Art of Joshua Heinsz

So Much for the Cake

2012-01-26T14:16:00.000-08:00

A recent challenge at the Square Carousel Illustration Collective was to create an illustration inspired by one of your favorite movies. While it was a tough decision, I eventually went with one of the movies that inspires me most visually. I really wanted to try out some hand lettering because I have such admiration for artists who are able to do it well. I definitely hope to explore it more in the future!

Tan Lines

2012-01-16T15:28:00.000-08:00

Just a little something whipped up for the character sketch blog Glitter and Graphite run by Blythe Russo and myself. I think I like the look of my digital illustrations more in the end, but I still have so much fun with watercolors! Enjoy =)

2012-01-11T01:25:00.000-08:00

So, I saw this fashion blog recently and a couple of the images inspired me to depict my District 1 ensemble for the Opening Ceremonies of the Hunger Games. For those unfamiliar with the Hunger Games, after the tributes are selected(to compete in a televised fight to the death), they are showed off to the Capitol during the parade of the Opening Ceremonies and are all garbed in really outlandish outfits that are representative of their District. District 1 is the luxury items district.

The concept behind the outfit is to resemble a white diamond, so the tributes’ bodies would be painted white, and there would be structural, prismatic shaped translucent fabrics containing fiberoptic material that would wrap around the figure to create the effect of a jagged, jewel-like texture.

Also I thought you might like to see some of the process work for the piece below.

Also, Blythe Russo and I have some time again to pick back up on our character sketch blog Glitter and Graphite! As our welcome back post, we each depicted our favorite Harry Potter characters. It was a close call for me, but I think it had to be Fleur Delacour. Goblet of Fire is my favorite of the books, and not to sound superficial, but I relate a lot to her in the books. I also identify with certain aspects of Hermione and Luna, but I think in the end, Fleur is who i have to hand it to, haha.

Keep an eye out for this next weeks post with the goal to design a mermaid character. This has actually inspired me for a small project that I'm looking forward to sharing with you guys, but I'm going to have to keep it under wraps a bit longer! In the mean time, I hope everyone is having a wonderful new year and you haven't given up on those resolutions yet!

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T16:52:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to take a moment and wish all of you guys a happy new year! I know that I for one am excited for all of the prospects this new year holds! I haven't set my resolution in stone yet, but it definitely involves keeping up with my sketchbook more and not just working on so many finished illustrations. I got a little bogged down on the idea of creating as many portfolio pieces for a while, but I read an interesting article recently about how not everything you do needs to be a finished or portfolio piece. It helped remind me that there needs to be more of a balance between sketching and finished pieces. The case used to be that I pretty much ONLY sketched all day, every day and never finished any solid illustrations, haha! Then when I reversed the process and was only creating to make finished works, I think I sort of put myself in an unintentional block by limiting what I was allowing myself to do.

Anyway, with those thoughts in mind as I move forward into the next year of artistic growth, I look forward to seeing where my work goes! Expect a lot more sketches to be popping up here and there and more blog updates. I'm holding myself to updating at least once a week this year, because it also forces me to be sure I'm generating work! With that, I bring you the first watercolor sketch of the year, another depiction of Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games. In case you haven't noticed, I'm a tad obsessed with the books ;)

Girl on Fire

2011-12-21T15:50:00.000-08:00

I'm currently planning out a large illustration of Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games, but the books are really important to me and I want to make sure I really get it right. So I've been sketching up Katniss in a number of ways and this is one of the more finish sketches so I thought I might just throw it on the web to share with you guys!

Testing new techniques

2011-12-09T16:03:00.001-08:00

So I got some advice from an illustration rep recently and she had some great suggestions as to directions to start taking my work. I took a lot of what she said into consideration as I finalize some new portfolio images for my grad school applications and decided to trie doing some acrylic work. I did this piece as a mock book or graphic novel cover. I played around with some type treatments, but I want to mull them over with some graphic design friends before I post them all over the web haha. Anyway, I would really love some feedback on this piece, as I definitely plan to continue exploring this method of working.

If anyone is curious as to the back story of the image, it is inspired by an original Hunger Games story... don't act so surprised! I also recently did a watercolor illustration for a made up children's story about a dwarf king's magic goblet. Really, I just wanted an excuse to draw someone wrinkly with a big nose haha.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful December so far!

Rue's Death

2011-12-03T23:58:00.001-08:00

This image has been sitting around in my sketchbook for ages, so I took some time off from all my preparations for grad school apps to have some fun and bring it to a finished piece. Though I've done many Hunger Games inspired pieces, I realized this is the first illustration I've actually done based on the book. I hope you guys who are fans enjoy it! For those who haven't read the books yet, hop to it! There are just seeping with inspiration!

Where is this year going??

2011-12-01T17:15:00.001-08:00

Wow you guys, I can NOT believe that it is already December! What the heck happened to this year?? I was banking on a few more months, but ah well! Time wins out over me again! This past month or so has been just absolutely insane with all the children's painting lessons I've been teaching on top of getting everything ready for my graduate school applications. I'll be sending those off next week, so keep your fingers crossed for me!

I do have a couple small projects I can share with you for now though! I was recently commissioned to do an illustration of a family friend's Christmas cards this year. And I also participated in a little art trade with the fabulous artist, M. Mosley! Her work is so bright and fun, so it was really enjoyable to do a rendition of one of her characters! More updates to come over the next week or so! Things will be winding down again once all of my grad school apps and portfolios are sent off. I'm really looking forward to working on some personal projects for a bit!

2011-11-09T16:31:00.000-08:00

The new ABC show Once Upon a Time has really rekindled my love of fairy tales. For a long time I kept pushing this concept aside because I really wanted to break away from the Disney era of my life. Thankfully, this show has brought me back to my roots and reminded me that what I've always truly loved is the fairy tale itself, not just Disney.

In the very first episode, one of the leading characters had a line that really stuck with me. "... the most important thing anyone can have... hope. Even the possibility of a happy ending is a very powerful thing."

After fooling around in my sketchbook, the idea for this image came about, and I hadn't played with my watercolors in a couple of weeks so I figured I'd whip them out. I'm trying not to get too set on working solely digitally, because I love being hands on too much to just drop watercolor completely. I definitely see myself continuing to move further in the realm of digital media though.

Only two months left!

2011-11-01T02:20:00.000-07:00

Can you guys believe that it is already November 1st? Where the heck did this year go? Gosh! It's definitely been a good one though, and I'm still excited to see what the last two months will bring! We have some exciting changes coming up at the Square Carousel Collective soon, including some amazing new, talented artists joining us! I actually just finished up a piece for the collective today that was part of a collaboration with the illustration blog Jazz and Draw.

This has been our second collaborative project since we began in June and we are looking forward to more in the future! In other news, I've been working on another fun project on the side that is pretty close to my heart. For those who don't know, I recently competed in a large online Hunger Games competiton and came in 3rd place. Well when the Games were turned over to new management, I was so pleased when I was asked to be the artist for the new Games! I can't share all of the illustrations with you yet, because they are revealed over time to "tributes" who are competing. Since the second Games have just begun, I can only reveal the opening image of the Cornucopia at the moment.

What I'm really excited to share with you guys though are the muttations I designed! I think it will be interesting to have some creature designs added to my repertoire. I'm also working on an illustration of the "careers" from the Games that I participated in. We were basically the villains of the Games haha, but unfortunately I have to set it to the side for a week or so while I finish up some other work. I also have another watercolor piece I'll be sharing with you all before the week is out, and I'm really excited about it!

I hope everyone had a great Halloween! Now let the Christmas season begin!

Death of a Tribute (the Pretty Face)

2011-10-17T04:51:00.000-07:00

The latest challenge at the Square Carousel Collective was to illustrate your greatest fear. Well I recently competed in a huge online version of the Hunger Games called The Tumblr Games and my death was caused by my greatest fear: SPIDERS! Technically they were thousands of spider "muttations" though for those familiar with the book, and they didn't actually kill me. But because of them, my arch nemesis in the Games, the boy from District 5, was able to stab me through with a spear! UGH! Oh well, I was still in the final three! Haha! Plus, I kind of had it coming because I was kind of the villain of the Games. My district partner was right alongside me the whole time (and she WON! =D) But she wasn't quite as evil and manipulative lol.

