INSTRUCTIONS:

PASTE a jpeg file of your portrait in the space

above!
Respond to the following questions about your
digital painting- a symbolic self-portrait. Make
sure to use proper paragraph form,
punctuation, grammar, and spelling.
Use as much of the listed vocabulary
appropriately.
UNDERLINE ALL VOCABULARY TERMS USED.
READ AND REVIEW the prompts (questions) and
the listed vocabulary before you begin writing.

QUESTIONS:

1. What did you create?

2. How is this work a meaningful reflection of you?
3. How did you use compositional strategies to compose your original sketch?
4. Describe, in detail, your process for making this work. (What steps did you take, what
tools did you use?)
5. What challenges did you face when constructing this work?
6. What successes did you experience?
7. What did you learn about digital art or Photoshop throughout this process?
8. What prior knowledge did you access to complete this work? (think about our first
drawing if you are stuck!)
9. What did you learn about yourself throughout this process?
10. How would you evaluate your final work- is it good / does it meet your standards?
11. Many artists use scanned work to further manipulate and develop it in Photoshop. Is
this a process you would like to explore again? Why or why not?

VOCABULARY:

- Symbolic
- Self-Portrait
- Drawing
- Painting
- Lines
- Contour Lines
- Outline
- Layers
- Visibility
- Background
- Original Sketch
- Scanned
- Cropping
- Overlapping
- Tools
- Brush Tool
- Brush Size
- Brush Type
- Pen Tool (optional)
- Paint Bucket Tool (optional)
- Gradient Tool (optional)
- Opacity (optional)
- Flow (optional)
- Adjust / Adjustment
- Color Swatch
- Trace
- Texture
- Eraser Tool
- Undo
- Step Backward
- Drag and Drop
- Save
- Photoshop
- File
- .PSD
- .JPEG
- Select
- Deselect
- Lasso Tool
- Polygonal Lasso Tool
- Zoom In
- Zoom Out
- Keyboard Shortcut
- Process
 - Product / Final
- Neatness / Craftsmanship

YOUR RESPONSE:
I created a symbolic self-portrait. This work is a meaningful reflection of me because

there are five symbolic items in there that represent me or things I like: the two sloths

represent my laziness, the xbox controller for gaming, the canvas board for art, the camera

for Youtube videos, and lastly the way the sloths are sharing the tree, representing

friendship. In order to compose my original drawing (thumbnail), I created contour lines

outlining all the objects I wanted within my sketch. I made sure to crop out some of the

objects such as the table and the mannequin, and finally added detail to the objects. After

my original sketch was scanned and uploaded online, I opened it in the Photoshop program. I

created 3 layers labeled lines, background, and layer 0. Layer 0 contained the original

sketch, while the background layer remained blank the entire time. The lines layer is where I

began to outline all of my lines in black using the brush tool. After I completed all of the lines

I changed the visibility of layer 0 so that I could no longer see the lines from my sketch. This

is when I started to color my painting. I used the polygonal lasso tool to enclose any spaces I

wanted to color, then I made sure to use a variety of brush sizes and brush types in order to

give diversity to my painting. Throughout this whole process I zoomed in and out in order to

color spaces that were difficult to paint at the normal size, and I made sure to continuously

create new layers every time I was going to paint on a large area.

Challenges I faced throughout this process was that occasionally my lines wouldnt

come out straight, when this occurred I would make sure to go a step backward by using the

keyboard shortcut command + z, or I would use the eraser tool. Also, I would sometimes

accidentally deselect the area I wanted to color while using the lasso tool. Some successes I

encountered were I was able to shade somewhat decently even though Ive never used
photoshop before, and I colored every part of this painting. After completing this artwork I

learned that within photoshop there are an endless amount of possibilities available to you,

but you have to pay close attention to everything you do, otherwise you could make a

mistake affecting your entire project. The prior knowledge I used was when we created a

contour outline using a still life of objects. Throughout this process I learned that I can

surprise myself by being able to create a good painting on a program Ive never used before.

My final product looks good to me and surpassed my expectations. Using photoshop to

innovate my original drawing that was on paper honestly surprised me, I had fun doing this

and would for sure do it again.