That's Good Spam

"That's Good Spam, draft"
June 2009
Red pencil on copier paper
21.59 cm x 27.94 cm (8.50 in. x 11.00 in.)



"That's Good Spam"
July 2009
Vector illustration
20.32 cm x 25.40 cm (8.00 in. x 10.00 in.)


"That's Good Spam, header"
July 2009
612 x 180 pix.

There's something not right with me as evidenced by this "little" project.

Being dissatisfied with the appearance of "That's Good Spam," a recently begun web-log repository of jokes, links and minutia which have been passed to me, I set about to illustrate a more pleasing header.

"I draw a lot, this should be easy," I thought.

With my favorite red Col-Erase carmine red, the draft was completed in a half hour - tops.

Instead of cleaning up the line and blocking in digital color, I misguidedly decided to create the finished illustration with Adobe Illustrator, a program with deals with vector information to create imagery instead of the raster programs' approach with their grid of little color squares. At its most basic, you can created art which has the appearance of being comprised cut colored paper.

Of the little art I make in/ with Illustrator, most are with black lines and flat color fills. After 20+ man-hours of Illustrator version-10 fun (roughly estimated), I seriously think the reason that I do so little vector art is because I hate it. With it's necessary point-by-point drawing of each shape, spontaneity is all but completely excised from the creative process. And why not compound the torture? In addition to some simple gradients and transparencies, I thought I'd try my hand for the first time with two of the application's tools: 1) the "free transform" tool to create a perspective effect with the floor tiles; and 2) the "gradient mesh" tool to create soft blush and makeup effects on the face. 18 hours into the piece, I was still committed to the experiment.

The final piece barely shows 50% of the figure, and 0% of the tile floor.

I cry "woe."

Maybe I should have my internal "good enough" meter checked and tuned.

Please investigate and enjoy the blog at your liesure.

http://thatsgoodspam.blogspot.com