Digital Art Explorations

I made a campaign poster when I ran for Speaker of the House during a simulation in my Current Issues Class. I made a pun on my last name by depicting myself forging legislation on an anvil! I  tried to emulate the dynamic style of political advertising and mass media campains. Overall I think this reflects a recent trend in my art style of increasingly angular vector art. Sketching linework on a raster program and creating final shapes in a vector program proved surprisingly effective at creating a sharply-defined character that is still dynamic. That two-step process takes extra time but I think is ultimately worth it.

For a carnival game project in my Statistics class, my group made a project themed around Doctor Frankenstein bringing back three famous mathematicians. There is a probability-based matching structure to the game. I created "head," "torso," and "legs" cards for Alan Turing, Isaac Newton, and Pythagoras. I later ended up reusing the Newton drawing for my Dorian Gray comic (but without the stitches!). 

This is an alternate movie poster I created for Office Space. I thouht portraying an office comedy in a science fiction style would be an interesting challenge. For the receding cubicles, I actually used a radial design that is only partially shown in the final image. You can see it in the accompanying progress image!

I also created an alternate movie poster for A Serious Man. The existing movie poster for this film is already fantastic, so I figured my design would have to be more metaphorical. I depicted Larry Gopnik being crushed by the framing of the poster, signifying the deluge of challenges that overwhelm him throughout the course of the movie. I started with a physical sketch to narrow in the proportions before turning to a vector program. 

I created this vector portrait with a very simple rule in mind. My face would be constructed entirely of triangles whose vertices must connect (a vertex cannot intersect with the side of another triangle. It can only touch other vertices). I only broke this rule a bit in complicated areas around the eyes and glasses. Ultimately, this created an interesting image. It looks almost like a 3D sculpture. 

For this vector portrait, I only used curved lines. Also, I thought a plant would make it into a nice composition. It looks a bit like a photo in some sections, but zoom in and you can see these are all vectors I manually traced. I started on the right cheek and moved in a counterclockwise direction, and you can clearly see how I refined my technique along the way. 

I gave my shot at a vector landscape, using this reference photo of Lake Louise.

I experimented with rotations as I created these abstract patterns to familiarize myself with color theory. The one with the red triangles was inspired by the Sierpinski triangle.

I aimed to create vector icons representing a single theme. I used black, white, and blue to create thirteen medical icons. In order to practice using shapes and the transform tool, I refrained from using the pen tool on this first collection (except for the tubing on the blood pressure cuff). On my second collection of thirteen construction icons, I began practicing the pen tool and utilized various colors. 

I tried practicing that style from the previous set of drawings in an actual vector program rather than a raster program. It is approaching the clean, angular style I want!

These are some sketches I found from when my style was very curvy exaggerated...and also a robot. 

There comes a time in every person's life when they must draw an old man on a skateboard. For me, that time is now. 

This was an early idea for a logo design. A logo should be more simple, ideally, but the expression on the emu is still nicely expressive.

I made these sketches trying to hone my ability to convey expression.

I tried to develop a sketch of this character in two very different ways. I first practiced my linework with an outline and then added color without outline. 

What are they discussing? 

With these sketches, I tried to practice varying my line length.

I decided to draw a miner because I wanted a single light source, and a lantern fit this requirement perfectly. 

I was going for a Hanna-Barbera intro look. I think they are ready to go solve crimes with the magic dog or something. 

My main goal when drawing this runner was to learn how to draw folds in clothing. I also liked the idea of telling a full story with just one character (and no background). I think the flying sweath accomplished this goal!