In the Editorial Illustration class that I'm in, I originally thought that the class was going to be about working with political illustrations and cartoons. However, as the class has progressed, I've realized that it takes a lot more than just political illustrations.
Our first assignment was based on a basketball-sized object that we brought from home. Seeing as I don't really have a whole lot of large objects, I brought my stuffed gorilla. We had to create four different pencil drawings to represent a single word.
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"Decay"
pencil
6" x 6" | |
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"Isolation"
pencil
6" x 6" |
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"Rebirth"
pencil
6" x 6" |
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"Trustworthiness"
pencil
6" x 6" |
As usual, it was noted during the critique of this class that I tend to use to much texture and tone in my pieces. The strongest piece was determined to be the "Decay" pieces, because it had a balance of tone and white.
The second assignment revolved around three different articles that were taken from the magazine 'The New Yorker.' After reading the articles, the assignment was to choose one article and illustrate it so the reader could understand what was going on. I chose to illustrate the origins of Wonder Woman. The idea for the comic came from suffragette days.
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| Original inked piece |
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| Touched up piece of Wonder Woman |
I made Wonder Woman the center of attention because that's what the focus of the story was. I used the lines of the poles of the suffragette signs pointing towards her so that it formed a "W" and emphasized her even more. I couldn't put Wonder Woman in her iconic costume, so I lengthened the skirt, but kept the stars. She is still wearing her 'bullet proof' bracelets and her crown on top of her hat.
My favorite part of this illustration was creating the feathers on the hats. That was the most freeing part and I was able to just have fun and not really worry.
During the critique of this piece, it was mentioned that the signs could have some scribbles on them. While words were forbidden, scribbles would give the effect that there were words on the sign. While my figure drawing has improved, the figure on the far right was not ideal and could have been rendered at a better quality.
It was also mentioned that the sign that Wonder Woman was holding should have been flat like the other signs instead of being 3-dimensional. It was confusing and should be the same as the others or make them all 3-dimensional.
The third assignment was an infographic on the topic of the students choice. I chose to cover the topic of recycling. We were limited to a color palette of 3-5 colors, not including black and white.
I really struggled with this infographic because it needed to be done on Photoshop and I had never worked in Photoshop. I spent a lot of time on this and ended up having 92 layers when I was finished.
During critique of this piece in class, it was noted that if the blue background had been a few shades darker, it would be less harsh on the eyes when reading.
It was also the opinion that I should have focused numbers of a specific recycling instead of the facts that I did focus on.
