The Night Before, Final

 Alright, so this week, I began work on the centre piece of the nursery, which is the baby quilt. Since this is the first object I wanted the viewer to draw their attention to, I decided to create a quilt from scratch. Now, I am a guy, I have never done any sewing or knitting or any kind of quilt making. So when I found out that this entire project had to be from scratch, I did debate back and forth whether or not to create a quilt as the centre piece. In the end, I did decide to make it, only because the nursery wouldn't look the same without it, and without it, it would be missing the personal touch that this nursery needed to stand apart from generic nurseries.

 So here we go. I must have spent ages on this part, redoing this over and over again, but I began to understand Illustrator more as a result. The first was creating an outline of the quilt, I made each "patch" unique and used the shapes and lines tool to create each design.








I opened the blank design in Photoshop and began filling in the quilt. I added lots of colors, patterns(default Photoshop patterns), more shapes, letters, numbers, and more. I applied a texture to the entire quilt, to give it the look of fabric. I wanted a "homemade", almost homely quilt look, to go with the mood of my nursery.

 I finished the quilt by adding in a fabric/denim looking border(its actually the bubble texture scaled down significantly), and finished my quilt. Time to apply it to the final scene.

I applied the texture, and fixed the lighting a bit as well, for better viewing and to emphasize a night scene.

The Night Before, Prelim, Round 2

OK! Well, I am slowly getting more comfortable with Illustrator. I am beginning to really enjoy doing the cartoon/tracing work, and this time, I have done a trace of a few zoo animals, and plan on coloring them different colors to decorate the newly added wallpaper border and the lamp that I've put in my nursery this week. 

 After I opened this in Photoshop, I began to play around with the textures a bit. I wanted a fabric look, but not too fabric-esque. After all, this is a lampshade and wallpaper.

I added some borders, top and bottom, and aligned the animals side by side. I added a few more fx textures in Photoshop.

So the Prelim Round 2, I have added a lamp(with a dim lighting effect), and covered the lampshade with the new animal design. I also added wallpaper border with the same animal design. I also added the 3d white airplane(still untextured), and moved the train artwork to above the lamp to get the full lighting effect of the lamp. Finally, I needed something to place the lamp on, so I created a night stand. Still planning on adding curtains, baby toys, and maybe a background for the window.

Design Competition - Healing Art

The contest I chose is The Healing Power of Art. I realize that my work may not exactly be what the contest is intended, as I am assuming they want more spiritual and perhaps religious art, but I chose to do something that closely relates to what my peace was. When my son was born 6 months ago, he had many problems and was in NICU for a week. The stress and anxiety I felt during that time was difficult, the most difficult days of my life, and the only solace I felt was to stand in the empty nursery that my newborn son had yet to come home to.

This is what I call "The Night Before"

I began by tracing the outline of a rug that I was modeling in 3d. I created a simple teddy bear rug design that I would eventually apply in the 3d software. This teddy bear design is my own, created with the elliptical tools in Illustrator.

 I then opened this up in Photoshop, and filled in the colors and used the FX function to add a more rug-like texture.

 I then traced a train image in Illustrator, which will serve as a decorate wall hanging in my nursery.

 Again, I opened this up in Photoshop and filled in the colors. In Photoshop, I also created a blue and white stripe wallpaper, and also created a cherry wood texture using a photograph I took of my coffee table.









This is my preliminary nursery, note the train decoration and the teddy bear rug. It is intentionally dark, and the only light is the light coming in from through the window.

I will be using Illustrator and Photoshop to add a few more things, such as patterns for bedding, more decorations, crown moulding, curtains, etc. I may also add a lamp and end table, as well as a few more baby toys.