I updated a few things around the site. Since time is at a premium, there probably won’t be a complete overhaul from the default WordPress layout (which is now Kubrick since 1.5). But there is randomfoo I wanted to do.

Recently
I made the top a random banner. With that, I added 3 more headers. I shortened up the blog roll list and have the most recently changed 10 show, with a “more” that shows them all.

Next
Make the random banner have alt tags that go with that banner. Tweak the top layout a smidge. Add more banners.

I was thinking about making them all vector looking so that I can get more practice with Illustrator. Not sure though.

Project
Come up with an illustration for “Crowded” for Illustration Friday. I have been looking at the site for a while and kept putting off doing anything because everything there is so amazing. But. One gets better with practice, right?

Mechanics
Illustrator CS. I reused the fish from another project. I drew in the people with a pencil and filled in with black. Why pencil and not pen? Maybe because my last Illustration project was with pencil. I made the fish really big because goldfish grow to the size of their container, but this one grew bigger. I put a crowd of people in front for… well, another crowd!

And then…
I want to turn the fish so he’s looking at the crowd. Like “Hi, I’m watching you too…” but maybe next time. Heh.

Project
Use the pen tool to trace an image and then redo the illustration four times with different color schemes. Examples of color schemes: warm, cool, monocromatic, analogous, complementary.

Mechanics
Holy cow! The pen tool is an… interesting thing to use. But it can be powerful. She stressed that when you click down to drag even if a little bit because the handlebars are easier to use when they’re there and hard to put in later. After spending what seemed an age and a half on the cat, I was at a loss for a background. She suggested a branch. Then I drew a fish and she said an aquarium. So there we have it.

I grouped the different ‘pieces’ and ungrouped to do color changes. I, of course, named the different layers and groups to help with organization. In the end, I had 4 folders in this Illustrator file for the different color schemes.

And then..
I was disappointed in the printing process. The cat is black and yet I couldn’t get the pieces to have enough contrast to print well and still be black. It looked fine on my monitor and then would print out all one big black piece. I missed the critique on this one since I was with flu but I did get to see a few of the other students’ pieces and was quite impressed! I wish I could post them.

Neat thing about vector is that I can make this as big as I want…

Project
Illustrate with text. The teacher showed us examples and, unfortunately, I can’t find them online. Most were from former students. We were also given the choice to use the original photograph in the background, but I got sick and missed that lecture so made do with what I had. It was also limited to one font family (ie Times, Helvetica). Because of this, we should pick one with other styles like Palatino or Myriad.

Mechanics
In Illustrator, place the image. Lock it. Use the pencil to draw the various sections, using “option” key to make sure it’s a closed piece. Make a box the size of the shape off to the side. Type in the box and use whatever to make it darker (bigger font, bolder, tighter, etc.).

Put shape on top of box of text.

Object -> clipping mask -> make

Put the shape back on there.

I used the same text just different pieces of it for the person but the background was a different text. The layers were named and grouped so that it was easy to find what I wanted and to turn viewability off and on easily.

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