Struan Shields

For an IB Art assignment, we had to do a piece in the style of another artist. I choose the famous American quasi-pop artist Alex Katz. While Katz is a painter his simple style is pretty similar to my vector style so it was a natural choice. For the portrait I took at snapshot of a friend and then worked on it in Adobe Illustrator CS3 for a couple hours. I kept it pretty simple because I have to do three more people for the assignment. You can expect those soon.

Grid Self-Portrait

This is a self portrait that I did for IBH Art. The assignment was to do a piece in the same vein as one of your favorite self portrait. I choose Chuck Close's 'Self-Portrait.' I've always wanted to do something based around pixelation and this was my opportunity.

I took an emotive self portrait using a point and shoot. Took it into Photoshop CS3 where I shrunk it to 17x30 pixels. Then I blew it back up again and printed it. I was left with a highly pixelated grid of 510 boxes. I recreated this then on a piece of paper and armed with a wide variety of pencils: 6B, 2B, B, H, F, 2H that i can remember I got to work. 4 hours later I had this.

Jack and Nina

Taken with an old Canon F-1 35mm SLR using Ilford HP5 film. It was really sunny out so i think the exposure time was 1000 with the aperture at f/16. I love the way the picture came out and absolutely no post work needed to be done on it. I really like this one.

Warning, Emotional Children Near

I got the idea to do a comical warning after browsing through deviantART one day. My inspiration comes from =SRotherham's piece, Ennui. It was just a fun little doodle that only took me about half an hour.

Something Big's Coming

I've been kinda of inactive on the blog lately, more active on deviantART anyway. Well my friend's sweet sixteen is in August and I want to give her something special. I already vectored her (it's Sasha) before but I'm overhauling my style. Before I used to do more of a cutout style for the hair, but know I've taken on the daunting task of vectoring each strand individually...yeah. I've already put in over 4 hours of work and I'm really exciting in how it looks.

Kelley

Yet another vector of a friend. This one took about three hours to complete in Inkscape. The a little bit tricky and I decided not to add her freckles because it would have taken forever...

Corina

This one is way way way way way overdue, Corina was the first person to ask me to draw her :/ :). But here it is finally :). This one didn't take as long, just some fiddling with the hair took a while. Overall, about 2.5 hours of work. I'm still not crazy about the way the hair turned out though, its the hardest part...:/

Sasha

This is probably the hardest vector I've done, especially when working with her multi-dimensional hair. Thats the last time I'll vector a blonde :P. I really like the way it came out, almost exactly like the photo I used. I'm still wondering whether I should put more work into the hair though. It took about 5 hours in Inkscape. Leave your thoughts in the comments :)

Heather

This is probably my best vector portrait yet. I really had a good time drawing her, even though she is my best friends girlfriend :P. I think I did the best job on the face that I've done in a while. It took me about 4-5 hours in Inkscape and I really like the end result. Please leave a comment and tell me what you think.

Lauren

This is a simple vector "cut out" of a friend. It doesn't have as much detail as the other ones but i still like the way it came out. It took about two hours working on and off in Inkscape. It was challenging though because the source image was not that large to begin with so that made the hair especially difficult so I cut down on details there.

Annie

This is my third stab at vector portraits and i really like the way it came out. I'm totally digging the way that her glasses came out with a simple gradient. As always leave comments.

This That & Struan Shields goes under the pen

This vector portrait is of the front man to my favorite local band, This That & Struan Shields, none other than Struan Shields. This vector was a challenge because I'm really bad at doing hair. I like the way the vector came out overall and gives me a good starting point for drawing people. It took about three hours in Inkscape. Be sure to comment and check out This That & Struan Shields at their MySpace at: http://www.myspace.com/struanshields.