Yes, I drew the face on the screen using the knobs. Yes, it was a pain in the neck. No, it's not what I "do," but I thought it would make an interesting photo. I had to buy the Etch a Sketch for the challenge, and this was my first attempt. I drew the face a little too large, but close enough.
To illustrate the face, I took a photo of my daughter (not the same one holding the frame), converted to a very light B&W, and printed it out on transparent inkjet film. Using the film on the screen as a guide, I carefully traced over the image— a tedious process that took several hours. Though the line work is real, I left the film in place because I liked the subtle shading in the open areas. I went to some trouble to coordinate the background color with gels, but B&W provided a closer match to the face and made it look a little more real. Here's a version without the gel. Unfortunately, the super-bright hue of the frame resulted in noise when converted and the abundance of midtones creates a muddy look. Not my best photo— this one relies more on concept than photography. :-/
FWIW, this was my second entry in a row to get absolutely clobbered by the early voters. I was at 3.667 after the first few votes and didn't get above 5 until early the next morning. Tough crowd!
Processing: Levels, Curves, Smart Sharpen, B&W conversion with adjustments to yellow, red and magenta channels, and Noise Ninja as a final sharpening step.
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Place: 1 out of 146 Avg (all users): 6.9929 Avg (commenters): 7.5882 Avg (participants): 6.6047 Avg (non-participants): 7.1649 Views since voting: 6535 Views during voting: 404 Votes: 140 Comments: 54 Favorites: 16 (view)
Wow! You are an artist of many genres! That is a very cool etch-a-sketch drawing! And a brilliant idea for the challenge :) Glad your hours of work paid off!
I agree that's a really good bit of sketching, but if you haven't already seen it, check out this guy's gallery -- it's almost unbelievable what he does ...
Wow! Very impressive. I didn't have a chance to vote in this one or go through all the entries. I'm always amazed at the things people will actually do for these challenges. So creative and fun!
That's exactly where my career started (in high school), and I got as far as Chiat/Day (Apple, the Energizer Bunny, Nynex, Reebok, etc.) in college before straying into other fields of graphic design. I'd go back to that in a heartbeat!
I knew this had to be yours as soon as I saw it. It's good to see another one of your elaborate concepts fully realized and ribboning. I have nothing but admiration for your ability to do this. Have you ever considered being an ad man? :-)
Good one Shannon--hadn't thought of a paper overlay to help with the drawing. I'm still impressed; i can only draw stair steps and worm holes. Congrats!
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