Gr. 11 Hero Project

For the 2nd project of the semester, the Gr. 11 Media Arts students focused on creating digital art by way of portraiture that features their own chosen personal heroes. By definition, a hero is a person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model or ideal. For this project, each student chose someone who has persevered through all odds and continues to help society at large through their work.

Miguel A.

I don’t really have people I would consider heroes in my life, but if there’s someone I deeply care about and look up to, it’s my grandfather, the person I chose for my hero project. My grandfather didn’t have the easiest childhood, he grew up fairly poor, moving from place  to place  in Caracas. Yet even through all the troubles and hardships he faced he still managed to look for the positives in life. He always talks about “Looking for the positives in the negatives.”, a line I hold near and dear to me. My design process consisted of taking a portrait of him, setting up the lighting to get just enough shadows, then posterizing the image. I then vectorized the images, and used the old crumpled paper textures around the face areas of the vector portrait. All in all this took longer to do than expected since I had to restart multiple times due to save issues, but I think the end product turned out to be great.

Alexandra B. – Greta Thunberg

The subject of this piece is Greta Thunberg, a Swedish environmental activist. The reference photo used was her holding up a sign at a protest. I originally had a hard time picking my ‘hero,’ because I don’t really idealize people. I decided to pick Greta because she’s very young to be doing what she’s doing. I think she sends a good message to students our age, that you’re never too young to create change in the world. Additionally, climate change is a really important issue in my opinion, because at this point in time, no one can really avoid it. Hence, why Greta is holding a sign saying ‘change is coming whether you like it or not.’ When rendering this piece, there was a lot of technological challenges (such as the computer deleting all my work,) as well as a ton of self-doubt in some of my artistic choices.  

I really like the values used in my piece. From the beginning, I was very set on rendering this piece how I would normally paint or draw traditionally. (I guess because I’m stubborn). So I kept into consideration things such as not using a plain white for the whites of the eyes, rather using a very light blue. In addition, I wanted to create a colour gradient in the piece, especially the face, of not just different tones or shades in one hue, rather use multiple hues intermixed like I would with paint. If I had more time, and really more experience using Gravit, I would clean up the linework. In addition, I would have liked to find a better font.

Vlad C. – Elon Musk

My Hero Project is a digital vector graphics based portrait of Elon Musk, whose achievements and actions I admire a lot, and am inspired by. As an innovator and entrepreneur, Musk has been extremely influential and successful the past few years. His electric car company Tesla has been laying the foundations for a cleaner future, his private space company SpaceX has been pushing forward the space industry altogether, and his several other companies are continuing to innovate and completely change the game in areas such as artificial intelligence, solar power, and transportation. 

  The portrait took me a good amount of time to complete, since I chose to add an extra level of detail to his face by adding an additional layer of shadow to ensure that I captured exactly what I was looking for detail-wise. At the very end, after I was finished, I decided to add more detail to the coat and shirt by adding shadows and highlights to make sure it didn’t look bland. This turned out to be more difficult than expected, since I really tried to make the coat look real by adding subtle shades and highlights of creases to give it that 3D look. I think the part I enjoy most about this piece of art is the quote, even though it is not entirely visible. “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” I think is a very significant to this portrait since I believe it really represents Musk since many of his companies and ideas, from Tesla to SpaceX, are pushing the envelope and going against all odds, opinions, and disbeliefs, to pave the road to a better, more innovative, more sustainable future.

Charlotte C. – Freddie Mercury

Gabriel D. – Kanye West

My artwork is a vector image of the rapper Kanye West depicting him in one of his most iconic appearances at the Grammys. The concept here is to have Kanye West in some sort of spotlight. I tried adding some layers of filters around and having Kanye blur a bit into the background to give off some lighting effects to go with that. I chose to make everything look purple as purple is a more cold and dark colour which fits well with the quote as the quote is also fairly dark yet realistic. I arrived at my final idea when I made the checkerboard pattern in the background which sort of represents a literal stage for Kanye which is distorted in the background. My favourite thing about this piece is definitely Kanye himself as I’m pretty pleased with how I made him and I’m also satisfied with what picture I chose and also to have a waist up photo as I think it just gives people more of a sneak peek of how Kanye West’s personality is like. If I were given more time I would add a bit more detail to Kanye west since I think some parts such as his shirt needed more love in that department.

