Table of Contents Adobe Illustrator Works................................pg. 2 Infographic.......................................................................................pg. 6-11 Digital Photography...........................................pg. 12 Hand Drawn Art..................................................pg. 28
One Side Makes You Taller... A first look at creating Value with Color. I drew this image in Adobe Illustrator with a drawing tablet and the brush tool. I created different layers of colors for each step of the drawing, starting with a very basic shape in the palest shade of the color I wanted to use. I created gradients of each color I wanted to use on the side panes of the image. Then I layered the colors for shadow effects. I chose the subject matter from childhood favorites of mine, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carrol. Mushrooms, I find, are one of the most iconic images of the books.
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The Infographic Project: Preliminary Drawings
For the Infographic project, I chose the topic of child abuse. Unlike previous works I have done in Adobe Illustrator, this set of images is done with a mouse instead of a stylus and tablet. I placed an image over a blank illustrator document and traced each picture with the pen tool. I did each image in the same colors as the original image, except the pill bottle and the kid. I used an option called live trace. It traces over the image for you, and it offers a different way of tracing. The sad little boy obviously fits in with my theme of child abuse: he’s the abused child. However the martini and the pill bottle stand to convey the role drugs and alcohol can play in the abuse of children across america. The images as they stand are entirely too colorful and bright. The martini glass seems to convey the pleasure alcohol can bring. The pill bottle doesn’t come across as a prescription bottle right away either, it can be misconstrued as an orange beverage.
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The Infographic: Working Drafts I started with the background and made it one solid color to set the theme for the following layered colors and types. I thought that starting from the back and working to the front would be the best way to get a color scheme going. Next I added in the middle rectangle of color to establish an area to begin working with. With a theme like child abuse, where it’s a cycle, I thought that working from the center out would really get the circular motion of the cycle going, kind of like ripples on water. I added a simple title to the top center because that’s where most people go first to find out what they’re looking at. As english-speakers, we read top-to-bottom, left-to-right. I only put some of the more shocking statistics on my poster, unfortunately it is in a font most people find difficult to read. That will be updated in the revised project. I felt that the hypodermic needle and the drinker best underscored (excuse the potential pun) the facts to the left and right of the image. The arrows are a visual expression of the cycle, how these activities cycle around and through the victims. For the first one, I chose a red-white-blue color scheme because they’re the colors of America. For the other options, I let a group of children pick the colors they loved the most, then I manipulated the tints and shades to fit my needs.
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The Infographic: Final Product
These are the finished products of my child abuse infographic. This is obviously a huge jump from the previous ones to this design. This set up has a more sleek and modern design. The large paragraphs were condensed into graphical representations using a graphic tool within the illustrator program.The images were limited to just the boy and the needle, and the strip of color in the background was eliminated. I found them to be too distracting in the overall finished design, and it was just easier to remove them. I could not decide on a color scheme that I loved, so I chose a few limited-colors designs. Most are monochromatic, with a few adjustments such as the pink and blue and the orange and red. I found these graphical representations much more consumable in the overall project. The fonts have obviously been adapted to the sleek-and-modern theme.
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Koi Digital Painting This is a piece that I painted in the Corel painter program. Using a mirror setting, I drew one koi fish on the right side, and it was reflected onto the left. I did the lotus flower in much the same way, but I turned off the mirror for the finer details. Then using a colored pencil setting, I colored everything with the mirror setting, alternating between the colored pencil and a blending stump setting. The blending really helped the fins achieve a watercolor look.
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Nate’s Cat Digital Painting, a Little Different This is another digital painting I made using the Corel painter program. Unlike the painting on the opposite page, this painting was not created by hand, so to speak. This painting was created from a photograph I took of my love and his best friend Toby the Cat. I laid out the photograph in the Corel Painter program. Once
there I could lay a sheet of digital tracing paper over the image. After that, I opened up the Underpainting panel, which allows me to set a brush to the proper type of paint, size, and shape so the program can paint it in a splotchy, erractic pattern.
The Self
Original photo by Monte Gerlach Manipulations by Autumn Cano This is a self portrait I created from a base image in Adobe photoshop. I selected my entire self using a quick selection tool, then I created a mask. I placed myself on a black background. Next, I highlighted sections of similar color using a magic wand tool. I then used a rainbow gradient over and over again, pointing it in different directions each time I selected a patch of colors. The point of choosing the rainbows over and over again is to convey my ever changing emotions and thoughts. There are lights and darks in equal proportions, though everything has a glowing effect because of the black background. The background really isolates the subject and makes it pop.
