Tracey Nautel Blog

I have started giving some thought to my personal online portfolio site.  Here is a sketch of how I would like to have it laid out (apologies for quality - scanner not cooperating for me so had to snap a pic of it)  I must admit though I am confident I will be able to build this site the way I want, I am not as confident that I will have the right content to fill it and make it interesting.  We'll see...

Here is my final photo restore - I think it came out pretty well.  I spent a great deal of time going back over section 8  Balancing Colors  in the Lynda tutorial on Photoshop Fundamentals.  After a bit of trial and error I finally came up with what I feel like is a nice final product.  I am really excited to get a print made of my freshened image.  It has always been one of my very favorite family photos!

For my photo work I have chose a photo of  my father, on the far left, standing with his father and two brothers.  This is a small photo that I have on display in my sunny living room.  It is a color photo but is quite faded.  I am going to see if I can realistically brighten the colors up to bring it back to its original glory.  As my dad looks to be about 18 in the photo I am guessing it is easily 50 years old.  

Here is my re-designed cover for Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.  I enjoyed searching for a font that I thought demonstrated the sci-fi nature of the novel.  I also had fun playing with the photo of the player - I liked the way the grainy filter turned out.  I hope you like it! The font I used was called 'Rubber' - I had a difficult time finding a free font that had the look I wanted.   This was the best I could come up with - pretty happy with it. And the player is made from this photo I found and "borrowed".  I used filters on it that made it look like grainy video image.  I really like how it turned out.

The book cover I plan to design is for Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.  This is an all-time favorite read of my 11-yr old son and he is anxiously awaiting the release of the movie version later this month.  I thought it would be a good idea for me to read the book as well before we see the movie together so that I could keep up with what I know will be a fast paced story. I sketched out a few designs - the first of which I realized is probably a rip-off of an image I have already seen for the titled.  I finally honed in on a design that I plan to use black and white effects to get the image to pop.  I am hoping that I am able to draw out the silhouette of the player's face against the shape of an egg (representing the easter egg he is searching for throughout the video game).  I am hoping my overall design demonstrates the gestalt principle of closure.  And I found a font that I think I will use for all the text that definitely represents that principle...

This is my awareness poster - They Are All #DREAMers The issue I chose for my awareness poster is immigration, specifically DACA.  I chose an image of a diverse group of children that were smiling at the camera.  I put it as large as I could in the center of the poster so that there it was the first thing that draws in the reader.  I used a simple bold font to make my message clear and direct.  I tried to keep the overall colors clean and bright.   I hoped this bright feeling would convey the idea of the bright future all children deserve to look forward to.