Stefan Emmanuel 241 illos

-I am currently still trying to narrow down my portfolio work by making sure I have my best work, but also having a diversified to showcase I am a multidisciplinary designer. -I need to obtain a domain. I intend to keep my name Stefanemmanuel since that's my name on all my socials and is most recognizable by my peers.

End of the Journey for now, but a new chapter awaits ahead.

Thank you everyone for the weekly illos. It surely has been a ride.

The end is near, and I have somehow managed to keep up with the weekly illos. It's almost close to the reading break. So I have some time to sit down relax and reflect on my progress. But right now long story short: I feel I'm in a trance between a dystopia and a utopia. So I fell underneath the middle of the two. The human mind is open-minded to joining either realm. This signifies their current headspace and the need for space to grow. The eyes portray the spiritual realm of experiencing a bad trip and sleeplessness while chugging on caffeinated energy drinks cause of a busy semester. Sorry if I went with a negative and low-key dark theme for my illo. But that's just how I had been feeling so far and wanted to portray this in my illustration. But my main takeaway for this is to put your head down and work smart not hard to rise to the top to finish this challenge in submitting this illo on time. The stylistic choices I made is using rough pastel and charcoal strokes complimented with a soft brush in order to emphasize the blending of the background.

It’s Storytime….Another spooky seasin goes by & Abel is Alone Again and realizes it’s Too Late. A man who is the Hardest to Love is also Scared to Live Again. Growing up as a Snowchild, Cali was the mission but he now regrets it and wants to Escape LA, because all LA girls look the same to him. A girl he fancied in the club pulled up to the studio but she used him to her advantage. He now feels betrayed and Heartless and lost his Faith; losing his religion every day. He somehow ends up in the back of a flashing car in Sin City where lights have blinded him again. He reminisces the times he saw the tears in her eyes and whispers Repeat After Me and Save your Tears for another day. Because now we are in the After Hours and I have until Dawn till I bleed out.

The case of the Steffies am I right.

It appears I had taken a similar route from my last illo into this week's (Last time I will draw the dessert or talk about Oman). This was a scrapped illo for last week which I think is more fitting in this week's topic. I decided to do a nostalgic one. Perhaps a trip to my past life in Sunny Oman. This is a photo I took a couple of years ago at the Wahiba Sand Dunes. We often come here during holidays or weekends to spend time and take a break from the busy mundane lifestyle in the heart of Muscat. The beautiful scenery of Oman and its hill sandy side is breathtaking. Some context behind this picture is me patiently sitting on this sandy hill to watch the golden hour and the sun set into the horizon. This is a true spectacle indeed. I implemented a combination of smooth and rough strokes on my tanned skin under the sun. As well as to show the presence of texture on the sandy hills in the distance. The main focus takes you to the colour palette and the exaggerated sky. I made it look very trippy and psychedelic purposefully. Meanwhile, seeing the natural beauty of your surroundings, it however is not a mistaken being in that scorching hot environment. Only one could imagine! I did something unique where I combined warm and cool hues together which kind of worked well together. Whereas it would have an opposite colour palette for separate day and night scenery.

Based on this week's illo, you can really see I'm starting to feel a bit homesick for Oman. My family annually plans to go visit the Wahiba sands. Which is located in the Sharqiya Sands, a region of desert in Oman. And this was the first thing that popped into my head when I thought of the topic for this week's illo. Initially, I wanted to try a vector style but instead went raster to show the graininess and texture of the sand dunes. To emphasize scale, I utilized 3 vehicles in each third of the frame to show perspective. Whereas for my composition, I used the rule of thirds. To portray the topic I used symmetry painting in Photoshop to further emphasize this. The further you look down the road, the more fainter the subject and foreground are. Likewise, the desert dunes which the asphalt road paves along the trajectory bumps that lie ahead of the horizon. Both of these give the illusion of emptiness and the vast endless landscape that lies ahead of the horizon.

The illo for this week was quite enjoyable with an interesting challenge ahead. I had to do an analog drawing and later port it digitally and incorporate ink. We had been working digitally for some time and it was quite refreshing to switch to analog for a bit and roughen up my free hand drawing techniques skills. Throughout my life, I have been doing fine art all along and I like going hands-on with my drawings. I get to use my favourite 2B including my handy micron pens that have been tucked away since ARTG140. This idea came along from a niche community of creatives who like to customize and draw on their sneakers using markers and ink pens. Being an avid sneakerhead, I decided to redesign my favourite go-to pair of Chuck Taylor sneakers I own. It was inspired by pastel hues and sunflowers in the spring season and mostly by my friend Jose's favourite artist Tyler the Creator unique sneaker collaborations. For my style, I wanted to show an unfinished decontructed version of the shoe. The rough pen work really shows an edginess and rawness to the shoe. Which is complimented with outline strokes and pastel hues.

For this week, we had to do a vector illustration. When I think of something vector it screams simplicity and elegance. This is why I wanted to carry something which stuck with me and stood out from last semester's ARTG140. And you guessed it right my infamous Avacado collage I did using a bunch of cut-out magazines. And yes, indeed my classmates thought it was cute, and Faye approved it as well. So I had to switch sides from using Photoshop and had to use Illustrator instead for this week's topic. I tried to keep it two-dimensional mostly with a slight depth effect from the shades of brown and green hues. However, this particular avocado is not like your usual one, if you look closely it evokes surrealism giving it animalistic features. Be careful if you get too close it might bite you.

For my illustration, I presented the theme of texture through the scuff marks of fast-tuned JDM street race cars and the burning shredded rubber that lasts a 1/4 mile race with no hesitation. So I pondered upon some grungy, aesthetic street-style look with a trippy background which appears to be slightly hidden from the view and faints in the distance. The exaggerated added noise makes the illustration daunting and very mysterious. My choice of art style for my illo is very unfinished with a turbulent flow of rough strokes. Overall, I felt that I had improved from my previous illo and conveyed the feeling of texture in my humble opinion.

For the word pair assignment, I chose the words Lamps + Jaws I was inspired by the movie poster “Jaws”. Since I was a kid I always didn't like swimming but over time grew a liking towards it. Living beside the ocean during my childhood always amused my curiosity as to what lies further beyond the horizon and deeper than what we can see. My illustration here tries to break the typical ideology that sharks are the villainous evil bad guy predator in the underwater world who always seeks their prey. But this is something that’s being mistaken as they are one of the more significant contributors to aquatic life. However, they are in fact one of the most important sea creatures and is a major contributor to the marine life of the sea bed. Overall, I know it’s my first illo and I know it should not be perfect but I learned I should practice not becoming a perfectionist.