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Cloud Seas Landscape Photography This is a photo I took walking the campus one morning. The clouds were patchy like this and stretched as far as I could see. I loved the way the clouds looked like brine on the ocean, cut apart by the waves. The blue gradient from the top of the photo to the horizon line is gorgeous, especially against the white clouds. The bit of campus at the bottom of the photo shows people just going about their daily lives. No one looking up at it, no one stopping to notice or admire. I think this photo makes a really great metaphor for positive thinking. If you’re willing to look for it, there’s beauty everywhere, even in the most ordinary places.
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Chicago: T he C i t y T h at W o rk s Landscape Photography The assignment for this photo was to go take pictures of the city of Chicago. I chose the Field Museum of Natural History for many reasons. Firstly, it is a Chicago landmark. Everyone recognizes it, and no tourists come to Chicago without checking it out. Even if they just take a peek and leave. Secondly, though it seems desolate outside, the inside is bustling with people. It’s a hive of activity, at any day, at any time during the year. Even in this snowy, cold, frigid winter that is typical of Chicago in January, people are still going in and out in a constant flow.
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Chicago: The City That Works 2 Landscape Photography This is the second part of the City that Works project. Usually pictures of the Chicago skyline are taken more from the lakefront. They are more stylized and beautiful. This angle, I felt, gave it a more industrial look. Its kind of grungy, kind of dirty. It’s bland, washed out, and it doesn’t have any of the dynamic lights or glamorous angles that one would usually see of the city. However, it’s still beautiful. It is more quiet, and much more subtle than most photos of the city. The fog, clouds, and snow all frame the city in a similar color. The railroad tracks and the train at the bottom lead your eyes up into the city.
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Campus Lights Landscape Photography I live on the Saint Xavier University campus, so I always have the chance to see what’s out there and photograph something interesting. Everything on the campus was toned down on this day, because it was cloudy, as you can see. Everything was just gray and dismal. It was dreary. But then the clouds broke and a bright red sun shone through, and it was so beautiful. It draws in your eyes, and you notice details from there. All the little lights stand out, and so do the walkways. The walkways curve and split the ground in irregular, bent shapes. It resembles a winding road map.
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Photo Restoration
A Photoshop Project
For the photo restoration project, I chose images of my late grandparents. The degradation of the image of my grandmother is due to years of being carried in a wallet. It’s been scratched, bent, folded, and torn. Because of all that the photo had been through, the restoration was rough. First I cut the white edge off using a crop tool. Then I used a tool under the crop tool to straighten the photo. I used a filter tool to help me eliminate most of the background dust and scratches. I used a patch tool to clone the upper left-hand corner from the upper right hand corner. Where her hair is torn, I had to use a clone tool to clone from her hair on the other side. I cloned curls from more curls, and copied parts of the right side over to the left. After I fixed her hair, I went in with a spot healing brush. It removes small blemishes very delicately, and it allowed me to make corrections such as the bad scratch on her eye. Lastly, I blurred the scratches on her shirt into a pattern. Those scratches were extremely difficult, and most of them would not brush away or be fixed.
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This image fix was much more simple than the solo of my grandmother. I used the spot healing brush as I did in the other image, to fix the tears on my grandfather’s face and suit. To heal the majority of the tear, I cloned from the surrounding area to make a near-perfect color blend. After I eliminated the tear, I changed the tone of the entire image so it looks much less faded.
Flowers of Fall Just a Bit of Color I took these photos last fall, just before the leaves began to change.This fence was the only space in the entire neighborhood with a plethora of plants. All the yards in the neighborhood had plain grass and the occasional shrub. It was an explosion of colors in a monochromatic green world. The orange flowers stand
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out and draw your eyes to the bottom of the photo, so much so that I gave them their own picture. The petunias pair nicely with the dynamic orange and they bring us to the dark greens very nicely. From there, you can easily follow the greens up and around to the green vines, and eventually to the maroon and brown leaves.
Tangled Tree Photography
I absolutely love the way the sunlight makes the tree branches and twigs dark against the sky. It’s a stark contrast against the sky and it’s beautiful. I couldn’t resist snapping these photos. The image to the right was taken first, then I walked a few blocks, looking for a different angle with a bit more of a tangled up tree. The four trees in the image above look as though they’re touching, and it is a really cool angle.
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Blink Just Graphite This is a simple graphite drawing of a flower. Of course, flowers like this don’t exist in nature. But I’ve always been enamored with the idea of mixing plants and animals together. Imagine a world where plants eat and animals use photosynthesis. This particular flower is half of a two-part series I did on that exact idea.
