Learning Illustrator

I went to class on Monday and took pictures of the printer that I turned into a tree planter for a sculpture project. I had wondered if absence would make my heart grow fonder toward it. Nope. Seeing it again confirmed that it was awful. It looks like crafting with a glue gun gone wrong. I realize that not everything works out. And I have plenty of evidence of that. But this is so bad I am not going to show it here. Moving on...

Meanwhile, I am continuing to learn Adobe Illustrator. Our assignment is to take a picture of an animal and recreate it using fonts...basically learning the type tools. You start by placing a picture as a bottom layer and then lay areas and paths of text on top. At a certain point, the font animal takes on a life of its own and the photograph is no longer relevant. In fact, you really have to let go of the original and respond to the new design that is created by the letters. It's like coming up with a really good sentence. You might hold on to it longer than you should and then by a very late draft realize that you just have to let the sentence go because it no longer fits. The version shown here was rasterized--meaning put into a bitmap in Photoshop elements--so I could put it in a format that Blogger would appreciate. And yes, I did think of completing the assignment using the infamous photo of Jimmy. And I'm still thinking about it.