The purpose of this project is to create three cohesive pieces in Photoshop. This is one of my first ever design projects, each student was assigned a country, mine was Belarus.
Application(s) used: Adobe Photoshop
100 + Sketches:
We first started with researching our countries then we had to do copious amounts of sketching, my professor required us to to at least 100 to really flesh out our ideas and do some deep research about the country we were assigned to. Our professor told us we need that many because he really wanted us to do the research and really have every single idea out there, like a mind dump. It was really difficult for me because I had no idea how to come up with 100, they all looked really ugly but I did hit the quota. This was helpful because it really pushed me to put all the ideas out there, and by the end of that I felt like someone had squeezed all possible ideas I had in me, I was exhausted. There are way too many to show so here are some of them:
Narrowing it down:
After coming up with 100 sketches, it was time to narrow down some ideas and have more detailed sketches. These should be refined sketches of different elements that represent Belarus. Belarus is known for its architecture, so I drew some churches and buildings. I added their national flower to it because I really like flowers, and at this point, I had no idea how my final piece was going to come together. I did some more detailed sketches of buildings and stuff, labeled them. I liked my sketches a lot more here, but I had no idea how I was going to compile them together for them to look good.
Composition ideas:
Then comes the third phase of sketching, composition sketches. I was told to come up with different variations of compositions of the elements from the previous stage. Belarus is also known for agriculture, so I drew a tracer with one of the temples on top of it. The next idea I had was the glass stained window in one of the museums combined with their national flower. Lastly is one of the churches within the outline of Belarus.
Bringing it into photohsop:
After that, I picked my favorite one then imported it to photoshop. I had the sketches as a background layer then traced them in ad colored it. It was very difficult because you are drawing on the stylus on the desk but you are looking up to see what you were drawing. The first one took me the longest because I was fingering out how I wanted everything to look, Then the other two came together with a little faster but the three pieces did not look cohesive at all. So I decided to add some clouds to each one of them which did help with the continuity.
Final product:
Final thoughts:
This is my first big graphic design project since switching my major from health science, and I have heard that this is one of the harder graphic design classes. Which now looking back taking this class as the first one made the other ones seem much easier. I am really proud of how it turned out given that it was my first big project, I really enjoy pastel colors so I am glad it worked out. It was very amazing to me that I have the ability to turn a blank screen into an art piece, and this will forever be one of my favorite projects.