Corinne's Blog

Hi everyone,

I've been trying to work on my computer illustration, but I realized in our class yesterday that I still needed to learn more about the pen tool so I could use it more efficiently to create designs.

I found this really great tutorial site with videos and a nice lady explaining things better so I just thought I'd share it in case anyone else needed a little more practice with the pen tool. Here's the link:

Click here!

And some random junk I got off her site and then traced with the pen tool:



- Corinne

These are my complementary color grids. I like how it turned out even though I couldn't match the colors from my magazine squares exactly to the computer colors.



This was my attempt at the Live Trace option in Illustrator. I took a photo of my little cousin Emily and I from last year's Fourth of July. After I did the Live Trace, I also brought this photo into Photoshop and gave it a little extra coloring.

Here's the color wheel I created in Illustrator. The placement of the lines and circles is a little wonky but it was simple to create and put together.





Basically during this exercise we got more familiar with the shapes and different tools of Illustrator and also explored the different options for coloring and changing the shapes. I especially like my rectangles with the teardrop-shaped cutouts. I think they look nifty :]





This was the pen tool exercise we did in class. It took forever to learn how to use the darn tool, but this exercise helped a lot!

So we just finished watching a film about Milton Glaser, a graphic artist based in New York. Before I watched this film I knew nothing about the man and had never heard his name before. However, I discovered that I had seen his work before like his "I love New York" designs and the "We are all African" posters. It's an interesting idea to be so influenced by an artist that I know nothing about.

On Milton as a person, I find myself admiring him not only as an artist, but also as a human being. At one point in the film, he said "I don't have the right to be indifferent" as he talked about Darfur and the issues in Africa. It was refreshing to see such a successful artist working for the greater good of everyone, working to communicate his ideas to the general public. I found it intriguing to find that he was more an artist for the people than for the money or for the recognition.

Overall, I'm glad to have watched this film for the experience of Milton as a great graphic artist, but also as a genuine human being.