Exclusive Tracing Projects

Step by Step Process

In depth look at California's Best

Includes Artwork FromGrant Vargus

Hector MurilloScott Taloff

Karina Ramirez

The Illustrator

The Illustrator

Starting with the basics is key to making very successful illustrations and other pieces of art. Even though it is very tempting to jump right into the main project it is better if you start out slow to make sure you know how to use all your tools and get a good understanding for what exactly needs to be done. For the computer graphics class I took this is what we started out doing. Instead of jumping straight to our main assignments with got familiar with the tools and options in adobe illustrator. Then we started to get use to using the pen and pad to draw in the program. Most people in the class were not use to using the pen with adobe illustrator so it took some time to get acquainted. We started out with exercises as simple as looking at an object and constructing it with simple lines as you see in the picture above. After while once every-body got better at it we moved to making shades using the lines but this time we used more lines in our drawings.

Mark Williams

3

My pear drawing to me iooks the best out of my value drawings because it is not as blotchy as some of my other value drawings. The way I created the pear is similar to the bowl at the top of the screen. Instead of coloring in the the grays I did more lines throughout the drawing. It gave it more texture to the piece and also the way I curved the lines makes the object look more real in a sense. Composition wise I constructed the piece so that your eyes would go from dark to light and feel that my piece accom-plished that. After comparing my drawings I feel that use more lines throughout the drawing was mre effective then just trying to shade and color in the object. The shading just seems more real and clean I’m hoping.

VALUE DRAWINGS

5

Grant Vargus

Mark Williams

7

CraftUsing Adobe Illustrator, I created this image using only the shapes that were given in the panel. Colors and gradients varied in the image as I tried to make a scene.

CONCEPT It is a futuristic automobile that runs on water or perhaps a form of gas other than gasoline. It also ‘flies’ in the air (hover). The gradient for the back-ground also helps give the illusion of either a sunset or sunrise.

COMPOSITION Focus is immediately on the ‘automobile’ of my im-age for it is in the foreground. I made it appear like a snapshot of it in motion so it would appear so boring just floating in some empty space. I also added a few elements to the background to also add some dimen-sion and interest.

Welcome to the Future!

Your Future Car?

Grant Vargus

Karina Ramirez

In Her Own Words

9

When the subject of architecture was assigned, my mind raced through all the years of science-fiction and alien environments that I laid waste to. I noticed that most of the xeno-landscapes had a number of organic elements such as earth tones and curva-ture. Sometimes the richer colors of purple are seen to separate their environments from human’s because we (more so Ameri-cans) do not use purple and it complimentary colors. For the most part xeno-landscape utilize large scale objects, as a symbol of their culture (which is to emulate human philosophy in architec-ture). I also wanted to have all of the frames I created to be tied together in someway or another, so the vehicle and mountain range are incorporated. The “Dagger Tower” was the culmination of these ideas, however, it is far from my completed visualization of an in vibrant habitat, but it is still a good start.

Separating the work into layers was key to development, so I ar-ranged the tower into four primary layers: foreground, sky, moun-tains, and tower. The pen tool was my primary weapon during this project because none of the structures have the human fetish of right angle. I did use the hexagonal and elliptical tool for the door at the base of the tower and the energy-tether’s rings. The gradient tool was very important to creating the illusion of light direction, time of day, and the energy-tether. I did not like this gradient tool for about three-quarters of the time during construc-tion because of the gradient swatches being confusing, eventually I figured it out.

Dagger Tower

HOME OF TOMORROW

Grant VargusDagger Tower

Karina RamirezGrant Vargus -

11

WELCOME

to the COFFEE

SHOP

SKY’S THE LIMIT

Karina Ramirez

Mark WilliamsMark Williams

13

Insight from Hector Murillo

This assignment was completed using only colored shapes. The different tools used to make these were the selection tool, the direct selection tool, the pen tool, the add delete and convert anchor tools. Finally, the rest of the tools were rectangle, rounded rectangle, oval, and star tools. I obviously used different color swatches and

changed the opacity of a couple color. The first image is a skyscraper base in the moon. I tried to depict the moon by adding craters to the moon, stars in the background, and earth. On top of the building is an antenna to communi-cate with the people on earth. This architecture is futuris-tic because it’s a skyscraper in the middle of the moon.

Hector Murillo

Hector Murillo

15

Originally the background in my sushi drawing was just a dark red background. The new one is still very simple but I was going for a plate that is on top of a table with sushi on it. I used the pen tool to draw the plate by dragging out curves when I clicked. I did not have enough time to go into detail with the plate. My minor changes adds more to look at as far as composi-tion. The first thing that I see fist is still the sushi but instead of seeing a red background second, I see the plate second and table last.

Sushi in monotone

17

Hector Murillo

Grant Vargas

More Sushi...

