Link to tutorial/example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1LpFn1OHa0&feature=youtu.be
Before tackling my Hyperlocal Objects Project, I decided to try one of the warm-up exercises and made a portrait on Adobe Illustrator of my roommate using only shapes and the pen tool. I wanted to practice simplifying a person/object into smaller shapes in order to make it more universal since this was one of the ideas that Susan Kare emphasized in her discussions of icons. Although these are definitely not my best works as an artist, I think that the ability to break something down into smaller parts and shapes is a very interesting lesson in the different meanings art can have. It also showed me that is important not to try to represent everything so literally in every piece of art. It is the unity between reality and abstraction that makes certain pieces unique.
These were two of my attempts at this task:
