Eye Glasses that Blinds!

Do you wear eyeglasses? What brand do you wear? Are you loyal to your brand? How well can you see with them? Did you know that most of the high-end brand name eye glasses on this planet is owned by one company? - Luxottica. Take off your glasses, open your eyes and take a look at my illustration for this week's word - 'eyeglasses'. I have been doing illustrations on Annual reports and what they could look like.

I wear Steve Madden, because I got the frame as a gift and based on my research it doesn't seem t be owned by Luxottica, so I am not promoting one of the world's monopolies. Here are the brands that the company owns.




Not only do they own these brands, they also own some of the retailers that sell the brands. Based on an article they could even be making 50 cent profit on every dollar you spend on a pair of shades. Some believe they are no better than the shades in a pharmacy and the money spent to update your shades and replace broken ones, is a fortune out of your pocket!

I created a few rough thumbnails to show a concept of Luxottica's customers blinded by its brands. The middle top thumbnail was chosen and the bottom left was incorporated into the design.

Below. are the steps used.

Step 1. Blocking the main area after creating the background. I only blocked the face to help myself get a feel of the shape head I wanted and the position. Unlike previous blogs, this time I used the lasso tool to get a more defined area



Step 2. Adding drawing lines. In this step I simple defined where he facial features are. They are not perfect right now but this was just to get a general idea. It is also time to note that this is my first portrait done in Photoshop and I intend keep improving as I love the look of portraits done in photoshop. I also added my reference image that I used to help with the face and hair.





Step 3. Painting! I was so excited when I was what kind of results photoshop painting can do. I blended colours for skin tone and added the glasses in, of course! The nose was the most challenging, but I believe it came out pretty well.



Step 4. Now, I added a radial gradient to make the glasses the focus of this illustration. Nice and simple step!



Step 5. The Most interesting step. How could i incorporate Luxottica's brands into this images. I wondered for a while where would I put the brand names. Then it came to me! on the glasses! So I visited Luxottica's website, took a screen shot of the brands charts and place it in photoshop on a layer in front of the glasses. I created a mask from the glasses then applied that mask to the brands screenshot. Quite unique looking.



The Finale. After lowering the opacity of the brands screen shot layer, I added my text and the Luxottica logo.

Do you see what I see? Is the brand you are wearing a Luxottica brand? If yes, I hope this opened your eyes so that so now know who really get your money.

Swift Wings

If I had wings I would fly, I would fly, fly a way, fly-a-aay awayaaayy, and be-eee at rest. I am no singer but I do wish I had some wings. This week I will illustrate the word 'Wings'.



It was a lean mean swift machine. The Concorde commercial airplane does not seems to be around in 2014. Upon doing some research, I found out that, there was a crash in 2000, then this was followed by 911 in 2001l. Many people were afraid to fly in a regular airplane, much less the Concorde. On 24 October 2003, British Airways withdrew Concorde, bringing to a close the world’s only supersonic passenger service.

There was no other place on the Concorde that had the attention as did its Delta Wings. Let us remember the Concorde and its unique wings. This remembrance will be demonstrated through my illustration of an the annual report, entitled 'Remembering the Concorde'.

Here are a few thumbnails showing a 2014 Annual Report of the British Airways Concorde. Although I loved all my concepts, I decided to chose the thumbnail on the top right. It shows a unique angle of the airplane.



Using Photoshop for this project, my aim was to create a painting effect of the Concorde just after take off. My colour scheme incorporates a warm and cold colour as shown in my background. Let us take a look at how my illustration turned out!

Step 1: The Background

After painting a typical blue sky, I used a brush to create the organes bushes below. This would indicate the earth is still near and that the plan just took off.



Step 2: Blocking

Using references of what the Concorde would look like at my desired angle, I blocked out its shape using white. This was a quite rough estimate.



Step 3: Shaping things out Part 1.

Where are the wings? Where is the cockpit? I now started to drawn areas of the plane in that would make it look more like an airplane. I did this by adding contrast in shades of grey. Luckly the Concorde was a white plane and so all I needed was my grey scale.



Step 3: Shaping things out Part 2.

More contrast was added to the image. Things have started to come together, but not quite there yet. I proceeded on!



Step 4: Adding a Photoshop Filter.

Now that I was satisfied with my contrast colouring, I decided to add a filter to my Concorde. Lesson learnt: Create Smart filters! everytime! My intension was to create a slight hazed effect, that you see when you look through window at the departing lounge, that caused my possibly fuel and heat. Instead the filters was overdone and I was not able to reverse it, having gotten too far. However, I thought the rough look was a bit unique and may be appreciated for what it is; art.



Step 5: Adding the Window.

This steps added a lot to the illustration, yet it was quite simple. By just turning your brush opacity down and selected your circular brush and turning hardness to 100%, I create four circles that gives the effect that you are look at the plane through a window with water droplets. I thought, this was quite nice.



Step 6: The Final Illustration

Text was added to the illustration and overall it was no longer rough looking but neat. To highlight the wings the focus of the plane, I labeled it using red type.

Take your hats off and bow your heads and let's have a moment of silence, remembering the lean, mean delta wings machine; The Concorde.