Gary Soto Garage Illustration

Our first illustration was based off of short stories by Mexican American writer Gary Soto. I chose a specific story, "The Inner Tube" to focus on. A specific beat in the story, Gary tripping over fishing tackle, is where I wanted to focus. Upon further research, I found out that when Gary was just 5 years old, he lost his father. For my garage, I wanted to focus on the lost memories of his father, while still including the inner tube.  The process started with ideations.

Here I am trying to figure out which items I want in my garage, and what my garage would actually look like. After I find out all of the items, I need to build a schematic.

Using the 3D software Maya, I was able to create my scene, drop a camera in the center, and view every angle of my garage.  From there, I find 2 shots that I like. A wide shot, and a medium shot.

And now I need to decide which shot will best tell my story.  The wide shot seems a little vague, almost disconnected from my original story idea. However, I want to work with values to see if I could get it to work. So from there, I move on to value compositions.

These value comps have confirmed that the medium shot is going to best represent my idea.  I pick my favorite value study, and render out a full version.

After I have figured out my values, I move to color.  This is my first time working in color.  I've decided that this is morning lighting, and decide to use Van Goghs "Starry Night" as a color palette.

The feeling I was going for was morning before the day becomes hot.  The garage is still a cool place to hang out.  However, to get to the inner tube to make memories of this new summer, he has to get through the boxes of his fathers old things. I chose to keep the background warm and inviting, while the forground remains cool and unwelcome.

We had to take this shot, and give it a different lighting scheme.  From my value studies, I discovered that with this composition, it would be hard to light it any other way.  But after trial and error, I found away to reverse the idea of the morning image.  In a night time image, I would make the father's items, the things he did together with Gary, the focal point. The inviting pointing in the story.

In this image, the foreground becomes the place where we want to stay.  We can see the baseball, the box of Gary's fathers clothes, the fishing tackle, and encompassed in warm light. I found this painting to be my favorite and I did have the most fun with it.

Photoshop Photoshop Photoshop!

This semester I am in an Intermediate Illustration class.  This class focuses on putting story into illustrations as well as transitioning from traditional to digital paint. We were given three assignments to learn and get used to digital painting. The first project we did was taking a picture of an object in the kitchen and rendering it.

This was my first time painting in photoshop. Like actual painting and rendering. I definitely found it challenging and had my struggles for sure.  However, I did learn so much from this and it was a great way to start learning and getting used to photoshop.

Next we were given a photo of a valley to copy.

 

This was the most challenging of the three. I think it is because of the organic shapes and values. It definitely gave me a run for my money. But as before, a lot was learned here. 

The last project was Rockafeller Center. Unfortunately, I was unable to finish this one. I do plan on revisiting it when I have the time because I really do love it. This one taught me a lot with masking, and patience, but mostly masking.