EVEN MORE SUSHI

19

Mark Williams

21

After adding more detail to the arms of my guy in the im-age I decided t was time to work on the back ground of the image. I started with the turf field first and added an endzone by using the pen tool and line tool. The line tool was used to create te lines going across the field and the field

was created using the rectangle tool. I also had to add the yard maker .

The next thing that I had to focus on making was the other guy in the image who was working out but in the dis-tance. What I did was take the pen tool and make the shape of him but separated him into to parts: the head, hair,body, arm, shors and leg. This was done, because each of those parts had different colors they all could not be the same color.

I use the gradient tool to create a shadow on his shirt and shorts. The last thing I did was choose the blur option and added a blur to every part of him so that he would look like he was in the distance. I pretty much did the samething for the guy in white but itwas a little bit easier with him. Lastly I added the pole in the pitcture and blurred that as well.

What came next in this step was the most difficult part but only becauseit was time consuming. Long story short I went throught the original mage and outlined the faint shapes in the crowd with the pen tool. there werent defined shapes because they were really far back in the picture. So after going trhought and outline shapes

I colored them and then went back to the blur tool and blurred these particular shapes more then I did the two guys in the image. I did this consider-ing if you look at the image the two guys should seem closer then the crowd because they are actually o the field.

The final product was very satisfying considering where I started from. This layout of my steps really those make the final result much better. Unfortunately, due to time I was not able to keep going further with the crowd and add even more detail. However

I think most of the important detail was captured int this project. My most useful tool for this project would have to be the pen tool ofcourse but also the gradient tool. The gradient tool really help bring more detail to my image . Other then those wo tools only use one more tool I think and that was the blur effect.

When starting this project most people started with the main fo-cus of their image instead of starting with the back-ground. Howeve, I wanted to lay out at least a rough start of my back-ground. I didn’t want to go into too much detail, because the crowd was going to take the longest out of every aspect of my image so I saved that for the last step. I pretty

much used lines and rectangles to for this basic background and threw some color in there.

The next thing I did was try and add some type of shadow to the image or something along those lines to make the image look more real and life like. For example the helmet was probably the part that looked the least realstic because it was so flat. One of the tools that I used the most throught the whole project but espe-

cially here was the gradient tool. I used it for the helmet, stripe, jer-sey, number,and arms. As you can see compared to the previous im-age you can tell it sticks out more. The helmet even looks more round. It also helped a lot that I was able to chane the direction of the gradient.

This part of the project was proba-bly the easiest. All this part consisted of was outlining the basic shapes using the pen tool. After that I threw some colors in there but those colors wouldnt be the final colors in the project.. This way I had a rough draft of what I got done so far and what else I needed to work on to make the image look more real.

This shot gives you an idea of ll the work that I had put into just the jersey and the helmet. My goal was to make the helmet and jeresy look more real and stand out more. I was able to do that by going throught the orignal image and pcked out spots where the jersey looked to be wrinkled or have shadows and created those

shapes with the pen tool. Then I filled them in with a darker color to make it look like a shadow. I contin-ued this technique throughout the rest of the image.It was very time consuming but worth it as you cant between this image and the previous one.

23

25

Grant Vargas-

This is the most realistic rendering of the milkshake that I had started the other week. I still do not like it, but time constraints did not allow me to develop a second tracing that is started (all of an hour or so it’s worth of work).

Concept It is still a milkshake on a disgusting green table.

Composition Nothing really new to see, aside from some smoother edges and value gradation. The eye remains relatively unaffected by these changes.

CraftThe amount of work that I had already put into it during the first week of development made further tracing near impossible with the pen tool, so I attempted to use two other tools: the mess and blend tools. Good ol’ YouTube provided some tutorials, but they were not all that useful. The blend tool tutorials were good, however, the value changes of the shake/the resulting paths did not allow for us-able blend. The colors overlapped other paths and all sorts of what not. As for the mess tool, I could not figure out how to place colors as gradients into the mess instead they keep applying as solid fill. There are a few blends in the image that worked out well enough for me to keep them in, but that has caused some complications in next weeks assignment (all will be revealed in time). What work I was able to accomplish with the tools I was familiar with primarily was smoothing out the hard edges and a few more details.

SHAKES

Grant Vargas 27

MILKSHAKES

I had to create around ten variations on the original piece that I have been working on for the past two weeks. They had to communicate something unique to each piece. The bottom right is my favorite of the variations because it really feels alive.

Concept

From the title I wanted to reference the famous line from the film Casablanca, but I wanted to not say it verbatim because I think that line is really creepy in its full context “Here’s to looking at you kid”. For some reason the line just came to me, when I was trying to think of variations. I wanted to convey the feeling of the film, which had a classical Hollywood ro-mance style. Meaning soft focus, warm colors (if colored), and shadow play.

