor

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To show a bit of what I've done before, here's a page from the last book that I made:

When I made the book I wanted to practice creating vector images, but I only ended up with 6 little images; not because I didn't want to do more, but because they took me forever. I wasn't really sure how to go about doing stuff like this, so I used some kind of crazy system where I livetraced everything (gasp!) and then cleaned up everything by hand adding extra points with the pen tool and whatnot. It didn't look too bad in the end, but it was a pretty long and laborious process, each thing taking me a couple of days.

Here's another drawing that I made into a vector image in kind of the same fashion more recently. This also took me way longer than it should have:

Original sketch

Vector

I've got a couple sketchbooks full of doodles like these, I always try to finish a sketchbook when I travel, and I've always wanted to do more with them, so this book should be a good chance. I think the tool that'll be most helpful in this circumstance is the brush tool within Illustrator. I haven't gotten the chance to trace one of these drawings with this method yet, but I have to imagine that it will be siginificantly faster. I could also see how overlaying textures could make some of these more interesting, so the research I've done of the past couple of weeks on texture websites will come in handy as well.

Here are a few good (i.e. free/hi-res) ones that I've stumbled across:

cgtextures.com - textures for almost anything you can think of

lovetextures.com - pretty new, but what they've got is good

hiresolutiontextures.com - a texture blog of sorts

texturewarehouse.com - tons of different categories

-- more to come --

Final Week: Proposal

2009-07-27T22:10:00.001-07:00

For my final, I'd like to put into motion a project that I've wanted to do for quite some time: a book. Over the summer I purchased a couple 'zines from artists around the country and quickly became fascinated with these home-made yet visually sound projects. I've create a few books in the past, although nothing too complex, mostly because I simply didn't have the skill set.

From both a design and production standpoint, I think this would be an interesting project to tackle. In papermaking, we've been talking a lot about and researching different kinds of books, bindings, materials, etc., so making this by hand would also be an easy possibility. Researching these different materials/substrates is also useful as far as packaging or printed materials are concerned. Mostly, though, I just want something tangible that I can show and/or give to people at little cost. I'm also hoping this may open its way to more collaborative projects in the future, as I've begun to gather the address of a lot of smaller named artists that I look up to in hopes that, at the very least, we can share some ideas.

*Lots of photos to come

In my posts this week I hope to outline what exactly I plan to do and how certain tools will aid me on this project. Today, I started out by researching. Although I didn't allow myself near enough time, I added at least 35 more bookmarks to my delicious that kind of point to certain directions that I want to go in. I think these bookmarks will be a very useful tool. Tomorrow, I plan on posting a bit of what I've done in the past and how certain methods I've learned will come in handy and save time in the same circumstances, as well as point out a few techniques that I may want to try out in the near future. I've tried to start this project several times in the past ended up scrapping most of my ideas; hopefully by the end of the week this research and planning can give me a more narrow idea of where I want to go in this.

Interpretation Week 4 Update

2009-07-26T21:37:00.000-07:00

I've been working on a few ideas for the background of this week's interpretation. Here's a working version. The background is a few different textures layered on top of one another, including one of a stormy sky, which I thought was appropriate for the image.

Interpretation Week 4

2009-07-24T19:21:00.000-07:00

Here's a working version of my interpretation for this week. I found a sketch in a notebook I have and made it from that. I'm a little stuck though. It's obviously missing something (background?), but everything I've tried just looks weird. It might be the color choices. Any ideas?

Master Study 4 Update

2009-07-21T22:27:00.000-07:00

Original:

Study:

Here's my attempt at Mar Hernandez's art. Copy is on top, study is underneath. It took a couple hours, but I finally got the method down. The only thing I struggled with (and you can still tell this in places) is getting two colors to blend into eachother. I'll have to keep messing around and see if I can't find a better way to do that. Other than that though, this technique worked fairly well.

Master Study 4

2009-07-20T21:46:00.000-07:00

For my fourth project I decided to recreate a piece by Mar Hernandez, an illustrator/designer based out of Spain. She's got these great texturized vector images that I thought would be interesting to work with.

