fall quarter wrap up

Well it certainly was a stressful and busy quarter at SCAD, but I have to say it was WELL worth it! I think during this fall I made huge leaps in the improvement of my work as well as gaining a lot of knowledge in new areas. I learned so much about typography, something that I think I will come to find very helpful as I get further into the illustration business. I also got a lot of experience with oils in my oil based media painting class. I learned so much technique wise and thought oils are not something I have plans to include in my illustrations at this time, I look forward to exploring more personal work with this media in the near future; particularly in the area of plein air painting!

So before I go on to talk about my plans for the break and next quarter, I'll share with you guys my final projects in my studio classes. This first is for my Type and Illustration class. The assignment was to illustrate a double page spread of a poem and it could not be a children's poem. When I heard the latter part, I panicked a bit, but my mom suggested I illustrated Edgar Allen Poe's Annabel Lee. The poem is so dark so it was a bit of a change of subject matter for me and I really enjoyed the challenge!


Below is my painting final. The assignment was to use the broken color technique, doing an underpainting in contrasting color and color tempurature. The subject matter had to be a 20th century artist's painting, so I chose Wolf Kahn. Though I am not a huge fan of more contemporary art, I have to admit I found his landscapes absolutely stunning!

Final, 48''x 36''

underpainting

You'll have to forgive my for the rather blurry photographs of the painting. I have a hard time getting good pictures with my digital camera because I have such shaky hands. A good quality camera is definitely on my list of purchases for the near future. =)

So now that this quarter is over, I have my 6 week winter break as usual. My plans for the break are to whip out a portfolio piece or two, do some plein air oil paintings, paint gifts for my family, prepare my application for grad school, create style boards and start preparing my list of clients to approach when my website is up and my portfolio is ready within the next couple of months. I have to say, I'm really looking forward to putting myself out there soon! I just have to make sure everything is perfectly organized first =)

direct painting

I finally got around to photographing my first painting from my oil based media class which I took as an elective this quarter. You'll have to forgive me for the shine on the painting, I have such shaky hands that I can't take a photo without flash, haha.

Anyway, this was a direct painting of a rack still life. For those who don't know, a rack still life is a still life set up vertically, with the objects attached to some sort of support, and in this instance it is a beat up piece of card board.

The assignment for the subject matter was "relationships", so I chose the relationship between myself and the story of Peter Pan.

Peter Pan has influenced almost every aspect of my life. The illustrated edition by Trina Schart Hyman was the book I saw when I was 14 and KNEW I had to be an illustrator. Around the same time I was in the play Peter Pan and for those who know me personally, know what effect that had on my life and what that brought about. I also was "good friends" with the character Peter Pan at Walt Disney World for the summer after my freshman year of college.

I'll be uploading several images over the course of this week, or I might just do one large wrap up post of the quarter next weekend depending on if I have any free time during this finals week. Cheers!

Type and Illustration

As I've mentioned before, I'm taking the Type and Image class this quarter as one of my illustration electives. This class has been extremely helpful as I had very limited knowledge of typography beforehand. The professor is Linda Warner Constantino, who's work you can check out here. I've taken several classes with her in my time at SCAD and unless she teaches Promotion in the spring, this will unfortunately be my last one with her. She has become one of my role models since meeting her, and that is not something I say lightly.

Anyway, back to the class, it is extremely informative and I highly recommend it to my fellow SCAD illustration majors. I feel that a basic knowledge of type is a huge asset to illustrators and is also something that is usually overlooked. I've learned so much about fonts, kerning, incorporating the proper style of typography with my images, what fonts work well together, what never to do and so much more. Below I have some of my work from the class:



The assignment here was to create a book-jacket for a classic novel.



The assignment for this was to create packaging for a food or beverage product.

inside edition: my sketchbook!

Hey guys! Since I haven't had much finished artwork to share with you all yet this quarter, I thought you might enjoy another peak inside my sketchbooks. There are definitely a lot of characters that continue to pop up in my sketches as I explore their stories in my head. I would love to maybe write some of these someday, but for now the illustration business and getting my foot in the door there comes first! Anyway, enjoy!

exploring oils

So as I have mentioned previously, I am currently taking a painting class, fully titled: "oil based media eploration" and we've been covering a wide range of techniques. Our first painting was a direct painting of a still life using a very limited palette. Our second was an alla prima of the figure. I have not been given either of these paintings back yet after submitting them for grading, but I will be sure to have them photographed as soon as I do so that I can share them with you guys! For now though, I do have the underpainting for our next project for which we are using a glazing technique.

