portrait of Aurum

Digital Illustration project that was due last Friday. we were paired up with students from our class and were then assigned to do a portrait of them that captured their "essence." we were also supposed to incorporate into the composition some of the objects that the other student found.

i was paired up with my girlfriend's friend, Aurum. i'd say she's my friend now, too, since learning more about her and talking to her more.

what i tried to depict in this image is how Aurum, a native of South Korea, is will be facing a predicament once she graduates. she's only here on a student visa, so unless she can find work right out of school, she will have to return home. she wants to stay and is hoping to find work in California, possibly go into animation (3D stuff like Kung-Fu Panda. i guess the character designer is Korean as well.). her father on the other hand is wanting her to return home and find work there.

the balloon from her cell phone is in the shape of Korea because it is her father calling her home. i tried to take a portion from Aurum's shoe and layer it into the piece. it felt like i was just slapping stuff into the background, but the further i got it seemed like i was trying to emulate waves. waves with detail and ornamentation from Korea that carried her to the United States. on the left side of the image i tried to have the final destination of Arizona, where she wants to stay. i had fun manipulating her lipstick into the shape of cactis. also have a chain running from her phone to her wrist because she said that it's always by her side, so i wanted to embellish that by chaining it to her. also thought the inclusion of Korean would be a nice touch, too. Aurum's saying, "Hello, how are you?" while her father is saying her name in Korean.

i had fun with this. liked how it turned out. also was well received by Aurum and my professor, so that was great.

this class is supposed to be about progressing our skills in a digital medium while already possessing a basic understanding of Photoshop. sadly i have none of that right now (i did this in Painter IX) so i'll need to jump on that and check out the tutorials posted...somewhere. i think U of A's computing resource site?