This one was harder than I thought.  Maybe because I was in a hurry as I wanted to spend Sat. with my family on the farm.  Seems like any time you are in a hurry, things conspire to slow you down!

We were learning “live trace” and “live paint” in this exercise.  I hand drew outlines of the cat and the castle, scanned them into the computer, did a “live trace” in Adobe Illustrator, then did the clean-up and “live paint” work. 

I learned that  I am not real crazy about live trace.  If I had 20 more hours I might have been able to get him to look the way I wanted, but the tediousness was a bit much for my creative soul.  He is what he is. I am thinking that in the future I would probably use the pen tool for this type of work, but I can see how live trace could be handy for certain projects.  I also think I am still old school enough to want to do my art work by hand (draw, paint – you know… all that wonderful, messy, glorious tactile stuff.)

Criteria:  Illustrate a fairy tale on a comic book cover using live trace/live paint.

I chose to simulate a 1960’s comic book cover.  (The teacher tried to tell me several times that the UPC was not on the front cover and I reminded him each time that this was 1960s!  The teacher was not even born yet, so I do realize that it is probably hard to remember a time when UPCs were not on the front of comic book covers.  [Ok…that was a bit tongue in cheek…but really now!])

Again… another 90% but no reason as to why (one student laughed at me for being bothered by that.)  Steve (teacher) did say he thought it looked like “Tom and Jerry”.  Sheesh… I told him I was trying to mimic that time frame and drawing style (although this is not Tom or Jerry.)  I hit all the stated requirements and did my own drawings from my head right in class (which he saw), but again it just wasn’t enough. 

It is a frustrating thing when you can’t get the teacher to tell you what it will take to please him/her, but I think this is my quarter to learn to “accept the situation.”  However, I am not used to this sort of thing happening, since as a consultant I usually obtain all the requirements up front in order to bring the client the “wow” factor. 

Somehow I get the feeling I am missing something and I haven’t figured out how to get him to tell me what that might be. 

I will keep trying.  I have a few more weeks yet.