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Some in-process work on my icons project for Digital Illustration. Should be finishing up these bad boys some time today, if all goes well. The theme for my icons is The Avengers, and the rest I hope is self explanatory. :)

All of these images are vector drawings (Illustrator). Can't wait to use the finished icons on my computer!

painting sessions three and four

did some changes to this painting after crit. Looks waaay better with the darker background. Still not sure what I think of the face and dress, but that's where it's at right now. I have other paintings to start that I am behind on.....

acrylics

Next Helen Keller painting in a series of four. Here's a game for you: figure out what words I put in the background in braille. Hint: it starts with the alphabet, so you should be able to figure out the words. The alphabet goes to the third row.

painting session two. I like how the hair turned out.

acrylics

my workspace/playspace.

what I did today.

First painting of the semester..... here we go. Please fasten your seatbelts and note the emergency exits nearest you.

This is an in progress painting for my editorial class. We are to pick a biography of a person and do four illustrations of them. I chose Helen Keller, and am going to do four different stages of her life. One thing I didn't realize about Keller is that she was born with normal hearing and vision. At about nineteen months old she became very ill, and lost her hearing and sight completely. Present-day doctors think it may have been meningitis or scarlet fever (the doctors in the late 1800s didn't have a correct diagnosis). Keller didn't meet her teacher Anne until she was about six or seven years old. So her toddler years were spent not being able to communicate with her parents, so naturally she was very frustrated and was not a well-behaved child. In this first illustration my aim is to show the frustration Keller must have felt when she was a young child. Text is going to be added later.

acrylics on masonite board

I'm trying out painting on masonite this time. I really like it so far. Sometimes with the illustration board (which is a paper-based board) I would run into problems like the layers of paper would start to come off if I wet the board too much. Not so with the masonite cuz it's hard stuff! And it hardly warps. I like! It is also very cheap ($1.60-ish for one 11x14 board). Which I also like very much. :D

Process pics.

This is a test I did for a technique I am trying called image transfer. One of my classmates suggested it for putting the text onto the painting. Results are so-so, but it's my first try. :)

I have to figure out how to get more of the paper off.

sketchy sketchy

Some recent sketches. The first few are from the latest Dr. Sketchy, which had a Charlie Chaplin theme. It was awesome.

All the Dr. Sketchy sketches are done with felt marker and pencil.

School started up again, and of course that means.... homework! These are a couple sketches for my digital illustration class. We're working on icons. The theme I chose was The Avengers. You can probably tell who they are. :) Well, maybe not Ant-Man - I had to do a little research on him. I think his character is kinda funny/lame. His superpowers include shrinking himself down to the size of an ant (that IS pretty cool) and he can also talk to ants (come on..... really?) But I think Ant-Man can also make objects BIGGER, so if you can create giant ants, and then tell them what to do - I guess that is pretty cool. I guess.

pencil sketch of Ant-Man

daily.

Yet another attempt at daily drawing. Drawing daily and practicing everyday is something I know is very very important if one wants to be a pro illustrator, yet it's something I find so hard to do for some reason. I like to make excuses. So I am making a project for myself. I also want to get back into journaling, so, killing two birds with one stone, my plan is this:

1. Write down what I do during the day - thoughts, lists, etc.

2. Pick one thing that I have written about/listed.

3. Draw/illustrate it.

I am trying to develop some creative discipline here. This may be tricky once schools gets into high gear, but I'll give it a go. I find when you draw/paint/create more (for me, this is during the school year), your brain and hands talk to each other easier.

I'll try to post these daily exercises every week (probably towards the end of the week).

Ready, set, go!

Saturday. Went and saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Enjoyed it, I thought it was good. I liked the fact that they didn't put subtitles on for all of the ape sign language parts. Could sort of understand what they were signing.

Me needs some more practice with the pastels. :) And I also need to draw on bigger paper (this is in my sketchbook). I like how using pastels feels similar to painting (in the sense that you're putting down a shape as opposed to a line) but it has less set-up and is fast.

chalk pastels

Sunday.

collage (cut out magazines and a popsicle stick)

This is a really quick tiny sketch I did before the pastel drawing of Cesear. I actually drew this without my glasses on, so everything was really blurry and the values pop out better (little trick I learned from an instructor). I just like how the sketch looks.

pencil

success!

Yeah! Goache resist conquered!

Followed the steps on the tutorial I mentioned last time, and it worked! I love the look of this technique, you get a print-y look in waaay less time. :)

sketch (marker)

Part way through painting with the goache. I tinted the white goache with a little bit of raw sienna watercolor paint, so I could see what I was painting. Very helpful tip from the tutorial.

Finished goache. I learned that you shouldn't paint with goache in the sunlight and when it's really hot in your apartment. The paint dries ten times faster than it normally does (which is already really fast). Actually if your apartment is really hot you should probably go outside, I'm just silly and stayed inside. Meh, felt like doing artsy stuff.

Covered whole board with india ink. This is the scariest part of the whole process.

This is the awesome-ist part of the whole process. The reveal! Rinsed off ink with water and also some gentle scrubbing with an old paintbrush. I also learned that the Arches brand watercolor illustration board holds up better during this part than the Canson (with the Canson board the paper started to rub off a bit when I soaked it with water).

When I have access to a scanner and Photoshop, I think I would like to play with some digital color. :) Or I guess I could try watercolors.... hmmm....