Vector Portrait

Pre-Production

     For this project I chose to use a picture of my golden retriever, Christmas. I thought it would be something I wouldn't get sick of looking at and a print could be a potential gift for my mom. I put the image into photoshop and increased its saturation. I then played with filter effects to enhance color/tone differences. I then put the image into illustrator and made two copies of it on two different art boards. One to work on, one to reference from.

Production

     I began the process of creating an organic vectored portrait by outlining all of the defined edges between colors/ tones using the pen tool making white outlines. Once I finished this process I attempted to fill in the shapes created by the outlines, but I realized I hadn't created them in organized organic shapes and that all the lines weren't connected in a way that could be filled. After nearly crying, I deleted the lines and decided to go straight for just creating colored shapes. I continued the process having to pick and choose which sections to ignore and what colors to adjust. I consistently compared with my reference photo to make sure it was coming together well. Eventually I finished and added a light blue background that I felt complimented Christmas's coppery fur tones.

Post-Production

     Im pretty pleased with the final product. I will say, looking back I should have done a person instead. The amount of tone varieties in her fur were somewhat overwhelming and made it a somewhat long process. The only part that I don't like though is on her mouth area where I had to make it mostly grey because there are small patches of several neutral tones, and there are her whiskers which are extremely fine, white, and transparent. But  I think it turned out pretty well nonetheless.