Project 1- Material Strategies

 Project1- Material Strategies

Original Sketch (analog)

    From a memory of a vacation spot I visited as a child, a scene of a lighthouse with slow-moving water in the background is what I knew I wanted to recreate. I thought that the lighthouse should be the main focus, as it's what sticks out to me the most when I think back on the resort and how it looked when I was little.

                                                            Analog translated to digital

`After translating this, it was a lot easier to figure out what path I wanted to take when illustrating the scene. Originally, this was roughly sketched, but I decided to go with a flat illustration style for the final piece, as I felt as if it represented the nostalgic feeling of the scene well.

Final Piece

    For our first project, I decided to portray a scene from my childhood, the lighthouse resort that my family and I stayed at for one week every summer since I was little. It was right on the lake, making it something that stood out in my memories when brainstorming about what exactly I wanted to bring to life. After completing the analog (original sketch), I knew that from the choices presented to us, I wanted to make this composition a flat illustration. Through sharp line work, I created my piece on Adobe Illustrator. I went for sort of a muted but still life-filled color palette, and wanted to place emphasis on the lighthouse itself. There are other objects seen in the image, depicting what the dockside looked like from memory. The piece consists of an immense amount of greens and grays, as the main colors seen on the lighthouse were a deep, forest green. For most of the piece, I used the pen tool, which was extremely tedious but rewarding, as I could mess around with what I was making until I was fully happy with the result. Additionally, I used some of Adobe’s textures available for certain aspects of the artwork, such as the concrete picnic table and the trees in the background behind the lighthouse itself. By making this composition flat, I learned to be patient with both myself and the program I’m using, as it's a bit difficult initially, but once you get the hang of it, it is genuinely so fun to create. Through using the Adobe Programs, I’ve become most familiar with Illustrator. While the project was tedious to complete, it 100% helped me further develop my skills and helped me figure out what strategies would make completing the project most efficient.