Project 2- Vector Portait

For project number 2, our challenge was to find a portrait of a selected individual and recreate them through vector art (for more on what exactly vector art is and what it looks like, check my previous blog post on Mel Marcelo). After selecting various portraits ranging from Mike Tyson to Bill Murray I resided on a graphite sketch of Johnny Depp as seen on the left.

Not only is his visual composition both strikingly attractive, it conveys a bit of instability and madness- giving the photo more depth compared to that of a casual smile.  

Once I had begun working on the piece through Adobe Illustrator CS6, I mapped out large portions of his face, neck, and ears with the pen tool.

Now the pen tool is honestly an animal in itself (in a bad way). To trace the edges of Mr. Depp's face for example, one must zoom deep into the pixilated edges of his finely crafted features and trace, millimeter by millimeter, till a section is covered. Once that is accomplished, I filled in the area with color. The following steps can be seen bellow with the following pictures...

After outlining the largest features I proceeded to fill the areas with
different skin tones to give depth. I then began to work the upper lip.

At this point I am adding even more layers of skin tone depth, tracing
the shadows of his cheek, nose and jaw.

After further detailing his facial features, I was pleased to see the face was
FINALLY beginning to take shape. I was also not a fan of the skin tone
approach so I went for a more wild, yet more appropriate red based color scheme.
Still a ton of work to go! Updates will come shortly.

 

   

Mel Marcelo- Vector Artist

Jim Morrison

Digital art has given birth to many various forms of design in recent years- as seen through my last blog artist Georg Nees, the "father" of digital art. It's even more incredible to compare and see the progression of technology through imagination- thanks to the availability of adobe illustrator and paint shop applications for your home computer. My current in class project, known as vector art, has been one of the greatest challenges I've faced artistically due to its high level of skill and patience. Essentially one must trace a given portrait of facial depth, map out sections in which the features differ, and then apply transitioning tones layer by layer till the face is recreated through an animated format. 

The artist I have chosen to represent is Mel Marcelo, an aspiring vector master currently residing in San Diego California. Born in the Philippines, Marcelo moved state side during high school and studied at University of California San Diego till 1992. That was all I could find during my Google search and had to reside mostly on his obnoxious Facebook, consisting of thousands of selfies at various concerts with people half his age. 

With that aside, Marcelo is nothing short of epic- creating almost effortless replicas of portraits, some even holding a parallel realism to the real thing. Of his simpler, but still powerful pieces, he recreates music legend Jim Morrison through a classic pop art style. Dominate shades of red, white, grey, and black are used to show off his chiseled and clean features. I find this piece appealing because I take pride in modern works of simplicity, a success similar to that of stencil art. Other vectors revolve largely around pop, and electronic music artists such as Tiesto, as seen bellow. While he uses much diversity through his vector works, this one in particular caught my eye due to it's resemblance towards 1970's, 1980's film posters- which inspired me as a film major.  

For more on Mel Marcelo, check out his flickr for dozens more.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/melmarcelo/

     

       

Working with Adobe Illustrator

Over the weekend I was inspired by one of Kanye West song's Diamonds From Sierra Leone at a highlight marker dance party. Regardless of if your a fan of his music or not, its worth a listen along with the music video- which shows the (over dramatic and partially true) side of diamond collecting.

Diamonds From Sierra Lenone- Kanye West

Portraits

Corrupt Collage Final Piece

Georg Nees, the "Father" of Computer Art

When one thinks 1960's, many things come to mind. Jimi Hendrix and the classic rock movement, Ford producing the first fully customizable and revolutionary mustang, the civil rights movement in the United States, the list goes on and on. But what if I were to tell you it was also the birth of digital art and programming?

Cube Disarray Georg Nees 1965

George Nees, a German born honorary professor was one of the main pioneers towards computer and digital art. Hired at Siemens in 1965, Nees used primitive machines and manually overrode commands by creating his own codes and intervening incomplete production. In the reading, his piece Cube Disarray caught my eye because of both its simplicity and its downward spiral to chaos.

Between his occupation as a computer programmer and various photos, I find Nees to be an interesting individual due to his conservative and non stereotypical artist personality.

Plastik 1 1965

Georg Nees Himself

Photoshop is a blast