Allyana G. – Katya Zamolodchikova

My work is about my adoration and depiction of my hero, Katya Zamolodchikova. She is a drag queen, who uses her platform to promote self authenticity and humbleness. I choose this picture of her because her brand is about physical comedy with a touch of weirdness. The background is her  Russian phrase “I am a star – forever.” Because she plays a Russian character full of the certainty of herself. The majority of the work is in 

Red because she always wears red lipstick to match the suggestive side of her comedy. 

   If given more time I would find a better font. The font didn’t make much of a statement as I would’ve wanted to. I’m really proud of how the nose comes out. All in all, I liked the final outcome because it looks like a sticker I could use in messaging apps.

Abby G. – Selena Gomez

Selena Gomez is an inspiration to many artists and young boys and girls to truly be yourself. She has done work for charities and has given children hopes and helped them see out their final wishes. For kids like me who were fortunate enough to have a television in the home and be able to watch every morning, many of us got the pleasure of being able to watch her on different shows and movies. It took me a while to decide on who I would choose for this assignment because there are many people in this world that have had somewhat of an impact on my life whether that is a family member, a friend or even a celebrity. Selena Gomez, with her music and acting, helped me find my path of going into the arts. With the quote i chose, it goes with the photo that is in the piece because Selena was average like most of us before her fame. She changed her life to look the way she wanted it to look. Many of us teenagers just let life fly past us and by the time we are older, we never got to accomplish the things we wanted to. If I were to have given myself more time, I would have chosen an easier picture to trace and focused more on curved lines instead of the straight line. I do love the way it turned out and really came to life with the colours and lining of the picture.

Rober H. – Niki Minaj

My art is about my favourite celebrity and rapper, Nicki Minaj. When this project was first brought up, I immediately thought of her as a hero. So it would be a great way to conceptualize her in a one piece art. The point of this artwork is to show who this rapper is, and how she is a role model to many people through her lyrics, skills and confidence. Looking for the right images to represent her took a lot of time, but it was worth the search. After finally finding the image with the perfect look, quality and contrast for the project, I started working on it. I first began by drawing out her hair, all the way until the clothing, and then re-arranged the parts in the right layers to show them properly. I managed to create her with the background using the theme of her most viral solo, that is about showing confidence and empowerment. That theme led me using this certain image of her with the wildlife background. My favourite parts of this art are the background, the text and her hair. Although, I feel like the clothing could have been matched better, but I found that it could mess a lot up.

Mehrshad M. – Marshall Mathers aka eminem

Eminem is one of my hero and role model and I wanted to share one of his motivational quotes with you. Further, Eminem has a charitable organization named “Marshall Mathers Foundation” which focuses on at-risk youth in Detroit, Michigan and other surrounding communities. For creating this artwork, I simply followed the instructions in tutorials (Chadwick Boseman) by working on the selected eminem photo. For background, I separated it by colouring the left side grey and right side red. For the left side, I drew a blood shape just like his new album cover. The purpose is to make the artwork a little like his songs. For the right side, after I wrote the texts, I imported a dark stripe texture kinda like a blackboard and applied the multiply option and was finished. The one thing that I like the most is the blood drips and obviously the vectorized portrait. Also, there’s nothing I’d really want to do or at least It’s out of my skills.

Jordon M. – Elon Musk

I created this piece to show my appreciation and inspiration I draw from Elon musk. With this piece I decided to choose an image of Elon speaking to a large audience because it would show the sphere of influence that Elon has on so many people’s lives. I also chose this image because it looked like he was trying to get a very important message across. I think this represents his personality pretty well as he is always hard working and willing to share his ideas. I chose a blue background and yellow font to really make the quote stand out. Though the quote is not entirely readable, the concept was to make it stand out. While thinking of a hero, it was imperative for me to choose someone I really admired. I had considered options such as Frank Sinatra because his story was one I really looked up to. He started off in Hoboken New jersey as just a regular man and climbed his way to the top. He also was very vocal about his condemnation of segregation as he viewed it as a sign that racists had to “grow up”. The only unfortunate thing was that he did not have particularly good quotes. Instead I chose Elon because he is more relevant today than ever. He works hundreds of hours a month just to make a better future for humanity. Some of his projects include making space flight commercial, increasing the ownership of electric cars and most famously landing the first humans on mars. I definitely think that Elon will be one of if not the most influential person of the 21st century.

