Painting of a Landscape, 2021
Janice Hu
20 in x 24 in

This painting was of a landscape in the style of Monet, and I painted it with acrylics. I rarely paint especially using acrylics, but I was happy with how this came out. Of course, there are things that could be improved, but I am happy how I used all the colors to my advantage. it is one of my favorite paintings so far. Though the image may look a little dull, that is just the camera because it is a lot more lively in person. I had trouble with the sunset at first but I got a hang of it over time. The hardest part was getting the contrast to work, but I did it in the end.

Matcha Cake, 2021
Janice Hu
18.7 in x 14.6 in

For my project, I made a short animated GIF. The animation starts out pretty simple. Someone takes a bite out of the matcha cake and the cake starts losing parts of itself to show the inside of it, kind of like half of it is melting away sideways. At the end, the word YUM pops up. I included that at the end because I felt like it was better to end the GIF like that rather than not have anything. In my opinion, having the words pop up made it less bland.

I used a reference that I will include below (cake by Cooking Tree). Like what we did with the portraits, I repainted the cake in a different style, though I did not layer the paint on the picture and did not trace. I am not familiar with Photoshop and did a lot of digging around for resources to use it efficiently, making me step way out of my comfort zone. I am also terrible at coloring digitally, so this project pushed me to do a ton of coloring.

There was something I always wanted to try, and it was coloring without lineart, which I did for the plate. It is weirdly my favorite part of the project. I ended up picking a matcha cake because I enjoy having desserts with my friends and having long talks, and matcha is one of my favorite flavors and reminds me of when I went to Japan and tried the matcha tea. I also loved the inside of the cake.

Some other techniques and tools I used were clipping masks, destructive and nondestructive ways of editing, and using the frame animation timeline to make my gif.

Tarot Cards, 2020
Janice Hu
10.36 in x 20 in

I chose to create my own set of tarot cards for the final project because I have always wanted to make my own. I thought it could help me with creativity since the cards are kind of like prompts for what to draw. The drawings I created are based on the cards’ meanings, and the names of the cards are labeled on the bottom. I tried not to make everything literal. Some pictures may be hard to understand why I decided to portray the card like that, but the drawings came to me when I read the cards’ meanings. I spent a lot of time on this project and used many colors that I thought fit what I was going for. I used different types of layers on my piece, and tried to create environments within the cards. I also used a lot of gradients, which I think helped add dynamic to my piece.

Godflowers, 2021
Janice Hu
3.875 in x 6.875 in

The theme of my work is to show how some of the Greek gods look as plants or fungi in my mind. I used what each god was in charge of or what they symbolize and depicted the image that came to my head into the cards. The program I used was Clip Studio Paint. I am not very good at painting so my style always changes, but I tried to stay loyal to one style so some images wouldn’t look too out of place. My favorite card I drew were the three in the top row: Athena, Dionysus, and Hermes. For those three I had a clearer image of what I wanted to depict, and I felt it was more unique too. For Hermes and Poseidon I used overlay layers to show sunlight or glow. For Athena I started off with the vase and the book, then did the background, but for the other cards I started off with the background first. Throughout this process, I realized laying down just some colors in the background can help you show the atmosphere of what you are trying to draw a lot better. For Dionysus, there is actually an underlying layer which I scrapped, except for the part in the wine cup because I thought it looked a lot more interesting when it seemed like there was something in the drink. I struggled a bit with the name tags, especially for Dionysus because I didn’t want to cover up the grapes, the vines, and the pretty clouds I spent quite some time on. However, I still think it looks okay. Overall, it was hard getting used to painting again since I am not a great painter, but some of the cards turned out beautifully to me.

Capture The Moment Birthday Cat, 2021
Janice Hu
13 in x 19 in

I wanted to do something related to memories or sentimental moments for this project, but I had some problems trying to choose an image to draw. I eventually decided on drawing the birthday of a cat. Since I was making a poster advertising for Canon, I thought it would be nice to draw an image that is cute and sweet, and a kitten’s first birthday sounded the best to me. I used Clip Studio Paint and Photoshop but encountered some technical difficulties while I was working on it. It also made me decide to repaint everything, which is why it looks different from my initial draft. At first I had a circular frame around my drawing to portray camera lens, but I didn’t know what to do with the background of it outside of the lens. In the end, I scrapped that and did it without the lens. I used many layers because I was afraid of making mistakes, so if I did I could just go back to the original layer. At the very end I added a glow effect that shows the light coming off the candle with the number one, and added the Canon logo as well as “capture the moment.” I was wondering if I should have “capture the moment” or not, but when I looked at it without it, it felt a bit confusing to just have a cat’s birthday, even though we all know it’s a camera advertisement. I left it in and made the words smaller so it doesn’t distract from the rest of the painting. I also had the image in 16 x 19 in length at first, but luckily I just trimmed it down to 13 x 19 in and it still fit (though I think the 16 x 19 in one looks better because there’s more space!). This was actually my first time drawing/painting a cat so I had quite a lot of difficulties trying to make it work and I’m still not totally satisfied, but I think it ended up cute!

The Tale Of The Dueling Neurosurgeons, 2021
Janice Hu
11.5 in x 8 in

The concept of my design is to look cluttered and messy, with bright and contrasting colors I took from the side of the book I have, and because the book is about stories about psychological issues/mysteries, I have drawn a brain, some neurons, and other parts of the body that were talked about in the book.

The technical process of this project required me to draw a lot. Everything was drawn from scratch besides the brain, which I have attached the original image below. The coloring was also all done by me with brushes in my digital art program and not the fill bucket because there were too many gaps. The programs I used were Clip Paint Studio (which can support PSD files), Illustrator, and InDesign, and I used Illustrator to import and change the PSD file into a vector image, which I then added into my InDesign file. I’m not very good with coloring so I struggled a bit with it but I was surprised that it turned out okay in the end, even though I used many layers and got confused which one was which once in a while. The final work looks the way I wanted, chaotic and colorful.