Digital Painting

Reflection

1)   What is the strongest part (visual area) of your finished art piece? Why?

The Strongest area of my piece is my hair. I am very happy with how this came out. For me it is the most realistic part of my piece. It looks as though I painted every strand of hair, and it has all of the varying colors that make it look real.

2) What part (visual area) of your art piece can be improved on?  How can it be improved on?

I'm a little less happy with how I did my face. Some of the areas, especially my cheeks, either have no color, or the colors are not blended the way I had wanted, but it doesn't look terrible. Also, due to the time constraints of this project I avoided putting a lot of detail in the background because it wasn't my focus, but I would have liked to put in a little more detail.

3)  What Tools did you use to create your work?How did you use these tools? Explain.

The main tools I used were the paint brush tool, the mixer brush tool, and the the eye dropper tool. All of these tools were essential to creating my digital painting. The brush tool allowed me to first outline all of the color shifts in the image, and then apply color to those areas. The eye dropper tool allowed me to select the general color of an area so that I could apply it to my painting layer. The mixer brush tool was probably the most important tool that I used because it allowed me to make my picture look alive, and realistic.

4) What was easy about this art activity? Explain.

The easiest part of this activity was applying and blending the paint to my digital canvas. I'm no stranger to painting, shading, etc., and photoshop made it extremely easy.

5)  What was difficult about this art activity? Explain.

The hardest part of this activity was just trying to find color shifts in the original image. I think that in a couple of areas I should have had more color/color shifts to make things look more realistic.

6)  Describe how you demonstrated each of the objectives (goals) of this art activity?

The goals for this project were pretty much just to show proper demonstration of brush tools through painting, and using previously learned skills to help along the process. I think I clearly displayed the proper demonstration of brush tools so that my painting blends together well.  As to the demonstration of previously learned skills, I had to adjust and crop the image so that my painting's composition was appealing, and my use with the layer-mask tool aided when it came to the actual painting.

7)   If you could do this assignment again, what would you do differently?

Now that I know how well I can paint textures like hair, I would probably choose to pain an animal if I were to do this project again. I think it would provide an interesting challenge while also allowing me to show my skill with the brush tools.

8) On a scale of 1-10 (10 being the best), how would you rate your effort in this project? Why?

If I were to grade my effort on this project I would give myself a 10. I am extremely happy with how this turned out. My self portrait from last year's drawing and painting class ended up looking terrible, so for me this was a chance to redeem myself. Therefore I worked extra hard on making sure this looked good, and I think my efforts paid off.