The assignment for content, was to create a collage of three or more images based on the theme "words to live by". Well, I was having such a hard time settling on just one proverb, and I told my teacher that I just really wanted to paint a goldfish. She was all for the idea and said I could go for it. The underpainting was done using the optical gray technique of painting white onto a dry burnt sienna ground. ALSO! I built this canvas from scratch with wood from HOME DEPOT! Who would have ever thought I would be in that store willingly? haha! And I stretched and primed the canvas myself. I have to say, I'm pretty proud! I'm not the most handy person when it comes to building things, but I'm very pleased with my canvas. =)

some fun with Type

While I may not be producing much illustrated imagery for my type class, there was one little excersize I think might be fun to share with y'all. We were asked to create a portrait using only letterforms. I decided to choose the comedienne Elaine Carroll's portrayal of Mary-Kate Olsen in the online series "Very Mary-Kate". If you have not seen these spoof videos, you should definitely check them out, they are so freaking funny!

I'm alive!

Hello everyone! Sorry for the extreme length between my last entry! To be honest, I really haven't had anything to present to you guys! I've had such a busy quarter so far and have produced nothing really illustration wise! I'm taking an oil painting class, and we just finished our first two projects, so when I can photograph them I'll be sure to post those. We also just learned how to build our own canvas frames and all that jazz, and I must say was pretty proud of myself for managing not to mess mine up!

The illustration course I'm taking this quarter is Type and Image, and it's pretty much all about the graphic design aspects that relate to illustration and I haven't really created any imagery. This has been really frustrating for me since I'm obviously trying to build my portfolio. I'm sure I'll be eating my words when I'm actually taking the portfolio class next quarter, haha!

I've been sketching in my sketchbook though, but otherwise I haven't made any personal pieces due to lack of time. I now teach Zumba five days a week, on top of my presidential duties for Zeta Kappa Delta! I'm trying to take some time for myself this weekend to get some personal imagery completed though, maybe for Illustration Friday or something. I'd like to get back to updating this blog regularly as well, but to do that I of course have to have something to show you guys! So though it's not much today, I do have a little spot illustration for you.

"Pixies play poker on petals to pass the time"

Illustration Friday: Caged

Here's my entry for this week's Illustration Friday theme! I tried a bunch of new things with this work. First off all, I painted the whole image on Illustration board, and realized I love watercolor paper a WHOLE lot more! I also tried to work some colored pencils over that, but I wasn't really pleased with the texture it added to the water color, so another lesson learned there! What I did like however was all the digital editing to the piece. So slowly but surely, I'm figuring out a way of working =)

Anyway, I'd love some critique on this! Let me know what you think.

Paisley

This piece was meant for an Illustration Friday a couple weeks back, but I was too busy with choreography at the time to get it all scanned in and put the separate scans together in Photoshop, but I had some spare time this evening so I fixed it up. I'm inking another piece right now and I'll post that tomorrow, both inked and uninked. Opinions and critiques are, as always, welcome!

Illustration Friday: Giant

Hey guys! This is my entry for this weeks Illustration Friday! The theme this week is Giant, so I went ahead with a children's book interpretation in watercolor and ink. I think I'd like to really get away from inking my work, so I think I'm gonna try some new approaches involving either gouache or acrylic, so we'll see what turns up over the next couple weeks.

summer projects

hey guys! I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer season! Mine has been so hectic the past several weeks as I have been choreographing a production of the musical Back to the 8Os which has been a really fun experience, but very time consuming! However my time on the production is coming to a close and I've been really trying to get organized with my illustration work so I can start sending out mailers and emails. Unfortunately, a major problem I am running into is my lack of a large scanner in Louisiana, enabling me only to scan in my smaller projects and sketches. Does anyone know of a solution to this? I'm going to stop by the UPS store tomorrow to see if they can scan images, but if anyone knows of another place I could try please let me know! Otherwise, I can't post much that I'm working on until I get a hold of a scanner. Until then though, I have a piece I completed that I'm considering for the homepage of my website and I need some opinions.

Ink, or no Ink?

wrapping up the quarter and the school year

Can I just say that I am beyond happy this quarter is finally ending! It has been so stressful on so many levels, but I would say it has been by far my most productive quarter yet. I feel I definitely learned a lot about watercolor and painting in general. As you may have noticed, my strongest suit has always been drawing and I've been too intimidated by color media for far too long. I feel I've grown tremendous amount as an artist this school year and I can't wait to see how much further I've grown by the time I graduate next spring! Over the summer I plan to experiment with some other media and play around with my style some more so that I'll be ready to start developing my legit portfolio in the fall.
So without further ado, here is one of the illustrations from my book project this quarter as well as some of the preliminary sketches.

spring!

