Learning Something New (Illustrator & Journals) 20/11/11

Illustrator & Journals

We spent a good few hours learning a few simple things on Adobe Illustrator this lesson. I personally prefer Photoshop as it's a software that I'm used to working with in terms of design. However, after some perseverance and patience, I have grown to like Illustrator. We spent our lesson learning how to create certain images using only simple shapes, colours and lines. This was quite a challenge for most of us as the shape we were instructed to create was the Ying Yang symbol. 

Here is an image of what a typical Ying Yang symbol looks like. After a long time, mine came out looking exactly like this image (with some help). We were then instructed to create something out this image, using the same skills we learnt to create the Ying Yang symbol. 

Here is an image of the things I created out of my Ying Yang symbol in the the end. I thought some little aliens and owls best suited the shapes I was working with. I honestly, found this lesson to be quite useful seeing as I have never worked with Illustrator in the past. 

I personally believe that I take a while to master a new software so this was quite challenging for me. Although, as a Graphics student, I'm aware that one needs to be able to understand certain design software in order to be successful in the modern art world. I've decided that I will be using Illustrator in the future; possibly for Typography projects as this seems to be the best software for this area. 
After taking part in these sessions, I have started reading the Creative Review and Grafik journals. I did this because I wanted some ideas for my positive and negative project. Plus, I needed to get to know as much information in my chosen area of practice before the end of the semester. I noticed that I wasn't as informed in graphics as some of the others in my class so looking through a few journals, gathering ideas and learning about graphic design seemed to be the best thing to do.