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Elvish Prince Just Graphite This character is one of my own design. It is drawn in the style of japanese animation, but I had no intentions of him being anywhere near a cartoon. He is a character in a book I was writing in high school. He has a basic, remedial design. This sketch is a first-draft of the illustration, and I am hoping to do it again with better skill and maybe even color. I only wanted this sketch to be in graphite. I wasn’t sure I’d ever go anywhere with his story, and I didn’t know what to expect from his character. I didn’t want to give him defining color schemes as the hero or the villain, and I didn’t want the drawing to skew my writing one way or the other.
Legendary Original characters by: Satoshi Tajiri Drawing by: Autumn Cano These are two of the most iconic pokemon in the franchise. Mew, the pink cat-like creature, and Jirachi, the little star creature. The pokemon franchise has always been a huge part of my life. I’ve played just about every game they’ve come out with, and I’ve watched every season of the cartoon. They’ve always served as a huge inspiration for me, and they are what began my most basic love of drawing as a child. I can’t begin to explain how much pokemon mean to me, especially the Mew seen here. I have so much to thank Mr. Tajiri for. These cute little guys are done in graphite on plain basic drawing paper. I started with the base linework, and originally I had planned on leaving them in gray and white. But over time as I grew to love the piece more and more, I wanted to color it and gave it my best shot. In all actuality, I probably ought to go back and erase the gray lines. I can definitely say this piece will get a solid, hours-long redo in the future.
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It’s All About Perspective An Experiment in Two-Point Perspective I love abstract art, and even more than that, I love Abstract Two-point perspective drawings. My dad used to do a lot of these when I was a kid and he still does them occasionally. He used to draw with me when I was little, and eventually I just picked it up from him. I expounded upon his original ideas with different boxes with cut-outs, and with boxes going through each other. You could really take this image at any angle and it works.
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Geisha A Sketch of Japanese Culture This drawing is extremely near and dear to my heart. Ever since I was a child, I’ve been enamored with the Japanese culture. Not just popular japanese cartoons or games, but the myths, the religions, the architecture, every aspect of the culture is beautiful to me. Especially the lovely geisha women of pre-WWII Japan. There is a huge misconception that the Geisha are prostitutes, because in post WWII Japan, the geisha were out of work or money, and many sold their kimonos. After that, any common street walker could claim to be a geisha, and most Americans who occupied the country didn’t bother to learn the difference. But the geisha are NOT prostitutes. They are living art. They are artists and entertainers. They are beautiful and wonderful creatures. They had to be well educated and disciplined, and they learned many different art forms, and they are a lot of what I hope to be later in my art career. These women were dancers, painters, embroiderers, musicians, calligraphers, and many other things. Through this drawing, I had hoped to capture a fraction of their beauty and grace, and this drawing will see many revisions in the future throughout my art career.
Stare Art with Eyes This composition is just two quick doodles that I was playing with. I wanted to test my ability to draw realistic eyes. The graphite one came out very fantasy and I really love it. The value on it is pretty good, I think. It’s striking, for sure. It looks like it’s staring right at you, into your soul and all your darkest fears. It definitely has a creep factor that I like. The colored pencil eye was just a test in my ability to recreate another eye in color. I started with a pencil sketch and colored it in, modeling it after my brother’s eye color and my own eye shape.
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Take a Trip with Me Linearity in Sharpie For a long time, I did the vast majority of my compositions in sharpie permanent marker. I love the way the colors can bleed or not, if you let them or not. They create a vivid color unlike anything else you’ll find. This piece is abstract, but it’s very linear, for the most part. I drew it all with a ruler and then I colored it in. The two checkered patterns in the opposite corners are cartesian graphs, meaning they are actually mathematical equations visually represented. This was an extensive piece and I really loved doing it. Choosing the colors wasn’t really an issue here. I just picked one color and did a row of triangles, and then I grabbed a random color to place next to it. The only desicion I really made on color was to make sure each color is represented at least twice in the composition.
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Thanks! Thanks for flipping through! I hope you enjoyed the brief glimpse inside my head. Each piece is made with gentle love and care, and each page is a step on my journey to become a successful artist. The support is greatly appreciated. I want to thank everyone that helped me get this far to begin realizing my dreams. To my family who pay for my education and look over every project, thanks for everything. To Hannah Zablocki and Samantha Farnsworth, thanks for pushing me to do every project and to always follow my heart wherever it takes me. Last but not least, to Nathan Hjelm, my love and my life, thank you for walking along my journey with me, no matter how crazy or weird it gets.
For questions, comments, commissions, feel free to contact me at aizail@yahoo.com
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