The reason for the title actually, is because I was known as the "prettiest" Tribute in the Games, and I was the boy from District 1. One of the ways I made it so far was that I manipulated and tricked almost everyone in the Games. Over half of the Tributes died either by my hand or by the influence of myself with my District partner. And the first person we betrayed, as we killed her I said "Didn't your mother ever tell you? Never trust a pretty face." And after that "Never trust a pretty face" became the trademark saying for those that died by my hand lol.

I hope you guys like this piece. It's got quite a different feel than my usual pieces, but I have to say I'm quite pleased with the dark tone I created. I'm very much considering doing a series of illustrations based on the Tumblr Games, since I'm so inspired by the The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. Also, this way, the illustrations would be on a much more personal level since I was a part of these "Games".

Some recent challenge

2011-10-11T00:54:00.000-07:00

I'm afraid I've neglected my blog the last couple of weeks guys, so I'll have to apologize for that! Between the sites I'm a member of, commissioned work, and teaching painting lessons, I have been a bit swamped! All of the craziness seems to be dying down a bit now, which is great because I have graduate school apps to start preparing! Anywho, here are some illustrations I've been working on between Square Carousel and Glitter and Graphite!

"Ferocious"

2011-09-23T13:43:00.000-07:00

I actually just completed this piece last night, only to find out today that this weeks Illustration Friday challenge is "ferocious"! How fitting! I don't know if I've mentioned it on my blog before, but since reading The Hunger Games trilogy this past spring, I have been absolutely obsessed with these fabulous books! If you have not read them, I suggest you head to your local book store or Amazon.com straight away! Seriously, I have not enjoyed a trilogy so much since probably His Dark Materials.

Anyway, some of you may have seen me talk about this if you follow me on tumblr or are a facebook friend, but out of hundreds of applicants, I was selected to compete in an online version of the Hunger Games called The Tumblr Games. For those who aren't familiar, 12 boys and 12 girls are sent into a huge Arena of some type of wilderness environment and fight to the death; the last tribute standing is victor. In these games, there will be a first, second and third place, and there are currently 6 tributes remaining (myself being one of them). I had the top training score of the boys and the weapon I was known for using was the whip. Though I have yet to use one in the arena, I thought it best to depict my "character" in the form he would be best recognized.

I quickly became the "villain" of these games as I'm very competitive by nature which has made my tribute ruthless and brutal in the Arena. I just love to win I suppose haha. So I chose to depict myself this way for the Glitter and Graphite character design blog "self as villain" challenge and was so pleased that it fits for Illustration Friday's theme this week as well!

I hope you all enjoy it and I really encourage you to check out the books if you haven't already!

Pinkalicious

2011-09-12T16:00:00.000-07:00

One of the projects I've been working on lately is for a local theatre that is putting on a production of the musical Pinkalicious, based on the popular children's book. The way the set works is there are three large screens that these images will be projected on around the stage, behind the performers!

With this I tried to keep everything very flat, simple and childlike. I wanted to keep the linework more whimsical and scribbly to really give it the feel as if a children's book is coming to life before your eyes. There are 9 sets of 3 panels that I completed total for this project. It was a lot of fun to work with, especially since this isn't a style I usually employ in my work.

Glitter and Graphite!

2011-08-25T15:57:00.000-07:00

One thing I have definitely been slacking on in the last year or so has been character design, which actually used to be pretty much my favorite thing! So last week I was talking with my good friend and fellow illustrator, Blythe Russo, and we came up with the idea to start our own character design blog where we give each other a couple of challenges throughout the week to help keep our creative juices flowing, pump up our portfolios and perhaps branch out into a new market! So if you are interested in following along (which I'm sure you are of course, ;) haha) then head over to Glitter and Graphite! We'd also love outside suggestions for characters you might like to see us create or existing characters you'd want to see redesigned in our style!