I'm hoping to use something akin to both of the lectures posted today: using paths to create the shapes and using the different filters to create textures. To start out I've traced the shapes in Illustrator so that I can import them into Photoshop.

Interpretation Week 3 UPDATE!

2009-07-20T19:01:00.000-07:00

I experimented around a bit more with color (more to satisfy my own curiosity than anything), and came up with this. I think it turned out pretty nice. Once I got the colors down, I flattened the color and used an adjustment layer to get it to look right (like Babcock suggested). I also added laid a canvas texture over the color to give it a bit more life, although you can't really tell in this smaller version. What do you guys think? I need to look at more reference photos to really nail the lighting on the face.

Interpretation Week 3

2009-07-18T20:58:00.000-07:00

For my interpretation this week, I decided to work with a drawing I did in last semester's figure drawing night class. Here's the original:

To start out, I placed it in Illustrator and traced it with a custom art brush that I made.

Next, I imported the vector image into Photoshop and threw down some basic colors behind the lines.

I more or less added and subtracted things until I got something I was happy with.

I'm no expert when it comes to skin tones, so any tips in that departement would be very much welcome. Overall though, I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. I tried a version where the colors were within the lines, but I liked this looser version better. Even though I'm not the best at it, I really do enjoy painting, and this seems like pretty much the same, only a lot quicker and easier as far as mixing different colors is concerned. If I do any real paintings in the future, I could see myself using a technique like this to, at the very least, try some things out before laying anything down on real canvas.

Master Study 3: Step-by-Step

2009-07-15T19:46:00.001-07:00

This study ended up being quite a bit of fun. I tried a few things with the brushes that I'm sure a lot of you illustration majors have done before, but were pretty new to me. I'm always curious about how people go about trying different things, so here's a basic step-by-step of what I did:

To start out with, I painted some basic brushstrokes and scanned them in. Then, one by one, I created a brush from each stroke. I saved them into a brush file called "paintbrushes," so whenever I needed them I just loaded the paintbrushes file within the brushes window. Pretty handy.

Next, I used the brushes to created the basic background. The custom brushes worked really well in creating a painted feel.

Next, I used some of the same brush but with different presets to create the graffiti writing. I ended up creating an additional brush that was a drip. Being able to change brush sizes easily meant I could do different drip sizes easily as well. Pretty cool. After I got what I wanted, I used Hue/Saturation to colorize the layer.

I traced the black outlines in Illustrator, but without having a tablet, it was tough to get the line quality I wanted. So rather than mess with the Illustrator brushes, I set the stroke to 0 (leaving just the path), and pasted it into Photoshop as a path, which I then traced with a brush for a consistent stroke.

Lastly, I went back and painted behind the lines of the traced outline, each color on a different layer. The final study isn't quite as detailed as the original, but I wanted to explore the different brushes more than the outline detail. I think it turned out pretty well; I'd never really used custom brushes before, and the more I use them, the more I'm starting to realize how cool they can really be.

Master Study 3

2009-07-13T21:53:00.001-07:00

This is an illustration done by Faile, an artist collective based out of Brooklyn. This style isn't really what they're known for, but I found the drawing charming regardless. I really need to make myself experiment with different kinds of brushes in Photoshop, so I though this would be a good exercise.

Interpretation Week 2 Update

2009-07-12T22:27:00.000-07:00

I decided to try out a few textures on this; the top is a texture taken from the postcard and the bottom is a hair texture taken from cgtextures.com, which I've found to be quite helpful.

Master Study 2 Update

2009-07-12T11:50:00.000-07:00

I went ahead and added a bit of a paper texture to the study. It's not too prominant, but I didn't want it to overpower the image. I think it warms it up quite nicely.

Interpretation: Week 2

2009-07-11T00:36:00.001-07:00

Here's the start of my interpretation for week 2:

I used the same brushes I made for the master study and built the beard one hair-chunk at a time, then laid a second layer of color behind it on a seperate layer. Then I imported the vector art into Photoshop and masked the hand area to make it look correct. It took a while to draw the beard, but it was a relatively easy process. I scanned in the photo from a pile of postcard portraits I have; hopefully I can try this on at least one or two more of the postcards before the weekend is over.

