Working in Adobe Illustrator was so interesting because in a lot of way it’s counterintuitive. We aren’t accustomed to thinking in terms of shapes an lassoing angles to try and create images. It’s a challenge. Try and use the mouse like you would a pencil and you don’t end up with much. Try and use your mouse to put down anchor-points and manipulate angles and… if it’s your first try, like it was mine, you still don’t end up with much, at least until you except you’re working towards a colorful, clean-edged abstraction. which is a lot of fun, and it made me think.
This is what I thought. I think in the long run, if any of us were to keep after mastering this program, it would expand our creative capacity. It takes a skill most of us haven’t developed yet to think of, say, a drawing of a cow in the terms of the process we’d need to in order to build it out of these blocks. It underlines the problem-solving exercise inherent in all artwork, the execution half of the process, and that’s got to be pretty valuable.
Thinking in terms of shapes and breaking images down helped me develop my own definition of collage. In the past, I’ve always thought about collage in terms of bringing together whole objects to create an image. Now, I’m able to think of collage more in terms of bringing together fractions of different objects to create an image.
I really agree that Adobe was counterintuitive, and it took the whole class period for me to figure out how each button worked. I wanted to create an explosion like he had suggested in class and then when I was playing with the blending tool for the color, I struggled. However, once I started to figure out how things worked, it was an interesting skill to learn. I can agree with your point that it does expand our creativity because we were working creatively in a way that most of us probably had not thought of before. Once we learn how to use it, it would be a great way for someone who is not artistically talented to be creative.