In preparation for this weeks session we had to produce a number of sketches of both female and male faces. I decided to draw some of my favourite actors and musicians for this task, but I also made sure to select people with unusual faces so that all of my sketches were different and visually interesting. Once I was I session I scanned in all my sketches at 300 dpi and selected a drawing I would like to work with, which in this case was the portrait of Dodie Clark (the fourth image from the top). Before working with the image in Illustrator, I used photoshop to edit the levels of the drawing, to make sure that I could obtain the highest possible contrast between my pencil lines and the white of the paper. Following that I used the threshold function to make my line work as dark as I could, while making sure my lines didn't become too broken.
Digital Portrait-
Before working with the portraits we'd drawn in Illustrator we first created a very simple illustration of our choice, so it gave us the opportunity to try out the various tools that would be available to us, such as, the pen, shape, intersect tools etc. Using the intersect tool was very useful as I was able to add patterns to my drawing and then delete the excess that hung over the edge of the character.
When it came to finally working on the portrait I had edited in Photoshop, I started by using the 'Image Trace' function which turned my line work into objects that I could manipulate in isolation form each other. When using this function I ensured to select the option 'Ignore White' which meant that Illustrator only traced the black line work of my drawing rather than the background as well. Once I had done this I was able to edit the colours of various lines within the piece with ease, without worrying about it changing the whole piece. As well as editing the line colour I added layers beneath my line work, as I would in Photoshop, and added fill colours to different areas of the illustration using the 'Blob Brush' tool. I chose to make the majority of the line work a similar colour to the fill colour as I didn't want the harshness of a black outline. After I had finished filling in the portrait and had added a background I felt that my work still looked incomplete, but then I had the idea of applying what I had learnt with the intersect tool. So I added a circle in the centre of the background, over-laid the portrait and using the intersect tool deleted anything that hung over the edge. I really like how this turned out as I believe the circular design helps to bring focus to the portrait and I like the pastel colour scheme I worked with as it's not too overpowering. However I don't think that this is the most successful piece that I have produced in this module and I think that this is due to using Illustrator. I personally don't find Illustrator very easy to use and although I can see it's merits in certain areas I find it a lot easier to work in Photoshop, this is probably because I have more experience in this program. Despite not being that comfortable working in Illustrator I think that I will definitely experiment with it in the future, but in regards to my final brief I will be working with Photoshop as I believe it will help me to produce work to the best of my ability.
Vector From Photo-