He is truly someone who cares about humanity as a whole and wishes to take part in its growth as a species. The quote I chose for this piece was, “Really the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.”. I chose this quote because it says a lot about Elon’s goals and hopes for the future. It gets across his motive of wanting to help the largest number of people possible. This quote is something that I can personally agree with as I find myself thinking about humanity’s future quite a lot. The power of education is often underestimated and is capable of allowing people by the masses to change the future. The parts of my piece that I like the most are the shadows and highlights. I think I did a really good job capturing the details and shading of the room Elon was in when the picture was taken. Something I would like to improve on was the lips. I feel like it was very difficult to get the detail correct because I have not had much experience tracing lips before. Overall I am quite proud of the piece I have created and I am glad I was able to express my admiration for Elon Musk.

Marco N. – Jon Bon Jovi

My work is about my hero, Jon Bon Jovi. The concept behind my artwork is to represent him and his music, seeing as most kids my age don’t really listen to old rock music. I wanted to represent him and his music since I have been listening to him since a little kid, and I love his music so much. The process I took to create this artwork was finding the perfect picture to fit this assignment, it took a while. After that I had fun drawing him, I started with the hair, then the blacks. After that I added the skin, shadows, highlights, and identified the skintones. In the picture, the guitar was difficult to draw, but I think I managed to do an okay job. The guitar is the thing I think I could improve, but other than that, I love the way I drew the hair in this artwork. 

Also, I think that the quote is a little hard to understand seeing as it’s behind his head.

The quote is “Nothing is more important than passion”.

Nathaniel Q. – Robert Downey Jr.

For the hero project, I decided to recreate Robert Downey Jr. I first started the project by creating base tones for the head, shirt, and arms. I figured that Starting with a base tone would help me later with the details. I started working on the arms first since his face has the most detail I wanted to do that last. Once I reached his face It turned out to be a bit more of a challenge than I thought it would be. I really struggled with the eyes in this project, it really took me a while to get it the way I wanted it to be. The part I really liked the most is the hair, I feel like I made it pretty accurate to his actual hair so I’m pretty happy about that. Next time I would like to improve on the eyes so that they look cleaner for the next project.

Cooper S. – Albert Einstein

My work is about a hero of mine, Albert Einstein. He was a brilliant thinker, someone who helped out humanity greatly, and who was a good person with an interesting perspective of the world. This is shown in his quotes. The concept took the most famous black and white photograph of Albert Einstein, but added an artistic flare and depth to the image. If it cannot be in black and white, please let me know and I will do my best to colorize the art. However, since the original photo was just with shades and no colour, I figured it would be alright to follow a similar style so it’s more easily comparable and respectful to the base picture. If that’s not allowed, though, I will quickly try a way with more colours. The process I took was going through memory of the Chadwick Boseman art. After I turned up the contrast, I used my skills with the pen tool to trace over in many layers of different shades, and I attempted to stay true to the highlights, shadows, and other elements of the photo. Plus, I was adding things like the texture on top and blurry text at the back. I wanted to recreate the famous image in a cooler way, and using his inspiring quote as a backdrop, we’re able to really feel like this newly-designed Einstein is popping out, yet still in that same feel as before. I like the end product of his face art, although you could probably tweak every small point endlessly, what I have now looks really similar to reality in my opinion. I’m pretty happy with it, but given more time I would adjust every line just to make it more precise, and maybe make a colourized version with the imagined skin tone and colours to see what he actually looked like.

Jazmin T.

My work is of one of my heroes, Harry Styles. Harry Styles is a celebrity however he donates to a different charity every place he goes to on tour. https://hstyles.co.uk/tpwk The concept of my work is a portrait of Harry with the words “TPWK” written which stands for, treat people with kindness. This quote is important to me because it is what I try to live by, but it is also the words of Harry’s brand and he has a song titled “Treat People With Kindness”. To create this work I used a photo of him and outlined him in geometric shapes to then fill with according colours. I arrived at my final idea when I decided to use pink for my background and blue for the text because not only do they compliment each other, they are the colours of his latest album cover. I like the words in his hair the most because I thought it was a creative way of showing them instead of placing them in the background. Lastly, if I had more time to complete this assignment I would most likely change the way I did the lines, I would attempt a more realistic approach instead of geometric. Overall, I am glad I was able to create a work of someone who means a lot to me and is indeed a hero.