I'm also going to try to continue working on the study, adding textures to the flat colors, which if successful might be something I can try out on these interpretations.

Master Study 2

2009-07-07T19:37:00.001-07:00

Here's my master study for this week. Study is on top and original is underneath. Since I don't have CS4, I had to stick with the regular non-blob brush, but it seemed to work fairly well. It went a lot faster than when I've tried to trace stuff like this in the past. All I really did for the hair was create three different brushes (varying in thickness) and then adjust the strokes accordingly. Since I don't have a tablet, I used a pen tool for some of the longer lines and then applied the brushstrokes to that (which I never realized that you could do).

Master Study 2 Artist

2009-07-05T21:41:00.000-07:00

Sadmascot is an artist I found while browsing through flickr one day. He's got some very intricate line-work, but apparently a lot of the stuff he's done is vector. Here's a few pieces:

Would the easiest way to do this be using a blob brush or something similar? I've always wanted to try my hand a little drawings like this, so I thought I'd use this chance to try it out.

Interpretation: Day 3/4

2009-07-01T21:49:00.000-07:00

EDIT:

Here's a version with a texture thrown behind it. Not exactly the texture I had in mind, but it'll work until I can get a scan of what I want.

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Didn't get much done today. Finalized the photos and color, which I got by using Color Burn on a scan of a watercolor piece I did.

Interpretation: Day 2

2009-06-30T22:43:00.000-07:00

Today I spent my time editing the original vector art (within Photoshop), and then began working with editing the layer masks to look correct. Currently, there is room for three "photo" layers: two on the inside of the letters, and one in the letter outlines. After I got the masks correct for each layer, it made it incredibly easy to drop different photos in and try them out to see how they react to one another.

The photos I used in this version are by no means final (it's also missing a photo within inside of the letters). Tomorrow I hope to finalize the photos I'm using so I can create a final rendering of the letters; then, on Thursday, it's my hope that I can start experimenting with adding other shapes and photos to the composition/background, sort of like the master study photo. We'll see how that goes; I don't want it to get too crazy.

Also, I told this to Babcock, but it probably wouldn't hurt to post this here as well. As far as stock photos go, I've found sxc.hu to be particularly helpful. It doesn't have the greatest selection, but sometimes you can find usuable images, and you can download everything at full resolution if you get a free account. Pretty nice.

Interpretation: Day 1

2009-06-29T19:49:00.000-07:00

For my interpretation, I decided to try out a promotional piece for my friend The One Electronic; something that he could perhaps use on a poster for a future show. Today, I spent time preparing the vector art within Illustrator so that I could import it into Photoshop.

To start, I created the basic text, taking different letters from two different typefaces and editing them slightly. I then offset a copy behind the original letters and used the pen tool to add the angled connecting sections, giving it the dimensional look.

Next, I plan to cut bits and pieces (like in the study) to create a bit more movement. I don't think I necessarily want every letter to be striped like it is on the right, so I've kept a seperate layer copy without the pink lines. I might try working with textures or scans (I've contemplated scanning in some water color blotches) as opposed to photographs, and see how that turns out. I think that may work out well for a background as well.

My first attempt at typographic art

2009-06-25T22:52:00.000-07:00

I found this picture while looking through a graphic design pdf file put together by Tanya Rubbak, whose art was recently featured in an article on Juxtapoz.com. Although it's not the best resolution, it struck me as something that might be interesting to mess around with.

To start out, I traced the letter in Illustrator. After experimenting with different Pathfinder tools, I ended up with the vector art on the right. As the stripes are slightly different on each side in the original design, I made them different colors so that I could easily edit the areas seperately in Photoshop.

After placing the vector file into Photoshop, I set each color to be its own seperate layer. Then, after I placed the pictures, I used the vector shapes to mask the appropriate areas of the photographs. After several masked layers, it finally started to look like the original photo.

Unfortunately, I made one grave error (oh no!). As I started working on top of the original, less-than-stellar-resolution photograph, I realized that I had forgotten to change the size of the canvas when I first started, and thus, the resolution on the final version is barely passable. Definitely something I'll have to watch out for in future projects.

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2009-06-22T18:33:00.000-07:00

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