For Project 2 I chose to illustrate a Monochromatic Landscape. The inspiration for my illustration was one of my favorite movies, Star Wars. I chose to illustrate a scene from the desert planet of Tatooine.

To make the landscape as authentic as possible, I decided to include many items from the Star Wars movies for decoration. The forefront of the illustration features Luke Skywalker’s home, his trusty droid R2-D2, and Luke’s speeder. Not far behind these items are three moisture evaporators, which were seen in the movie around Luke’s home. In the distance are some mountains and sand dunes. Atop one of the mountains is the palace of Jabba the Hutt, while the Death Star rises ominously behind the adjacent mountain range. The Millennium Falcon flies upward from behind the sand dunes to engage in battle with Darth Vader’s fighter and two other tie fighters. On the sand dunes below, a couple of Banthas are leisurely strolling along while a Jawa Sandcrawler is seen heading towards Jabba’s palace. C-3PO is also visible, waving frantically from one of the sand dunes. Lastly, the infamous two moons of Tatooine watch the drama unfold from the sky.

While working on this project, I found vector textures to be much easier to work with than the bitmap .tif files. They seemed to take up less memory and result in fewer program crashes. I incorporated many textures and brushes to add depth and interest to my illustration. The linocut brushes gave me the ability to add some texture and depth to the mountains without going overboard or becoming too distracting. I added some grunge texture to the Death Star and Millennium Falcon to give them a rougher appearance since they have been in many battles and are a bit beaten up. A bit of texture on the Jawa Sandcrawler helped to give the illusion of some dirt or rust on the exterior of the vehicle. Crackle texture was added to the ground to give the appearance of a dry sand bed, often found in the desert, and also some grain texture was added for more detail. Luke’s house features some stippling brushwork to the top and bottom edges, as well as some grain texture overall. To help the Bantha’s appear hairy, and not too flat and curvilinear, I used the roughen effect. A grunge brush came in handy to create some wispy clouds, the jet wash from the Millennium Falcon, and some shadows for various elements.

For my color palette, I chose the color orange and applied it in varying shades and tints. I chose orange because it reminded me of the desert, which is primarily what the planet of Tatooine consists of. I used the darker shades of orange for the mountain ranges and items that were in the background to create the illusion of depth. For the foreground items, I used the lighter colors.