midterms...

It's midterms and we're getting into the narrative assignments of the assignment. So to start of the narrative assignments, we have to do a self portrait, caricature style! Check it!

book cover...

The second assignment for Intro to Illustration was to do a book cover. Wanting to try my hand at fashion illustration, I chose a book that would fit that style, Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palanhuik. For two weeks I did thumbnails for my concept, but nothing was working. A week before my finale project I threw all those crappy ideas and came up with a totally different concept. CHECK it!

original: water color, paper, and graphic pen

edited in Photoshop and type added in InDesign

Awesome huh? I'm pretty happy about it. If you didn't notice, I forgot the "I" in between the "V" and the "S" in the original. I didn't realize this until AFTER I had carefully cut out the letters from the tissue paper. Luckily, Photoshop was there to save the day. Anyway, let me know what you think and whether I should stick with the Helvetica or change it to Fuetura. Thanks much!

picasso girl...

Did I not tell you that my first piece, the master copy of Picasso's Don Quixote, would haunt me for the rest of my life? Well it's starting, and no one is going to let it go. Critique went well for my arbitrary piece. Burr loved the colors, but (that's a big but) he expected me to go all Picasso on it. "What happened to Picasso, Picasso girl?!" he asked me. Burr wasn't the only one asking about my Picasso inspired style, several students were as well. "Embrace it!" "Delve into it!" and all that fancy crap. For the record, Burr isn't asking me to be Picasso by doing all my work in his style. He expects me to be adventurist with texture and line....adventurist with my style. So let's be adventurist. Let's be inspired and create cause that's what I'll be doing from here on out....Picasso style.

arbitrary color...

Pretty self explanatory right? Our next assignment for digital illustration was to simply find a photo, change the color, saturation, contrast, etc. so that there is no trace of the original color. Then we're to render the photo in its new color digitally. Check it!

    original photo. of course i had to do fashion. then colors edited in photoshop.

finished product. 

fashion obsessed...

Hello my peeps. Good news, I found another artist to obsess over. AND she's a fashion illustrator! Introducing Stina Persson, fashion illustrator extraordinaire! 

She works with watercolor, acrylic, ink, and paper. She's sooo fun! I'm obsessed with her style because I'm in love with line, color, shape, and texture. She's simply an illustrator genius. So check out her website, be inspired and create...cause I am. In fact, she's my inspiration for my upcoming illustration project...creating a book cover. So watch out for that sucka! Peace.

Book Arts...

I've failed to post about my other classes. So this post is just to update you folks on what I've been up to in good ole book arts. Book arts is not a craft (aka arts and craft). In this class we learn the traditional techniques of book binding. We use materials that are archival, also known as expensive paper that will out live you. So far in the semester, we've been learning the different types of bindings. At the end of the semester we'll have to create a book with content. Like, for realz content; no journals, no photo albums....but artistic concepts. Aside from that, here's a book I'm currently working on.

   

Isn't that paper just fun! This one's just a mock up, but on Friday, I worked for five hours just tearing paper and getting my final book ready for Tuesday's class. 

Look at all that lovely paper. Seriously, I could tear paper forever. It's so relaxing.

My lovely work space. Check out the half eaten hot pock. I forgot to eat lunch that day and all I had was a lame sauce hot pocket. Oh, and let's not forget how messy I am and, oh the fact that I shouldn't be eating whilst I work. Bad habit.

Voila! Book is ready to be sewn in.

what a wonder...

Yes, I'm amazed with the results of my second master copy. On Wednesday, we learned the mixer brush tool and I loooovvvee it! I had a blast painting this piece. So I chose to copy Anne Faith Nicholls's oil painting, "Small Wonder: Blue Heart." I chose a simple painting, but like always, they're never simple enough. So check out the results and let me know what you think!

first attempts...

