School projects / my work

If I'm feeling brave enough to share or post my work, this is where it will be found.  Please note, my art training was an art minor 15 years ago (omg was it really that long ago?) and I'm now a second semester  student in graphics technology.  I'm not an expert in anything, nor do I profess to be.  I'm learning.  Sometimes I get good results, sometimes, the rough edges show through pretty obviously. 

Started with a reference photo.  Went into Illustrator to break it down into closed shapes.  (with the notion that I had a limit to those shapes, somewhere around 30.  I ended up quite a bit over that limit, so I ended up drawing myself some extra "guide" lines as reference lines for later as well).  Those shapes were then imported into Corel Painter and turned into selections and used as masks and used in the long long painting process :)  

Just a quick note about this one- The photographer of this lovely building is to be found on DA- he goes by the name of LethalVirus and takes some amazing perspective shots of buildings---  As a student, I often am tasked with finding photos to use as reference sources to work with- particularly since we are not going to be using the final projects in any sort of a commercial venue  (and honestly, we don't have enough time before the assignment to do the prep to get our own source material, which I would love to do...)  He deserves all the mention and promotion I can give him.  Find more on him here:  LethalVirus

Trapping color illustration.  Corel Painter.  Also a chance to play with various textures and paint brushes.  (I think from memory I tried out ink splatter, sponges, and airbrush).

One of my very first Illustrator projects.  Portrait of Billie Holliday- using no gradients, only vector shapes.  I made a conscious decision to limit my pallette, which  led to a more stylized look to the end result. 

Another big Illustrator class project- using Lempicka's painting as reference, recreated it  using vectors.  This project taught me so much about various gradients.  I used gradient meshes, blends, transparencies, and a variety of gradients to get the effects I wanted.  I tried a variety of effects on the face until I settled  on paintbrushes- sometimes there really is nothing like painting to mimic...painting.

 

Photoshop class project- fun photomanipulation exercise.  Forced me to review and learn all the manipulation tools I need to know.  I probably should revisit this project now and often to remind myself of just what is possible with PS and how.