Face on Body Practice

To get the hang of putting someone's face on someone else's body, I messed around with a picture of my cat, Cervantes. I found a picture of a woman with a sombrero and I attempted to make it look like my cat's hair. I then made his face and body look more human-shaped and added some "makeup" to him. I'm somewhat pleased with the results, so I'm really looking forward to the actual project.

Transforming in Photoshop

Our next project will be to put a celebrity's face on another celebrity's body, essentially warping them and changing their identity. Well, I did a similar project that involved changing something's identity. I chose a picture of a cat from the website http://www.icanhascheeseburger.com/ and toyed around with it in photoshop until it resembled an owl. Granted it's not the best it could be, but it was my first experiment in transforming one thing into another.

Happiness in Three Parts

This is my latest project in the world of Digital Art, a Triptych. A triptych is a grouping of three related images. At first you might ask "what does a kitten, a little girl, and a turtle have to do with anything?" Well, you see, my theme was the many escalating expressions of happiness. The turtle with his tattooed, ragged back and above the clouds soaring represents tranquility and contentment. The little girl represents joy, as she runs up the rainbow to greet her parents. Childlike joy is one of the greatest emotions in the whole world. The last image represents ecstatic behavior and overenthusiasm. The little kitten is so happy that he has three mouths to smile with. Also note the appearance of the rainbow, it grows larger as the level of happiness grows larger as well.

CD Covers

This was the first project in Art 213, (Digital Art and Design). I LOVED it and had a lot of fun.

The assignment: http://www.culturerecycling.com/hartwick/213_Proj-1.html

The Magic of MSPaint

How did I get my start in Digital Art, you ask? Why, my good old friend MS Paint of course. When I was a teenager, back before I knew what Photoshop was, I would sit there for up to 8 hours at a time in MS Paint creating all different kinds of things. The image at the very bottom here was one of those. A person had a preset human figure and ran a contest based on how much someone could alter it. 8 hours later I emerged with an algae covered fishman with a conch shell on his head. I actually took third place in the contest even though I didn't use Photoshop at all.

After I discovered Photoshop and was still clinging to my pixel enthusiast ways, I would roughly create an image in MS Paint and then alter it in Photoshop, as shown with the image above that. I was not very proud of these and felt my interest in sitting there doing things pixel by pixel fade away...and then I got a scanner so I could actually post some of my real hand drawn art, as the pencil and paper are my forte.

Just last week I had an epiphany...what if I went a MS Paint in a bare bones go get 'em fashion? No premade forms, no Photoshop, no anything...just MS Paint. Still without a tablet, I grabbed my mouse and went for it, and created a pouty faced angry looking woman with weepy willowy hair in my own actual artistic style. It felt great to pick up an old tool again, kind of like visiting an old friend, and so I encourage other artists to pick up a medium that they haven't used in a long time and try something new with it. You may be surprised with the results.

My Experience in Digital Art

I'm not a digitally-inclined person, so taking a Digital Art class was a blow to my subconscious, sort of. I'm more of a traditional artist, using pencil and paper to create my own worlds. I actually had some negative associations with Digital Art originally, thinking that it wasn't really art, but rather just an enhancement of art. You know, you take a photograph, you alter it, and then you say "Hey look what I made!". But DID you really make it? It's only been 2 weeks for this class, you know, and it's already changed. I see how creative the process for creating digital art can be, after making some fun CD covers, (which I will post in a later blog :) )

This here is one of my first ventures in Digital Art that I made for an Alice in Wonderland contest on the horrible, but functional site known as deviantArt, (and then didn't enter the contest anyway because I thought it was terrible). It's alright, but it's clearly beginner work. Hopefully by the end of this semester, I should be able to modify this and make it actually look decent. Still, this is a starting point, one step above simply coloring and creating lineart in Photoshop, to actually working on something completely in Photoshop...albiet rather awfully.

What is Digital Art?

While contemplating what I should write about, I thought of a question that would be extremely important to this blog, in which I will be discussing quite a bit of digital art. But what is digital art, anyway? The artwork that I posted could be considered digital, since, although I drew it by hand, I edited and added things to it in Photoshop. Digital art can also refer to things made with 3D modeling programs, or made entirely in Photoshop. The way I see it, digital art is any kind of art that uses technology in its creative process, but here is Wikipedia's entry if a more "professional" definition is warranted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_art

I will be researching many things about Digital art in this blog, including some burning questions that I have. Why do people assume that Digital Art must be high-tech or realistic looking? Why do we even use computer resources to help us when we have pen and paper? These, and many more, I hope to answer.

Is it Summer Again?

Today's weather was a welcome change from last week, where it rained so hard that people had to be evacuated from their homes, the college closed, and general havoc broke loose. Today it was warm, very warm in fact, reaching the 80 degree mark, and it was bright and sunny.

To commemorate this very pleasant day, as well as Day 2 of this blog, I have sketched a Troll out on the beach soaking up the sun.

Hope that everyone had a great day, and, although tomorrow is forecasted to be rainy and cold, at least we had a flashback to summer today.

Welcome to De Blog

For my Digital Art and Design Class (Art 213) I was asked to create a blog about pretty much whatever I wanted. Because of my nature, it will probably consist of art posts, talks about life, and whatever else I'm interested in at the moment.

So why all of the Troll metaphors? Aside from being referred to as a "troll" by people who do not like what I have to say, I play one of them. So let's make this first post about Trolls shall we? Since my professor says, "Oh, say whatever you want on there, as long as you post a video, a link, and an image". Perhaps that was a mistake for him to say, perhaps not.

That in the corner is a Troll. His name is Jelzerzak and he is an artist and outspoken speaker of jibberish, just like yours truly. Jelzerzak will be a common fixture in some of the art I post, since I find him an interesting subject to draw, (unless I post something from class, that is).

My Livejournal: http://dracotheferret.livejournal.com/

The magnificent Troll dance for your viewing pleasure: