All my life, the idea, concept and my own love of tattoos has stuck in my mind. As one who truly appreciates skin as another canvas, the whole general notion of tattoos, and tattoo style work has revolved around myself and my own style. Given the lasted opportunity to create a gel transfer piece, that was open ended in style, with a nature theme as a guideline, there was no question what I would choose. So, I decided to follow a creation path that I gruel love, and create a unique tattoo inspired piece.
For my work of art, I decided to create a line work piece that was in a tattoo style. My piece is a variety of different aspects and elements, all of which were inspired by me from different tattoo pieces that I’ve seen. The piece itself was first created on Adobe illustrator by using a drawing tablet to create and design what is seen below. The piece itself is made up of a large variety of nature inspired things; in the foreground, a squirrel is seen on a tree that is surrounded by roses. Lurking behind him is a wolf and behind him is a wondering girl, holding a lantern, with a owl swopping down. All are surrounded by the beauty of tree branches and leaves, as a flock of butterflies brightens the mood. The overall image was all hand drawn and created by myself, and is all completely unique and original.After the drawing process was completed, I then transferred the printed black and white image onto a large 12″x24″ wooden canvas. This was transferred by using a gel medium that is applied to the board, where then the image is placed on top, and, once dried, scrubbed away with water, leaving behind the ink and the beautiful imagery.
During any creation process, one should always think about aspects and elements that will make the piece more visually appealing and successful, by using the elements and principles of art throughout. In my piece, a variety of both of these throughout; these are line and value and balance, harmony, rhythm and movement.
The elements of line can greatly be seen in this piece. The piece as a whole is all line work and fine detailing in it to create depth and shading. The lines themselves depict different shapes and outline, and lines within are drawn to create different textures in places to allow the piece to be seen as more realistic and 3D, rather than flat. The last element seen is value. There was only two colours used in this piece, and that is black and white. By using these two colours only, a great contrast is created and allows the piece to me more detailed and visually difficult. By using thinner and finer lines on Illustrator, I was able to create more depth and textures within, instead of colouring them in solid. The principle of balance can be seen in the piece by dissecting it horizontally in into two halves. When looking at the piece, it can be seen as balanced because the top and bottom are both of equal visual weight. In the foreground, there is only a few aspects seen, and the ones seen are very large in proportion; when comparing these to the background, the elements get smaller, and more things are seen. By placing less and more in different areas, the weight of the picture is balanced by the amount of visual elements. By using scale in the piece, this is able to be achieved easily, in allowing the piece to be visually appealing and visual and proportionally correct. Harmony and rhythm can be seen together in this piece. By using the same aspects of the piece through out, the leaves and butterflies, it allows the piece to come together with similar units. This relates to rhythm as elements seen are regularly viewed and flow together in harmony throughout the piece, making the piece as a whole unified and complete. The last principle that can be seen is movement. This is vastly seen throughout this whole piece. There is elements throughout that are going in all directions, pulling the viewers eyes around the whole piece. Eyes can start at the wolf, whose gaze is upon the squirrel; the eyes then follow up the tree branch into the top corner, following the butterflies and branches surrounding the girl. Next seen is the owl, where ones gaze follows his wings, down through more of the girl and the trees on the left side of the artwork. Even in the girl herself, movement is greatly seen in the lifework surrounding her visual appearance. Her dress is flowing around her, pulling movement to the ends of her outfit and back around the piece.
Throughout the creation process of my piece, I was able to find a few successes in the work. The first success I found was the overall line work of the image. I was very pleased with how to completion of the drawing looked and how all the line work came together. To me, this was one of the most successful drawings done on Adobe Illustrator. I was really happy in how all the parts came together and successfully worked with the rest, allowing all of the piece to be unified and complete.
During the creation process, there was a few weakness that I faced. The first weakness was the printing aspect. Since the canvas size was 12″ x 24″, I had to print multiple pages; I had to cut the original image into 3 sections, and place it onto 3 11″ x 17″ pages to allow it to print. ONce printed, I had to cut the pages again and seam them together, making sure the edges line up perfectly. Another problem faced was applying the image onto the canvas. It was hard to apply an even layer of gel without it drying before the image is placed. This issue lead to a slight tear once it was placed and the image was being rubbed down. However, once the image, was transferred, there was only one spot that the paper stuck to the board, and it seemed to bubble beneath the transfer, so none of the image was harmed.
Overall, I am very happy with the transfer. I feel it transferred beautiful and captured the image the same way as it was drawn before it was transferred. It also transferred very well, which made the final piece even more successful.
Below is the image before it was transferred
12″ x 24″
Adobe Illustrator
Final Piece: Gel Transfer
12″ x 24″
Wooden Canvas
Gel Transfer From Illustrator
Melissa Reid: Art Portfolio Blog 