Individual Reflections (Day 2)

Today, we made a picture of ourselves as different characters. I did Two Face, Harvey Dent, from Batman. I was inspired by the his facial appearance that I wanted to draw it our. Although it was rather  crude, i felt so happy that I managed to even draw to look similar to him. It was a little unsettling to make make yourself into a disfigured half-zombie. It was also really fun, as we could use the tablet computers and photoshop to draw. It was so enjoyable that time flew super fast. I was even a tad bit disappointed when we were told to stop drawing.

Todays activities taught me to be very patient, I took 6 hours just to finish this picture. It was also a great chance for me to ask the professor about shadowing techniques and he shared his own experiences. He slowly guided us and taught us many useful techniques on Photoshop :D. It was not difficult and very simple to understand. Alot of the techniques he taught us could be used on other kind of projects, not those that could be used on a certain one only.

Although it was very tiring, I felt a great sense of accomplishment when I finally finished it. I was initially worried that I would screw up my final product, but I think it is the journey not the end that was important. After today, I felt that digital painting focuses a lot on making the drawing or picture seem realistic.When an image of an object is placed on an image of a background or something, we try to make the object look as natural as it can not being in its own picture. It relies quite heavily on shadowing techniques, to give the drawing a 3D feel. I felt that digital painting was very fun, as there was unlimitedness range of the colours, unlike physical paints. If we ever make a mistake, we can correct it easily by pressing the undo button, unlike in drawing in real life, where making a mistake could be troublesome to correct. There are also many pictures from the internet, where we can just "drag and drop". This could be a copyright concern though......

Although digital painting is good, there is something about drawing in real life that is still special, like feeling the pencil and graphite markings below your hand....and blending the shadows with your fingers..