Throughout my blog posts I have briefly mentioned my capstone digital art project, I figured I would spend some time today to reflect on my progress so far as things are wrapping up.
I’m not going to lie, like most art projects, this one was emotionally draining and my biggest struggles were the least anticipated but, as it is coming to a close I am finding myself happy with & even impressed by the results.
I clearly have a creative mindset and am intrigued by anything aesthetically pleasing or unusual, so it shouldn’t be surprising that I have had an interest in visual arts, specifically illustration, from a young age.
I have dabbled in various forms of art making including illustration over the years but never took the initiative to pursue it more in depth. As I am about to graduate and have become quite comfortable in various platforms I have found myself longing for more creative outlets/challenges. This curiosity led me to getting an IPad & Procreate and I began practicing. Because of my newly sparked interest in digital illustration I thought it would be a fun challenge to create a series of illustrations for my Digital, Art, & Technology capstone.
Prior to this project the following images were the extent of my digital illustration experience outside of photoshop.
My work prior was mediocre at best but I am committed to improving my skills so I decided to face the test. The project guidelines basically required that your work was: digital in some form, has an impact/underlying value, extensive in size to meet semester length, & lastly to be creative and original. As I approached this project ideas kept coming but one idea in particular kept coming back to me, illustrating “ugly food” in a cute way to highlight industry food waste. Once I settled on this idea the first step was to research imperfect produce waste and find reference images.
After gathering resources the first obvious step was to begin drawing so I started sketching out rough versions on a variety of platforms such as Adobe Sketch, Adobe Fresco, and Procreate. I played with a variety of brushes and strokes on these platforms and was simply trying to figure out the best way to approach this project stylistically.
Initially I envisioned this project finalizing as a minimum of 10 simple character illustrations on a plain background with a caption highlighting the issue. I was fortunate enough to receive a variety of feedback from professionals in my community and among them I was told to consider incorporating more scenery into the illustrations to serve as narrative purpose. I thought this was a rather phenomenal idea because I simply felt like what I was producing was not properly articulating my message nor did I feel like I was pushing myself enough. After conceptualizing some ideas placing the produce in human like situations I returned to the digital drawing board.
This was a part of the project where I think I started to feel the most defeated. I finally started to feel like a real artist, I definitely felt like I was pushing myself further creatively and physically and could see my ideas forming into something clearer. However while my mind was headed in the right direction there was still so much improvement to be made and I needed to better gaze my focus. So like any frustrated artist does I trashed those pieces and restarted.
Finally we have reached where we are today, and while there is still an exuberant amount of work to do in just two weeks (I know I’m sweating too) I am insanely proud of where this project is landing. I can see so much improvement from where I started at the beginning of the semester to where I am now. Comparing the beginning drafts of my ugly food series to now is honestly mind boggling that the same person created them let alone in a few months time. I am much more comfortable with the software I have been using as well as navigating my style and how to best articulate the message I want to convey. I would say throughout this project up until this point my biggest concern was how it would look stylistically and now I am confident in that aspect but am more worried about coming up with supportive captions.
I hope anyone reading this, especially aspiring illustrators, will see just how much improvement you can make in a short time if you push yourself and roll with the punches. Making art is one of the most trivializing, consuming, freeing, forms of expression and while it will break you down it will also lift you up you just have to hang in there and keep drawing to see it.
Hopefully this inspires some to keep going<3
Check back in 2-3 weeks for a final project update ( :
Art Bananas 