I first began teaching myself graphic design back in 2010
It's been 11 years already
My graphic design journey started in a high school photography class. I was less than a year away from graduating. I was in an art class with several of my friends and it was our last year of high school. The teacher was a sweet older lady who was passionate about art. Too bad she had a class full of crazy teenagers hell-bent on making things as chaotic as possible. Thankfully I was well behaved and actually took the time to focus on the art assignments we were given.
At the time I was shooting with my very first camera, a tiny little 8MP Canon Powershot SD1100. I wasn't able to do anything spectacular with that device, but it did allow me to find out that I had a natural eye for framing a proper photo. It was in this class that we were introduced to Photoshop.
My teacher always was very supportive of my work and constantly told me that I was an artist at heart. Never once in my life had I been told that before, until I turned 18, and was stuck inside of this classroom. It was something totally unheard of for me. All of my life I was an athlete, gamer, and jokester. Never an artist. I was intrigued by being good at something brand new, so I decided to pursue it further and see how good I really was, despite nearly everyone in my class claiming art was not cool.
I found a cracked version of Photoshop online for free and became obsessed with looking up tutorials online. I would spend hours daily trying to figure out basic the basic functions of Photoshop. I was pretty bad at first but eventually started figuring some things out. This Wiz Khalifa design was the first thing I ever completed outside of school's basic photo editing.
I was so proud of what I had done, but when I look at it now it is far from perfect in my eyes. I had at least figured out how to cut out people from the background, download custom fonts, blend textures/colors, and rip .pngs from google. I was on to something and was having a blast getting to be creative finally.
Right around this same time, I discovered my love for partying for the first time, the summer before I started college. I began drinking alcohol and smoking weed like many of my favorite hip-hop artists. I wanted to have fun more than be productive and find success. This led me to major in fine arts in college, I thought it would be easier and allow me to party more. Plus I was loving this whole graphic design thing.
I lasted less than two years in college. I didn't even make it to the graphic design courses, I was still just doing basic art classes which I didn't really enjoy. Throughout all of this time, I was still designing daily in my free time and absorbing as much knowledge as I could. I can say that I am 100% self-taught, literally, nobody has ever been there with me to teach me anything in person. Videos online and experimentation have shown me everything that I know now. The fact that I have so many shortcuts memorized by heart is pretty satisfying.
I am so thankful that I stuck with graphic design and allowed it to become one of my many passions. I began by focusing on the custom cover art for my favorite hip hop songs, but my skills have expanded far beyond that now. My favorite thing at the moment is creating custom thumbnails for all of my posts on Hive. I am drawn to movies, music, books, etc by the artwork that represents them. It doesn't 100% sell me, but it is one of the first things to capture my attention always. That is why I spend so much time on my thumbnails because I know that is a great way to get people to glance at what you've created.
I think I am far from a master of graphic design still, but I am confident in my skills and use them daily. I truly have to be thankful for that poor art teacher back in high school. She is the first person in my life to tell me that I had a unique skill to be creative. I believed her and now think what she said is more true than ever. Creating things is one of my favorite hobbies in this world. I am obsessed with unleashing all that lies within my soul to the world. I'm lucky as can be to have such an awesome place to share all of my work on Hive.
I thank you tremendously for supporting my creative ventures. If you enjoyed reading this story, leave a comment and let me know.
https://punks.usehive.com/gallery/daltono
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What a journey man looking forward to seeing where it’ll take you 👊🏼
It has been quite a long time since being creative became a thing for me. Time flies, but I cherish all that I have learned and hope to continue developing my skills.
Hehe I was going to say you did a good job at removing the background of Wiz Khalifas picture. Nice, I’m self taught too, I can find my way on PSD but to an extent. YouTube videos did it for me plus I have interest in art and design so the rest of my work were just free styling stuff I ended up liking. After Uni, I did a design one time and put it on a shirt for myself, people liked the shirt and started to buy from me.
I used to get so annoyed with the magnetic lasso. Luckily they have made the tool a lot better and I can rely on the polygonal lasso even better. My hand is far steadier than it was in the beginning, that is for certain.
Isn't it cool turning your work into actual merch? I have ordered many of my designs. Some turned out terribly because I didn't know what I was doing. Luckily I have it figured out now and have some pretty awesome stuff to wear.
Lool
I do not like both lassos and try to avoid it as much
It’s feels super cool...especially when other people admire it and not just you.
Do you prefer Corel draw or PSD though? PSD has always been my go to design app
Every digital cowboy needs to learn to love his lasso 🤠
PSD all the way for me. It’s what I’m used to.
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hahaha, I think you are more powerful than me, I used to remember when I first used Corel Draw I only combined two photos and I think at that time I was an expert in the art of photography editing, and when I think about it now I know it's a simple thing to do by kids
It's funny how we go through different levels of mastery. During each phase, we have thoughts of being the best and the worst. As long as we remain consistent with our endeavors, one thing that is near certain is progress.
Of course
Some awesome stuff man, do you do graphic design for a company or yourself?
I've been finding it fun to do some stuff for editing. We started a YT channel and I've had to learn how to use different editing software programs like GIMP and HitFilm express so I've been doing a lot on the design and editing side lately! I'm hoping it can turn into long-term work and pays off in the end but that's one of the fun things, having a lot of interests! This is all completely far away from what my actual career is lol I enjoy it though, it's a lot of fun!
I'm hoping to get better at editing things! This is one of my most recent experiments with engraving.
Turning things like a photograph into an engraving is an area of interest!
I only do designs for myself. I tried freelancing, but hated not having full creative control and emailing back and forth with people who had no experience with designing, yet tried to tell me how to do my job. I much prefer working on things for my own posts only.
Man as long as you are enjoying something, I say go for it. You can never get enough of the things you love, don't ever let your chances to do those things slip away in favor of something that doesn't make you happy.
As for that engraving style, that is definitely interesting. I'm sure you could compile a large collection of photos you turned into engravings rather quickly.
Thats really good stuff man, i've been teaching myself in UI and illustration designing over past few months ... here we dont get any courses to learn them ....have to rely on youtube and other online medias for it...Actually its so amazing to give wings to others ideas ...and yeah while working on it it has all our emotions and experiences given right into it...So yeah...do continue with work... I wish a successful career for you...Good luck Buddy🤗😀
Teaching ourselves may not be as easy as having somebody hold your hand through it all, but it is much more rewarding. I never have to look back to my times of learning and wish I had somebody next to me to help. I am always confident that I will figure things out on my own since that is what I've always done.