project 3

Project 3 - what a feat.

I created such powerful pattern brush that I sent myself straight to a massive crash. Oh well. Taught me a lesson. SAVE your WORK. All the time. And don't make complex pattern brushes and use them on multiple strokes.

This is about the mountain pine beetle infestation, that is very much a problem in large areas of the west cost pine forests. In this project I focus on the problem in BC, since I have personally detected these little bugs in trees and had to cut and burn them on the spot to try to contain the spread. Interesting. And gave me fun reason to draw a map and work with all the requirements for this project. Great learning.

week 12 doodle

Live effects rule! Unbelievable really. I created one star shape and here's the result after doodling with the live effects!

I duplicated the stroke to have orange and yellow strokes, duplicated the fill many times as well. And to be honest, I lost track at one point, so much was going on, so I started over. But the dots in the dashed line made me smile, so I decided to add some glowing edges on them, like little pearls or jewels. The transparency I applied, screen, gave another interesting level to the wild live effect doodling going on here.

Ok, that's it for now. Back to working on Project 3.

week 11 doodle

My doodling was focused on the brush tool this week. I loved paying with the different option, I created some custom brushes, loved the calligraphic options, the art brushes... Lots of fun. Here I traced an old symbol with a calligraphic brush, tweaked it a little by shaping the paths. Then copied it, changed to a rough charcoal in gray, pasted infront the original one and that's it in a nut shell. In the process, I tried applying opacity masks, gradients etc, but I liked the way this looks.

week 10 doodle

Week 10 practice doodle was truly about practicing the gradients for me; blending, clipping a gradient to use it as fill and making a gradient mesh... there was a lot to cover, and it could take me a lifetime to really get this program down. But the doodles are really perfect, forcing me to practice what was covered in the tutorials...

I am working with an upcoming website/company to sell unique artisan jewelry, and I decided to combine the doodling I've done one their logo in progress and such to this doodle (with a permission).

The first on I practiced creating a custom gradient, the using the text outline 'anja' to create a clipping mask. The small logo has a blend in the background clipped with a shape.

The bottom doodle has a background gradient mesh that I played with adjusting the handles, and points of... The linear yellow to green is a custom blend. On the small logo bottom right I used a radial gradient to fill the a in the shape. There it is. Lots of good practice.