American Sign Language Octopus

My students have been making illustrations of American Sign Language of animals. I made an octopus. I used blue construction paper, white pencil, and black pencil.

Sign for Friendship

This is the sign for friendship. It is part of a design I was asked to do for Student Appreciation Day at school. Staff at school volunteer as waiters and serve the students lunch. This design will appear on the top of the cake that will be served for desert. I'm not sure how they do that, though.

Halftone Dots

I am continually learning new things with Photoshop and my job affords me opportunities to experiment. For instance, one of the staff wanted me to come up with a simple t-shirt design, in like, no time for a workshop we will have at school. The only thing I had to go on is that the theme is "cooperation" and that he wanted to see an illustration of the American Sign Language hand sign for that word. Not bad. I drew up the hands, inked them, fooled around with some text, and layed out a simple design. The only problem was that the hands looked pretty flat and that the linework of the the fingers and the creases in the palm was too busy to distiguish what is going on. That's when I thought of a recent blog that I periodically read. Chris Wahl, who is an amazing illustrator, posted a short tutorial on creating halftones using Photoshop. Mike Zeck also gives a great tutorial on his site. The effect that is created is like zip-a-tone sheets used by cartoonists not long ago.