Shelby Schlensker's Portfolio
Typographic Portraits
First project of the year! Made with colored pencils, sharpies, and normal pencils. So basically with this project we had to make images using words and letters. One of which had to involve our name and something we enjoy. So I drew a car driving at night with music. Simply because that's something I like to do and wish I could do more often.
The one that says liar over and over is...bad. I have a really heavy hand so my sketches showed up horribly. Then the whole picture is general is a mess. Around this time I was still mad at someone I was friends with because she was a habitual liar.
The Skitter one looks a little funky but it's supposed to be a cat. I have a cat named Skitter and her name would be easier to manipulate into a cat than the other one's name, AJ.
Now we have what my friends like to call the "Eusic" picture. It's supposed to say music and be in the shape of a note, but it didn't end up that way.
Creating Characters with Shapes
As much as I wish I had the ability to create something this nice on my own, I have to admit this was a tutorial our teacher had for us. It was mainly an introduction to shapes and a handful of tools. A very cute introduction.
Let's Play with Creating Shapes
Those that know me in real like will know I have a habit of drawing wolf heads when I'm out of ideas. Thus the creation of this. I took the arc tool and just started bending it everywhere. Little did I know that picking a color for a fill only applies to the space between the start and end of the line. Oh well it looks midway decent. Especially for bring an accident.
Wordless Greeting Card
We were issued a challenge by our teacher. Make a postcard or greeting card without using any text. As I was scrolling through the inspirational stuff she thought we might like I thought of Valentine's Day themes. Then I remembered we have hummingbirds that visit my house in the summer and I wanted to draw them. This one's stomach was a complete pain. I don't know how to use clipping masks or anything of the sort that would bend that belly circle along the shape of the body so I had to resort to taking the eraser and chipping away at it until it looked presentable.
Believe it or not the flower pedals were pretty easy. Just select a handful of petals at a time and rotate the gradient where I wanted it. It was also easier than using a picture of a real flower. That was my original idea.
Pen Tool Practice
Postcard 2.0 turned out way better. I think in part due to the fact I didn't mess around with too many gradients -excluding the flower, but that was easy- and that I made the colors more vibrant. The bird's dark green belly looks much better than the previous too. It's not as lumpy. This whole one just feels more cute and lovely than before. I feel like the previous one is more like when you've been married 30 years and just recycle the same card so the colors are dull. While this one is the first time you sent it and it's still gotten its colors and looks fresh.
That was a lot of rambling about looks, I'm sorry. Now onto technicalities of how I made this...if I can remember. I had to use the pen tool the entire time. That's actually pretty much it. Pen tool with some color and gradients.
Swine 'n' Dine New Logo
I should probably explain what exactly this "Swine 'n' Dine" is. The town I live in has a little cook-off/grill party that happens in the summer-fall time. Basically you just stop by to eat food. Well the town people that arrange this wanted a better logo and asked my teacher to have her classes make logos for the public to choose between. This was my horrible excuse of an entry. In hindsight I should have taken a few images off of Google to do this. I just didn't know that was allowed, and I only found out AFTER I had hand made this whole thing. The pen tool was the primary one being used. Well, the ellipse tool made the background and eyes. Everything else though was the pen tool. Easily the handiest little tool I've been shown. You remember how I couldn't get the belly on the first humming bird to bend perfectly with the rest of the bird? Same issue here with the bottom of the pig. You have no idea how long it took to get it that close to perfect. There are a lot of pen tool anchor points along that one line.
Fine Arts Festival
We have hit my most favorite project so far. Also the biggest pain in the rear to find a text color that would show up on the background that I was too stubborn to change.
So my school set up this program that allows artistic students that aren't in an art class to show off their stuff. You just have to register. They wanted a new poster and pamphlet design and I went with something interactive. It's an event about drawing so I figured it'd be fitting to have something you yourself could draw on and a head exploding with creativity. I learned from my previous mistakes and took that nuke picture off of Google. It looks so much better. Guess what tool the head is made of? Yeah, the pen tool. However there's a new one thrown into the mix! I used the paintbrush tool to make those music notes. I think this is the best creation I've made in this class.
PBL Logo
As our final assignments we had to redesign our school's logo. Our mascot is a panther so obviously I chose to draw it. Originally my idea was a calm panther like on the left. Then the aggressive one turned out better. The original idea was for the outline to be the lighter grey but I like the darker one better. It doesn't clash as much. I figured I'd keep an example of the light grey just incase.