The content of my tribute art wasn’t as symbolic as I wish it was, simply because I couldn’t get enough information about my relatives who have passed away. So instead, I tried to focus on what felt right to represent all of the people higher up in my family tree in a general way. I chose to portray my family instead of a famous person or something similar because my current family is one of the most important things to me. They are a very important influence in my life, they protect me and make me feel safe, and most importantly they make me feel loved. No matter what happens, my family will always bring happiness to me. That’s why I’m sure my ancestors would’ve been the same way to me. Lastly, though I don’t know exactly what they liked to do, I do know based on the stories my mother has told me that they liked to endure work. It does sound a bit odd, but it has indeed been what’s motivating my family for generations, including mine. That natural trait of my family was represented in my project by flames. Flames represent compulsion, zeal, motivation, determination, and will.
    My tribute artwork was a sugar skull. Black was a prominent color because it symbolizes what my family values: strength, seriousness, and especially authority (obedience). I used a black texture for the background (to add detail and balance it all out), and half of the gradient that I used on the skull was black as well. Also, I inverted the color of the skull (white lines instead of black), used a gradient on the flames, added crescents in the eye holes and made them look like pupils to symbolize the energy of life, added a polarized white rose to match it to the 2D style of my project and make it look cool (it was the center of attention), added slightly-grayish blue tears and light gray wings to match the color scheme, and of course a simplistic border to complete the look of my artwork.
    I believe the design was very successful, however it could’ve looked much better if everything didn’t have a solid border. Also, the skull wasn’t directly in the middle, which still bugs me, and I would’ve made the border less rigid if I had more time. Last but not least, I like how my skull sort of looked like it was smiling. It was a very nice touch.
    During this project, I used the magic tool a lot, the eraser, the adjustment settings, the magnetic lasso tool, the gradient tool, the paint bucket, the pencil, the transformation settings, and of course the move/selection tool.

​My style of artwork was a sugar skull.  I used darker colors like black and gray.  Along with that I used red and green to express the importance of Portugal with my grandfather.  Most sugar skulls involve immense amount of colors however I wanted to go a different route. I used a mustache because my grandfather used to have a mustache, and the wore the exact same hat I used in my artwork.  The cigarette is because he used to smoke. I put the mountain in because where I’m from in Portugal is full of mountains. In my opinion it was successful because I depicted my grandfather very well, even my mom told me I did.  I honestly wouldn’t change anything. I used liquify for the first time and it was pretty cool. I used the mixture brush to create my smoke instead of snatching from the internet. I also used hue/saturation, gradient map, and selective color to make the flame and sky red and green instead of black and gray.

​My style of artwork is a sugar skull. I used lots of bright colors, such as oranges, red, and yellow. In all of the tribute art I’ve seen, it includes the vibrant colors and busy activity. I used the mustache and top hat as characteristics that stand out on Walt Disney’s face. I also placed the castle and fireworks in the background as that is a scene that most people who have been to Disney World are familiar with. The marigolds were on the eyes of my skull and on the bottom simply to add more color to my piece, and because most sugar skulls have marigolds somewhere on them. The roses were placed at the bottom of the image to both fill the empty space and to represent another part of Disney World: the roses around the statue of Walt Disney near the entrance of the park. The Mickey at the bottom of the artwork is because Mickey is the main character that Disney is associated with. I placed his face in the middle of the page, with the background surrounding him to show that Disney is surrounding by his greatest accomplishments and successes.  I think it is clear who I was trying to represent in my tribute art, but I would probably add more texture to the piece if I were to do it again. My main tool was the magic wand tool to move images from one page to another where I could make an actual image from smaller ones. I also had to use the eraser tool to replace the nose and eyes on the original sugar skull picture, with the ones I put on there now.