My first attempt at fashion illustration for a class assignment went really well. Brother Burr loved my piece, and I was quite surprised. My piece was just sooo different from everyone else, but that's probably a good thing. I was just  worried I didn't go far enough, that I wasn't brave enough to take on the new tools and techniques. But this first attempt turned out to be a piece that Burr loves. Here are some changes I made...not much but they're there.

master copy 2

Yes, another master copy. But first, we must have an artist and the selected piece approved. I'm having quite a hard time because I'm obsessed with two artist right now, Graham Franciose and Anne Faith Nicholls. I'm looking for a piece with a lot of neat-o texture, preferably easy to do digitally, but fun and interesting to look at. Here are a couple I'm debating between.

anne faith nicholls

graham franciose

So help me pick a piece, pretty please?!?! Or let me know if there a different and better piece I can do. Peace out peeps.

cruela da vil + yzma

 Our third digital drawing assignment was to play around with texture. I wasn't sure if I would enjoy this assignment, which is weird because I looove texture, but the whole layers modes and actions thing was not floatin my boat.

With that aside, in creative perspective, we have to create a villain's lair for our next assignment. Along with our lair, we can either create a villain or choose an already existing villain. I've been working on some sketches for my villain; a fashion villain, because I love fashion and cruel de vil happens to be my favorite villain. So I've been using cruel and yzma as references.







Now back to digital! Because I've been doing nothing but sketching my fashionista villain, I happen to use my villain for my texture project. This is perfect because fashion and texture are just perfect for each other. I had a Ba-LAST working on this image. Cha-cha check it out my peeps!

change is good....

I made some slight changes to my pumpkin. I'm actually sitting in digital illustration right now. Anyway, before Burr gets to my piece, check out the changes. 

Much better huh? I changed the texture of the shadow on the pumpkin, so the texture of the pumpkin and the shadow are in better harmony. The last shadow texture, just flattened the pumpkins texture.

So before Burr critiques my piece, let me tell you of the crazy morning I had printing&mounting my piece. I get to the CopySpot in plenty of time to print my piece, but what always happens when you finish things the day they're due....everything decides to go wrong. So the printer had problems, so I had to resend my image. Then it printed, FINALLY! Then I take my lovely print (holding it by the white border) up to the Media Lab to mount my piece to foam core. Before I tell you this part, please think of good&polite ways to tell people to leave me alone, I can handle this. When I get to the lab, I ask for foam core, a ruler, and an exacto knife. Then the lady decides she wants to be helpful and tells me that cutting from the giant cutter (which I refuse to use because I don't trust them) would save me time. I tell her nicely that I don't use that and I'm fine using the knife&ruler. BUT she takes my piece and decides to teach me how to use this giant mat cutter. At this point I have 10 minutes before class starts. I had to forcefully tell her ok I got it, because she wouldn't take her hands of my piece (which some of the ink smeared because it was still wet....dang CopySpot and the luster paper they use).  So I get my piece back into my safe hands, but the girl wouldn't leave me alone. She kept talking to me, and I'm like, "Look you're nice&all but leave me alone." Oh, and just like I expected, the giant cutter didn't save me time, and I ended up having to cut it with my knife because the cutter didn't cut all the way through. Lame sauce.

Now I'm in class and at peace, because Burr likes my piece. Loves the texture of both the pumpkin and the background, but he says they don't harmonize. Oh, and after critique, he's not too happy with CopySpot. He says they should be shut down from bad printing. Yup, I wasn't the only student who had trouble this morning.

let's get in the spirit....

of Halloween! I love Halloween so in great fun, our third assignment was to paint a pumpkin with a lot of texture, otherwise known as imposto. I enjoyed this assignment better than painting the apple because painting texture is my thing. It did get a bit tedious, but other than that I enjoyed it. Check out the results!

So I tried painting a face on this pumpkin, but it just wasn't looking right. Probably the problem is the angle of the pumpkin and I was just drawing the face in the wrong perspective. Anyway, let me know what you think. Face or no face?!?! Thanks so so much peeps!