Artist Statement:

This group of artwork consists of 4 pieces. Two of the pieces are done in Adobe Photoshop, and another two were done in Adobe Illustrator. The focus of this project was to further explore and experiment with digital painting in multiple programs in order to widen our understanding and capabilities. I chose to create portraits for my pieces, and each portraits is of a popular figure or fictional character that I idolize. The top two pieces; portraits of Kobe Bryant and of Chris Evans as Captain America; were done in Adobe Photoshop. To give Kobe the pixelated look that he has, I used the polygon tool combined with the eyedropper tool and specific gridding. For Chris Evans / Captain America, I used a set of downloaded oil brushes, along with a reference image, and I then gave the image a painterly look with use of the brushes. The bottom two portraits; Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker and Clint Eastwood as the Man With No Name; were done the same way. In Adobe Illustrator, I used a reference image to create unique shapes in spots on each person's face where there were differences in value and color, and then I used the eyedropper tool to pull the color I wanted for that shape. What does differ between the two are the backgrounds, which were done using basic shape tools and color / color gradients.