Self Portrait Project Final
Spring 2024
Adobe Photoshop
For my self portrait, I featured some specific symbols and images to describe myself and my hobbies. Unfortunately, most of my hobbies involve heavily copyrighted material; so there was a challenge in trying to find the proper images to communicate to everyone.
The Television: My love of animation started as a child viewing television weekday afternoons and on Saturday mornings.
The Comic Panels: Reading a comic strip daily in the newspaper, and then later, amassing my own comic book collection. This is where I developed a fondness, not just for the art, but for storytelling as well.
Game Controller: I’m old enough to remember videogame arcades in every mall (remember those?), inside every corner store/bodega and have seen the rise and fall of several videogame companies. I’ve played (and still have) all of my game systems, from an Atari 2600 to my PlayStation 5.
Lucky the Dog: All of these items are being watched over by my dog Lucky. Lucky is now 16 years old and has been by my side as I have read, watched or played away my leisure time for most of his life.
Not too much in the way of effects on this project, as the void of space and the contrast of a white dog doesn’t leave much room for added filters. I wanted to do a blend effect with the 3 images bursting forth from star shapes; but to my disappointment, that effect isn’t on Photoshop. At least that I know of at my current skill level.
Credits.
Lucky the Dog – Gabriel Ruiz (hey, that’s me!)
Background – “The Milky Way” Felix Mittermeier CC0 1.0 DEED Wikimedia Commons – August 29th, 2017 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%D0%9C%D0%BB%D0%B5%D1%87%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9%D0%BF%D1%83%D1%82%D1%8C.jpg
Controller – “Video Game Controller” Larissa Mancia CC0 1.0 DEED Wikimedia Commons – March 7th, 2018 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Video_Game_Controller_%286599%29_-_The_Noun_Project.svg
Comic Page – Helen Tosh CC0 1.0 Public Domain https://www.123rf.com/photo_84120434_pop-art-comic-book-strip-background.html?is_plus=1
Television – “Vintage TV” Tsipilevin CC0 1.0 DEED https://www.dreamstime.com/tsipilevin-latest-illustrations-vectors-clipart?pg=5
MMP Logo aka “What happens when you’re diabolical and out of money; so you order your Minions from Wish or Temu”
Spring 2024
Adobe Illustrator
Using shapes and gradient in illustrator to experiment. I was interested in how the rounding of corners and blending of colors can create an illusion of 3D shapes on a 2D canvas. (or so I tried)
