Rachel's Mini Art School

For this exercise, we were asked to create a book cover for the title Flirting With the Bully.   I decided to take it in a different direction, since when I think of bullies, I think of bully breeds.  I chose a picture of my pit bull, Bella, as the center of the cover.  I created the cover on Canva, an online platform that allows users to design media like Facebook ads, kindle covers, and business cards.  I took various fonts of text and used a vintage filter to complete the project.

For the color echo exercise, I chose to use Canva- a software where one can create and edit various types of media like posters, bookmarks, CD covers, and more.  I actually used it for the cover of my own book.  For the subject of my color echo, I chose a clip art illustration of a patriotic popsicle.  I thought the colors would be vibrant and easy to repeat, so I made a happy birthday sign for America. I used the eye dropper tool to repeat the main colors- red, white and blue, in the background and text.

For this exercise, we were asked to use different borders to complement an image from our library. I chose a photo of my two bunnies that I took last summer.  The software I used was google docs.  Unfortunately, google docs did not have many choices for borders.  One could change the color, thickness, and pattern of the border to complement the photos being used.  It was in the same menu that one could pick the color and size of fonts from.  Like the book says, I tried to come up with borders in colors and styles that don’t draw attention away from the photo but instead go along with the black and white palate of the photo nicely.

In this exercise on page 145, the goal was to repeat a single element to create an image of pattern.  The three prompts were "serenity", "sunburst" and "velocity".  I chose a sort of rolling ocean pattern for serenity and was more literal with velocity and sunburst, choosing arrow and starburst patterns respectively.  I will admit, using the Adobe Draw vector program was tricky at first.  I used the app on my phone, and it took a bit of getting used to.  Personally, my sunburst is my favorite pattern that I created in this exercise.  What do you think?

This exercise involved capturing the character of various fonts. I felt it was appropriate to use a fun, creative font for the commentary. It was somewhat nostalgic for me, doing this exercise, because as a child I loved playing around with fonts. Writing in extra large fonts really made me feel like I was being productive even when I wasn't. It is interesting capturing the character of different fonts, from the whimsical to the serious. It's amazing how many different emotions a simple font can convey.