Final Submission - week 4

 Instructions

Using Adobe Illustrator and the gradient mesh tool, create an illustrated self-portrait. 8 x 10 in @300 dpi. Export as a .png resized to 1280px wide @ 72ppi. 

Content 

    This project was easily one of the most challenging assignments I’ve worked on so far. It brought together everything we’ve learned over the past few weeks while pushing me to spend more time in Adobe Illustrator, a program I’m still getting comfortable with. The goal was to create an illustrated self-portrait using the gradient mesh tool, starting from a photo of myself. From the beginning, the process felt slow and very detail-heavy, especially when it came to image tracing and breaking the portrait down into simple, clean shapes that could actually be built on.

    To keep the illustration manageable, I limited each main part of the portrait my face, hair, hoodie, and flannel to around three color swatches. Instead of relying on a wide range of colors, most of the depth and realism came from adjusting gradient mesh points and carefully shaping light and shadow. A lot of time went into small adjustments that didn’t seem important at first but ended up making the biggest difference. Looking at the final Illustrator version next to the original photo, the portrait feels simplified but still recognizable, which made the long process feel worth it. More than anything, this project helped me better understand how powerful the gradient mesh tool can be, even if it’s still one of the more challenging tools for me to use confidently.

  Final Submission (Using image trace + Gradient mesh) 

Original Portrait



 

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