Self-Portrait illustration

What is an Illustration?

An illustration is a visual represenation of an object or being, this doesn't mean its a photo. An illustration is made by hand and drawn out. In our case we found a picture we wanted to use and using our tools we replicated it.

Explain assignment. What is purpose?

In design we were asked to create our symbol from our essay using adobe illustrator. Throughout the self-portrait unit we've been creating our assignments to revolve around one universal symbol, in my case this was a fortune cookie.

The reason behind using a fortune cookie was to represent how you can’t rely on expectations. You can’t expect to open up that one cookie that writes out your life. Instead of coloring the fortune cookie like it should have been I chose to fill it to look like a planet with a spacey fill for the fortune.. The fortune, which is found inside the a fortune cookie was filled to look like space. This was unique since space is what surrounds a planet, space is something that is unexplainable, unpredictable and uncontainable, but yet it’s being “contained” by the cookie. The reason for this was to further demonstrate how you can’t let your life revolve around one think like how the Earth revolves around one thing, the sun. A fortune is meant to be unexpected and unpredictable and you can’t be expecting it to tell you what to do. The stars and black radial background were used to further portray the outer space theme of the illustration.

When making this illustration the hardest part was trying to make it simple, my original idea had many extra symbols that in the end just made the whole thing cluttered and cramped. After finding the photo that I felt showed off my symbol the best, I had to decide how to make it unique. I didn’t want to fill it like a plain fortune cookie, mostly because it would just look boring. This is why I chose the Earthy fill, I wanted to really demonstrate my message and obviously make it look good at the same time. Throughout the process of making the illustration I wanted to make it unique to me most importantly, after finding a photo that I felt portrayed my symbol the best I knew I didn’t want to just copy it down to the nail, which is why I chose the out space theme. Although the task to make my illustration unique was a struggle, I have to admit the most frustrating challenge for me, was making those stupid stars. Each one ended up being made individually which took close to 45 minutes, in the end I am satisfied with how they turned out but for the time it took, I like to believe it was worth it.