Notes: I created this artwork to show how I feel when I do tricking, which is a sport that combines disciplines like martial arts (especially taekwondo), breakdancing, parkour, and gymnastics. It's all about chaining together "vert" moves, which are usually jumping kicks with many spins in the air, and "inverts", which are moves where you go upside-down (for example, a backflip). Trickers learn moves and then put them together into combos, and tricking combos are often inserted into extreme martial arts forms.
The photo (which I flipped upside-down) is me in the middle of a butterfly kick. It's flipped to show weightlessness, because at the top of the kick it feels as though I could just as easily fall up into the sky as down onto the ground, and because my shadow looks like a right-side-up person in a reverse bow, one of my favorite "power poses" when I'm choreographing extreme forms. I also removed all color from the image except for the sky, the red traffic light, and my own face, because when there is adrenaline coursing through me, the world feels sharp and clear, with only the important things drawing my attention.
I also decorated the portrait with blue stars and red hearts. I love light blue and red together, because the red gives a sense of energy and passion while the light blue gives weightlessness. When you put the colors together, the result is a feeling of power and agility and exactly expresses how it feels to be a martial artist. There is also a vertical red line in the background; there are supposed to be a bunch of horizontal blue lines as well to make it look like it's springing off the pages of a composition notebook, conveying how I write about my experiences as a martial artist, but for some reason, those blue lines disappeared when I saved the image as a PDF. Even just the red line helps to convey the effect, though.
Commissionable?: I don't take commissions for this type of work. :(
Notes: This piece represents how I feel when I'm out in nature in the PNW. It really feels like a natural place to be, such that when I walk though a forested part of the city I feel as though I'm "falling into" nature with the ease and obviousness of falling in the downward direction, away from unnatural city life. I wanted to express the conflicting feelings of eagerness to enter nature (represented by the greater saturation of the landscape than the cityscape), melancholy at the feeling of loss when leaving city life and choosing to live simply (represented by the heavy blue of the sky), and fear of the unknown/of failure (represented by the central figure falling).
I made some HSL adjustments on these images. I reduced the saturation to 0 on the cityscape, and I boosted the saturation on the landscape. I also changed the hue of the landscape more towards blue. While the background images were straightforward, I had to be creative to get the central image of myself falling: I took a video of myself doing a roundoff, so that my hair would be sweeping back away from my face. Then I paused the video at the right frame, took a screenshot, isolated myself, and rotated it so I was upside down. I'm really proud of that part of this composition. In order to draw attention to the falling figure, I also added a white glow layer, to help it stand out against the background.
I also wanted to use this piece to address the negative feelings that arise when I go into nature. Being in nature calms me down, but sometimes it can be melancholy or even distressing to try to let go of the expectations and fast pace of everyday life to make time in nature. It's easy to feel like a failure when you voluntarily choose simplicity, because there is a common idea in our society that your life only has as much worth as the work you do. This is a myth, and it is false, but it's so deeply internalized that letting go and surrendering to nature is difficult and scary. It can feel like falling.
Commissionable?: I don't take commissions for this type of work. :(
Notes: My poster is an advertisement for Coy Designs, the small jewelry-making business I'm starting. (I'll be selling stuff at the craft fair tomorrow!! You should all come say hi!)
For this poster, I wanted to capture the elegant, yet clearly handmade, aesthetic of the wire jewelry I create. I took inspiration from c-dramas and put my hair down to take this photo, so I would look more refined and less athletic, and I took the photo outside so the greenery would match with the natural, imperfect materials I like to use to create my pieces. I used a light-filled, brown-and-teal color scheme on this poster to match the colors used on the website I'm setting up to sell pieces online. I also selected the font (Book Antiqua iirc) deliberately, to give it a suitably delicate and old-school look without coming across as overly feminine or pretentious the way many cursive fonts do; jewelry is usually seen as a woman's thing in our society, but as a man who appreciates beauty, I hope to reach a male audience too.
I also made good use of the Sharpen tool for this project, to make the necklace and bracelet stand out by increasing their contrast. I made sure to make them "pop" so it would be clear that they were the focus of the advertisement, a trick I learned a few years ago in a graphic design class when we were taught to blur the background and sharpen the foreground. I decided not to blur the background for this poster, though, because letting the nature call some attention to itself enhanced the message I was trying to send about what kind of jewelry I create. The other thing I deliberately didn't do was use the spot healer on my face. I have some acne in this photo, but imperfections like that are 1) natural; and 2) not something to be covered up or ashamed of. Advertisements usually try to make people into ethereal, immortal-like beings and display an image of a human so perfect it can't be considered truly real. I want people to see themselves, real people, wearing my products, so I deliberately didn't make any "correcting" edits to my appearance.
Commissionable?: I don't take commissions for this type of work. :(
Notes: My photoshop pattern (on the left) is themed after the furry fandom. Furries are uncommon and misunderstood, but I have some friends who are in this fandom and they are all great people. My favorite thing about them is how unique they are! I drew an anthropomorphic wolf (my favorite animal) with bright colors, and when making it into a pattern, I turned up the color randomness so there would be lots of different colors, symbolizing the variety and diversity among furries. Obviously, furries come in different shapes and sizes, not just different colors, but that's one of the limitations with this pattern software; even if I'd drawn 4 different bases and arranged them in a square, that square would repeat regularly, and only the colors would change. Still, I think I was really able to use patterns to get the point across, and it saved a lot of time not having to manually recolor everything!
My illustrator pattern (right) is themed after art deco wallpaper. I knew going in that I wanted to create something bold and interesting, so I picked reds and golds because those colors are eye-catching. They also symbolize good luck in some cultures. I created a motif that looks like scales because it's classic and recognizable, but it's also reminiscent of my second-favorite animal: dragons! This pattern might be hard to pull off as actual wallpaper in a house since it's so bold and striking, but I think that careful decor could really compliment it and create an interesting and fun space. It might be a nice touch for a child's bedroom, since this pattern has a lot of energy, but so do kids.
I also placed the patterns into heptagons. I think seven-sided shapes look really cool, since they're regular and orderly but out of the ordinary enough to be visually interesting.
Commissionable?: I don't take commissions for this type of work. :(