Composition

The shake is still front and center, as in the original, except I cut out the hideously distracting green table and swopped it out for a smooth salmon/burgundy gradient. This makes the eye focus on the shake or its shadow, which is on the left side because the right side of the shake is lighter, thus creating an illusion of light source. The main attraction is the whip cream on the top (no longer looks like clean whip cream, but the brain still processes it as whip cream because of added context of the cherry and two spoons) because it is the warmest area of the image. The mixing color values, blood red cherry, and two spoons (two people) creates a sort of abstract notion of sex.

Craft

As I said earlier, I deleted the ugly green table layer and put in that gradient. I duplicated the shake, added Gaussian blur 4, and set the layer type to multiply, which is how I created that intense saturation and blur effect. For the shadow I duplicated the original shake again, set fill to black, dropped opacity to 90%, and sheared it by -30˚ to make the angle. That is all I edited from the original image

Words from Grant Vargas

Grant Vargus“Fun in the sun”

Grant Vargus“A Taste of Noir”

Grant Vargus“Charismatic Cherry”

Grant Vargus“Dining 2112”

29

Scott Taloff

Scott Taloff

31

Hector’s ThoughtsCraftThe craft is the exact same as the previous week.

ConceptThe concept is the same as the previous week but with a lot more detail, obviously. I zoomed in more and took my time tracing the shapes and filling in the color.

CompositionThe composition is the same as last week. This is a tracing of the Chicago Bulls’ starting point guard and franchise player, Der-rick Rose. Derrick Rose is a basketball player which is why he is wearing basketball attire and is holding a basketball. He is stand-ing in front of a concrete brick wall. There is light hitting him from both sides which is why there are two shadows behind him.

Hector Murillo

33

Hector Murillo Hector Murillo 35

This week I was able to work with multiple chromas and con-tinued to build on the previous skill sets. Seen above is the Laughing Onion that I produced after a laborious four hours, which I will explain in detail. I was given the option of draw-ing either food or shoes; I went with food because they were more readily available to me. I would rather draw something with a physical presence that I can examine and manipulate than a picture off of the Internet. Learning to utilize compli-mentary or contrasting chromas was the key to the assign-

ment, but I felt more comfortable with using complimentary chromas (although I did try an abstract contrasting combina-tion in one attempt, but it literally looked like a piece of shit). Since I had already drew the mono-chromatic and tri-chro-matic assignment, this one had to be the penta-chromatic. I went with more earth tones to reflect the actual characteristics of the onion while still remaining abstract.

The very first layer of the image is the red gradient, which I manually applied (other wise the values would much smoother). Next I placed an onion on my desk with the lamp shining directly on it and began constructing the horizontal skeleton. I connected all the edges with a curv-ing line to ensure I kept a semi-circular structure (perfect circles are literally impossible for the human hand to draw). There was a Shape Builder Tool that I noticed, but thought not to use it because that would defeat the purpose of learn-ing how to draw. After the main body of the onion took shape, I added the twisting peel at the top and root knob at the bottom. The chromas selected were from the CYMK

wheel, radiating two chromas +/- solid yellow, and very saturated. To get all the values of the selected chromas, I manually created a new swatch for every 15% increased black in the CYMK value slider. Each chroma had its own color group, so I could easily line up their value progres-sion. With the shape and background in place I began my value layering technique from last week. Brush strokes varied 1-3 stroke weight and 2-point oval brush definition. The yellow chroma was the base layer for the onion, fol-lowed by the orange-red to simulated exposed root, then the solid green as the veins, and finally the green-yellow as the shadow.

Grant VargusLaughing Onion

Grant Vargus

More from Grant

37

For this drawing I probably spent the most time trying to craft this. Using the paintbrush tool in Adobe Illustrator I had to draw a box that looked 3D. I also had to make the top of the box look like it was an actual top not just apart of the over-all box. The hardest part was probably trying to construct the ribbon over the box and also make it look 3D at the top. I used darker reds to fill in

some spaces so that the ribbon would look like it was folded. Composition wise the first thing that I see when I look at this drawing is the red ribbon then I see the purple stars, then the structure of the box. If could do something differently with this piece it would probably go more into depth with the shadows of the box because there are not really many shadows or shades in the drawing.

Red Ribbon

MELON

KIWI

Mark Williams

Mark Williams 39

Dedicated to all my art teachers

41

Note From The Author

First off I would like to thank my classmates for letting me access and use some of their artwork for the magazine. Your artwork made my magazine so much better and more interesting. Also wanted to thank my teacher for teaching us all the skills and tools to create the artwork that is in

this magazine and the artwork that did not make it in the magazine. The creation of this magazine was very time

consuming but overal was a very interesting project and I hope that the reader enjoyed looking at the image and finds

it interesting as well.- Mark Williams