Saturday, December 8, 2012

The End of a Chapter

Yes the end of the semester is rapidly approaching! And so I am prompted to reflect on how this semester has benefited  me as my last "assigned" blog post. My digital course is by far the most different of all the courses I am taking. It is also the course that pushed me farthest out of my comfort zone! But in today's rapidly computerized society digital art is becoming more and more prevalent and is becoming a valuable tool for my trade as an Illustrator. I have always found digital art amazing, but a little impersonal. I like being able to feel my materials and physically make the markings on paper. However, this course has shed some light on the subject of digital art for me. While I still prefer traditional media I have to say that there is way more that you can do with the computer today than I ever really thought!

Originally I always thought of computer animation when I thought of anything artistically inclined with graphics. I never thought about drawing and painting on the computer, at least not in a professional manner. And I never thought that Photoshop could be used for anything truly college level class related! I had only ever really heard about Photoshop through friends who liked to play around and make their pictures all goofy. This class really expanded my point of view on digital art. Looking at other artists works and seeing how many different ways you can go about approaching mark making and creativity through computerized means, it really gave me a new found respect for digital artists.You can make art that looks just like traditional media art, you can enhance pictures you've taken of your work, there are a million different things you can do!

My favorite program would have to be Illustrator mostly because I can mimic water color with it and I feel more like I'm actually creating something new than I do when using Photoshop etc. I feel like Photoshop is more of a collage making program. All be it a very professional collage making program but it is still collage making none the less! Illustrator feels more like the artists program to me. I felt so much more in my element than in any of the other projects, it was less like I was trying to learn a new language and more like I was getting to speak my own language for a change! There were some elements that I didn't like however. After learning how to use Photoshop in a basic form first I got slightly confused in Illustrator. The fact that you can't do any photo cropping in Illustrator. You can re size the image but so far I haven't figured out if there is any cropping function at all. It's one big learning process anyways!

I am looking forward to my next digital courses and the challenges that they are going to present. I will be keeping up this blog as well! I can't say that I am fully comfortable using my computer as a means to express my creativity just yet...but I'm learning! Slowly but surely. Hopefully as time goes on and I learn more this will become a valuable tool in my Illustrators arsenal!

My final projects are all being finished this week and will be posted as they are finished! If not right away I will catch up the blog at the end of the semester after I've gone into the traditional coma that is required to recover from finals week!

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