Thoughts on Illustrations

            After a morning of MatLab programming in math class, I was incredibly excited to leave school and go to Binders and Michaels for illustration inspiration. Although I have not taken a traditional painting or drawing class since my freshman year, I am actually a pretty good artist. On the weekends, I love painting different pieces to hang in my room. So, I went to these art stores to really get inspired by the different mediums that I could use to illustrate my book.  Last week, I was toying with the idea of using a computer program to convert photographs of Siempre Verde to illustrations. I still think that this could be really cool; however, I thought that it might be a good idea to see what other materials were out there.  Looking around the stores, I really loved the pastels the most. The store employees let me try them out on a few different types of paper. I ended up buying the set of pastels in case I decided to use them for my illustrations. If not, I would still have a cool set of pastels for my own use!

             Later in the day, I went to Karey’s room to talk about the possibility of using photographs to illustrate my book. She thought that I could use just the photos to illustrate the pages. However, she also brought up the possibility of converting them using a photo application from the Apple App Store. I really liked this idea because I have so many cool pictures from Siempre Verde that I have not used yet. When I got home from school, I started researching different types of applications. The most challenging part about this process was finding software that was compatible with our school laptops. After many hours of research, I found a program called Sketcher. The application allows users to convert photographs to pencil sketcher, watercolors, pastels, etc. The reviews of the program were astounding; so, I bought the application and started playing around with some of the features. One of the coolest parts about the application is that it has different levels for saturation, details, brightness, and strength of the effect. Overall, I really love the program and cannot wait to try it out with my own photos!