Memoirs of a cut paper geisha

I never quite got around to showing my cut paper illustration. Voila. Cut paper involves a bunch of stacked elements. You raise them up with foam mounting squares or similar things that scrapbookers use. The geisha is stacked on the bamboo fence, which is stacked higher than that tree, which is stacked higher than the rest of the background...I think you see where I'm going here. Yes, I cut out the cherry blossoms and folded the petals to make them 3D.

My first scratchboard illustration

Nine hours, an Xacto knife, and possibly a few expletives later and we have a fairly successful first attempt at a scratchboard illustration. It was such an interesting process and I will definitely be taking a few more stabs (pun recognized) at this technique later. Right now other projects are calling.

Scratching an itch

with an Xacto knife. It's called scratchboard and it's the next illustration technique we are delving into in Illustration for Graphic Designers. I have never done this technique (well, there was that one time, but I was 8 and it didn't involve drawing with sharp blades). It's a little bit intimidating. You have to reverse your way of thinking and focus on pulling out the highlights instead of the shadows that I focused on in the stipple illustration.

The source photo above is by local photographer Alicia Dickerson of Four-Legged Photo. She was kind enough to give me permission to use her work for the project and of the few I picked, this is the one that my instructor favored. Below is about four hours worth of work.

Circle gets the square

Or dots, rather. Lots and lots of tiny dots. I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I was going to be doing a stipple illustration and posted the source photo I'd be using. After 16 hours of work, here is how it turned out. This weekend I will be turning it into two variations of a greeting card.