My tribute artwork was a sugar skull of Bob Ross, the one and only relaxing painter guy. I chose Bob Ross mostly because of his relevance to current pop culture, and because his profession as an artist would lead to interesting designs on a sugar skull. His love of painting is represented in the paintbrushes growing across his cheeks, as well as his nose being a painter’s palette. His eyes and forehead are also covered in the trees, clouds, and mountains that he is known for painting and talking about. In making the eyes and forehead designs I made an outline with the brush tool, and used the bucket tool to fill this initial space, then again used the brush tool with 50% opacity for the detailing of the designs. I also used the brush tool with the drawing tablet to texture his hair and beard. I selected the area for the hair and beard beforehand so that the brush would not bleed outside the edges of the selected area. I also used gradients to choose the colors; after coloring two adjacent parts of the hair I used a gradient between the two colors and selected the in between colors to make the hair colors appear to fade into itself naturally. I liked the texture of the hair, but I feel like I could have done better, possibly by using a filter to make the hair appear more painted on, as Bob Ross himself would paint it.

​Ofrenda: My ofrenda has a picture of an old man that could be someone's family member. The ofrenda is decorated with many different marigolds. There is bread and empanadas for the dead to come and get once they cross over for the day. The ofrenda also has skeleton holding marigolds, the traditional flower for the day of the dead.

​I made the sugar skull  for Christopher Wallace, better known as the Notorious B.I.G. Thankfully I have not lost anyone close to me in my lifetime so I got to make this sugar skull on a person of my choice. I chose the Notorious B.I.G because I enjoy listening to my music, I obviously have no real connection to the man as he passed before I was even born, but I thought it would be nice to make this sugar skull for him. I put both of his kids names on his skull because he didn’t get to see his kids grow up in life. I also put two of my favorite lyrics from Biggie, there were plenty of others that could be used but I chose those two. Also, one of the bigger parts of the skull is the big crown laid crooked atop his head. This is there because of the most famous picture of him, with a crown laying exactly the same on his head. I put a gradient in the background because I really felt it made the skull really pop, I also colored his teeth in gold and made his eyes ruby’s showing his luxurious lifestyle. I like everything i did in the skull, especially the text boxes, almost appearing as face tattoos.

I have created my sugar skull with many details involved in this artwork.  I have created and put a golden texture representing strength and power with some gold spots outside of the shape of the sugar skull to add an attempt of some sort of 3D effect to it.  I have added a flower with soft purple transparent to pink-ish and with some sort of orange-y red-ish color giving a peaceful vibe or atmosphere to this, but I have also added a darkness and bad atmosphere to my sugar skull by adding fire flames into the eyes but around the eyes I have added a few lines making a shape of wings representing “forgiveness”.  I have added a flourish with a red color to give my artwork some classiness, and fanciness. I have also added fire two fire flames in different corners in the background that are black to give an edgy vibe, I have also put onto the fire flames the paint brush with a red color using the opacity to make the paint brush have a blur effect to make the fire flames pop and around the background I have also used the paint brush with the opacity to add all shades of black through light grey and some spots white to give a smoke from the fire and to make this artwork edgy.  

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For the tribute art we did in class, I chose to tribute my Pepe. I chose my great grandfather to create the artwork for because he was always my biggest fan. He enjoyed watching me grow up for as long as he could. He loved fishing, traveling the world with my Meme and most importantly his toothpicks. Every time I saw him he was chewing on a toothpick, it was his signature look. When my Pepe passed, my Meme gave me his crucifix. He used to carry with everywhere he went to let himself know, God was always on his side. Now that I have it, I carry it in my purse so I know that my Pepe is always on my side. I represented my Pepe in the sugar skull by adding into a crucifix, a toothpick and the sun in the eyes to represent Florida. Him and my Meme have a house in Florida where everyone winter they would drive their camper down to Florida and then back up to Mass. in May.

​My project is about my late grandma. I chose her because I don’t have many dead relatives that I have met as she is the one that I know that most about. She was the lady who didn’t treat her grandchildren like they were more than earth. She treated us like we were just another person and I loved that about her. She taught me how I don’t need to be higher than everyone else. She enjoyed mostly being with her family and having people over her house for events. I didn’t represent people coming to her house in a traditional sense. I showed that with the fake fruit. When ever we went to her house the first thing I would do is play with the fruit and have fun with it every single time.