Lost in the Technique (Blog 4)

           

            My big idea is exploration, more so exploration of myself and my abilities as an artist. I am attempting to bring meaning to my art through developing the skills necessary to create what I consider quality digital art. I choose a more original form, the creation of art from sketches done by hand the turned into line art in Photoshop. I would have sketched directly to a Photoshop canvas but I lack the tools to do so at this time. I would like to be able to express myself through digital art as I have gained an appreciation for how closely it relates to my interests in technology. Old fashioned paper is good but the ability to create art, at least for me,  through more advanced means is more appealing.

I choose to do a manga style image of my brother I thought it would be a good Idea to start with someone other than myself so that I did not get to enveloped in perfection. I think the image portrays my meaning very well. My brother is a self proclaimed rapper. He has built his own studio with some close friends and invest a great deal of time and effort into making quality music. A process which he has no formal training in, just as I have little to no formal training in creating art. The image conveys the message that the individual being portrayed is into music and singing given some of the elements included.

I have spoke with my brother and this will be an ongoing project where It will eventually end up as the artwork on his albums. I hope this comes to fruition as it will allow me to develop my skills and provide a cost effective means of acquiring album art for my brother.

I used a lot of hip-hop styles in my image to get my message across. I did some research into the creation of graffiti which I have come to appreciate through my experience on this project, here is some graffiti that I found inspirational as I feel like I draw at the images level regarding. I also looked up a lot of manga style art, most notably was the American cartoon The Boondocks. The manga-like style used was inspirational for my drawing. 

I used makeup techniques and painting techniques to get a more realistic looking character. I wanted more depth than your average manga, so I added more layers of colors to get a more realistic looking skin tone. A link to the makeup tutorial is here, and for painting I checked out this tutorial