Friday, November 13, 2015

Poster Parody

This week my students have been learning more techniques in Photoshop using Shepard Fairey's "Hope" poster from 2009. To help them get the idea of how this was done (and also teach them a bit about parody, I created a few demos)




And if I could use characters from one of the best shows created recently, so much the better!

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Inktober: Why It Didn't Happen...and Why I'm Posting About It Anyway

I was very eager to participate in Inktober this year. For those of you who don't know, Inktober is a chance for artists to do 31 days of ink drawings in October. I was able to partcipate in it last year, all 31 days (which if you understand how difficult it can be for me to make time to sketch, was a great accomplishment), and couldn't wait to work on it this year.



The plan was to pick a theme, which would make it easier for me to focus each day on what to draw. Since I love location sketching, my theme was 31 Day, 31 Places. I was off to a good start...and then life happened. The reality is that I have a very busy life outside of my art. It was perhaps easier (or more convenient at least) for me to participate in Inktober last year.



One of my mentors has mentioned to me that there are seasons of life that we go through. Right now, I am going through the season of teaching, which does not always allow for time for my own art. It reminds me of one of my favorite lines from Rise of the Guardians:

"We are very busy bringing joy to children, we don't have time....for children"

I've often modified that when it comes to my own work:
"I am very busy working on making art, I don't have time...for art"



As odd as it may seem (after all, my occupation is to be an art teacher), I don't make a ton of time for my own work. Which is not necessarily something to feel guilty over because it just may not be the focus of this season of life; this brings me to why I'm still posting on this.



I want my students (and everyone else reading this blog) to know the importance of working on your own art, if that is something you are passionate about. School project take a LOT of your time, but if you don't have your own work, it can be very draining. So, I'm posting my limited participation in Inktober because I am proud that I made some effort to work on my own work and did what I could. I hope that I will be able to make more opportunities to do my own work as soon as possible!







 

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

A Bit of Portraiture...

This week, my Computer Graphics students are working on making typography portraits in Photoshop. As I was creating demos for them, I remembered how enjoyable it is to work on these projects, so in whatever spare time I could get, I continued working on the demos that I had started and turned them into some new pieces.

As my students probably know by now, I'm quite and Old Hollywood fan. So, naturally, I wanted to select photos from that era. What resulted were portraits of three of the greats: Claude Rains (who I can't help but always return to as a subject), Katherine Hepburn, and Bette Davis.