Dave's creative corner

  In high school we had to recreate Andy Warhol's piece of Marilyn Monroe, my picture was of Bugs Bunny I wanted to make another one from this assignment. However, due to software issues....this was by far the most frustrating assignment... Photoshop kept crashing and freezing every time I would zoom in to adjust the pixels.   My saves occasionally wouldn't save and my layer masks, when I would go to reuse them, would be waaay off so the colors would bleed and I had  to redo the edges every image.   But I think the end result was impressive, even though all my friends tell me I look like a drag queen!

This was by far my favorite assignment so far.  Not many people realize that on average, 22 vets each day take their lives.  Purple and Turquoise are the colors for veterans suicide, which is why I highlighted the important words with those colors....VETERANS YOU STRONG PHONE.  Phone is important because most of the times the vet is at home self medicating, and if they could just put their meds of choice down and pick up the phone and reach out...it could make all the difference.  

 This is a calligram, an image created with just words.  Being a combat veteran, I felt I needed to express myself through my art.  Below are the steps to this final creation.                                                                                           Start with a selfie                                                                                          outline sections                                                   take the words and start constructing the different areas                                                                            add colors to match skin tones

Deciding on just five words to describe myself was pretty difficult.  Seriously, on one hand I am a pretty nice person who will go well out of my way to help most people, then on the other I can be a real $%*hole.  Here are my are my top five :  SUCCESSFUL, FUN, DILIGENT, LEADER AND LOYAL To make matters worse, we had to draw to 25 pictures.  Now I used to be an artist back in the 80s and 90's.  Sketches, paintings, calligraphy, I did it all.  All that stopped in '97 when I joined the Army where there is no need for those skills.  I hadn't drawn in over 23 years, now THAT was the most challenging thing of this assignment.  Think I'm drawing at a 3rd graders level now, lol.  Enjoy!