So this quarter all of my work has really been in watercolor, and I have to say for a while I was pretty discouraged about where my work was going, but then I read an interview with this one artist I really admire. She spoke on breaking into the industry and what now, but what I found most valuable was her display of images from her beginning and where she is now, a few years later, and the comparison was astounding. It made me feel so much better about where my work is not and where it has been heading and I look forward to the continuing growth of myself as an illustrator and fine artist. So continuing on my journey, here are two illustrations from this quarter.

This piece is one of the full page illustrations in my Book Illustration project. I'll be uploading other finished works from this assignment over the next week or so.

This work here was actually my first work of the quarter for my watercolor class. The assignment was to create a cover illustration for a children's food magazine. I'm not very happy with this anymore, as I feel I have made great improvements in my watercolors since completing this six weeks ago, but I'm posting it because I feel that I should be proud of the progress I am making and show where I am coming from. =)

Sidewalk Arts Festival

Hey guys! Sorry for the lack of updates here lately, there just hasn't been much to post. All I've really been doing of late is all of the preliminary work for my illustrations for selected Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales. Perhaps when I have some free time I will upload some of that work and post it on here, and this week I will begin working on the finished pieces so those will absolutely be posted here.

For now though, I have some pictures of yesterday's Sidewalk Arts Festival here in Savannah. A couple of my sorority sisters and myself worked on a square together this year. We didn't take it seriously for it was raining, and we knew our work would soon be washed away. But we had a great time completing the piece so I hope you enjoy it =).

end of the quarter update

Alright guys, it's the end of the quarter here at SCAD and I've finally had some time to scan in some more of my Portrait in Illustration class work. This first one is from our first assignment which was to complete an editorial illustration of a contemporary literary figure. So naturally, I chose J.K. Rowling! I think I lost some of the likeness from my original sketches, but this is not from a photograph, rather we learned to look at references and draw from them to create an original illustration. This was completed in graphite pencil.




Next I have another of my alla prima oil paintings. This was completed in about an hour and a half or so, and is by far my best one, being the fourth and final one I did.



Lastly! What quarter would be complete without a portrait of my idol, Jessica Simpson!? We were given the assignment to do a stylized portrait for the cover of the Rolling Stone. I placed her lower on the page to leave room for the text of the magazine. This was done in a mixed media of watercolor and guache.


I have one last portrait to show you guys, it's my self portrait placed on a master study of a Sargent painting, but we haven't been given those back yet. I'll upload that later today or tomorrow. I have some paintings from my life drawing II class that I may take pictures of and post on here. It was a rough quarter in that class as it took some time to adjust to that particular professor's teaching style, but in the end, I am definitely pleased I took the course. I feel as if I have learned so much about the figure and my way of viewing and drawing it has transformed for the better.

I'll be heading home for spring break tomorrow and I can't wait to see my family! After a week off though, I'll be very much looking forward to both my Watercolor for the Illustrator and Book Illustration classes, as well as my Survey of Asian Art, art history elective!

xoxo

alla prima

Ok so some of my first oil sketches from my portrait class are dry enough to post! This is my first time ever painting in oils as well as painting a portrait! I'm such a "noob" when it comes to painting! That's part of the reason I'm taking to painting based classes next quarter. So here are my first three alla prima oil portraits. Each was done in about an hour and a half to fourty five minutes time. I've definitely improved from the beginning, and I'm even emarrassed to post the first two!

My next ones are definitely better! I've continued to learn from my mistakes, and I can't wait to continue improving on my own. I'll be sure to post the others as soon as they are dry enough to scan in, in a couple of days.

And lastly, I'll leave you with some sketches. The two in the upper corner are studies from Trina Schart Hyman's Peter Pan work. Goodness, she is SUCH an inspiration! Anyway, I've been playing around with some watercolors in my sketchbook. I'm really looking forward to my watercolor class next quarter, so I'll finally know what I'm doing with them. Also, I drew up a picture of my and my pokemon team haha. It was a big fad on Deviantart for a while recently to draw your favorite pokemon again. Of course, I missed the fad, but I'm still gonna do it anyway. I'll post the colored version later.

sketchbook overload

Hey guys! It's been a while since you've seen what I've been up to! I still don't have anything back from my professors to show, but I finally got around to scanning in some images from my sketchbooks! Some of it is from class and others are from my personal sketchbook.

these are some master studies for my life drawing II and Portrait in Illustration classes.














These are practices for our upcoming field trip to do courtroom sketches.











And here's a peak into my private sketchbooks. By the way, I'm super excited because one of the local art supply stores just started carrying canson's multimedia sketchbook! So expect a lot of watercolor and acrylic sketches to start popping up as well!














I'll be updating again soon with some of my longer portrait studies and completed illustrations!