Poisoned Honey

2011-08-11T16:02:00.000-07:00

So the third challenge over at Square Carousel was to illustrate the theme of "Honey". I knew going into it that I absolutely wanted to stay away from the theme of bees or bears or anything of the sort! Especially since my mind kept jumping straight to Winnie the Pooh, haha. So I though on it for a while and it hit me!

When I was 14 or 15 years old and the 5th Harry Potter was released, I can still remember reading the book jacket where the new professor was described to have the personality of “poisoned honey”. That description is one that has really stuck with me over the years because I just thought it was such an interesting way to describe someone. So for this challenge, I ended up whipping out my watercolors (which I enjoyed using again) to complete a little spot illu of how I pictured Delores Umbridge when I read those books. I hope you enjoy it =)

Also, I have a really exciting project that I'm dying to share with y'all but I can't just yet! Stay tuned though!

Taking home with you

2011-07-29T14:13:00.001-07:00

This is my second challenge for the Square Carousel Collective. The theme was "Home away from Home". Initially, I really wanted to illustrate the opening scene from The Hunger Games when Katniss is in the woods she hunts in. However, upon my re-read of the first chapter, I realized my illustration would have been kind of forced to fit in the scene and also, that wasn't the scene from that chapter that I would really like to illustrate. For a while now I've been planning to illustrate the Hunger Games chapter by chapter and after re-reading the book, I am now in the thumbnail phase! So you can expect to see that going on over the next couple of months.

Anyway, back to this challenge. After realizing my first idea wouldn't work, I had to go back to the drawing boards. When I think of my "home away from home" there are some locations that definitely fit the bill, but I really didn't want to take the concept too literally. Then it hit me! Whenever I travel, I like to bring anything and everything with me! I'm prepared for any situation and basically like to bring my home with me wherever I go. So I took that to mind and came up with an editorial piece of a young woman traveling with a ton of luggage.

Be sure to check out the other artists work on the theme over at squarecarousel.com! There are some really fabulous artists on board.

Announcing the Square Carousel!

2011-07-15T14:33:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone! My small hiatus is finally coming to a close as I close the show Once Upon a Mattress this weekend and I wrap up my last week of teaching summer painting lessons! I have a lot of exciting projects coming up that I can't wait to share with you guys. The one on the forefront though is the Square Carousel Illustration Collective that I started a couple of months ago with a couple of my talented illustrator friends. Though we got started on this a while back, it took some time getting everything into order and we have finally made our big "launch"! The site features the work of myself and 9 other illustrators. We compete in bi-weekly challenges selected by the artists in turn, and we post updates and news on the illustration world. For the first challenge, we thought it most appropriate to do a carousel animal of out own. I chose to do a noble lion (a unicorn was a close second though, haha).

I have a couple other projects going on, some personal, others that I can't speak of at the moment, but I'll let you know as soon as I can! One that I can speak of though, is that a local theatre has just hired me on board to do paintings to be projected as the set for an upcoming production of the Children's play Pinkilicious! The play is adapted from a popular children's book. Though I haven't read the book before, this definitely sounds right up my alley, so I can't wait to get started!

So be sure to check out www.squarecarousel.com and add us to your bookmarks! We have a lot of great content in store for you guys!

well hello from a recent college graduate!

2011-07-03T11:13:00.000-07:00

Hey all! I promise I am still alive and well, and busy working as always! I have to apologize for the month and a half absense! What with college graduation and moving and taking on three part times jobs I had about zero time for the last couple of weeks.

So as I mentioned, I graduated from SCAD at the beginning of June. Looking back on my four years there, I have to say that they were truly the best years of my life so far, and I think it will just keep getting better! I grew so much as a person and an artist at that school and made some of the greatest friends I will ever know, so here's my thank you to SCAD for every opportunity that they have given me and the many more that await because of that!

So, since graduation, I have moved briefly back to Louisiana for three summer jobs I was offered. I teach painting lessons to children for four hours every morning then I am choreographing a musical and helping with some set and costume work for another show. In between I had a three week stint as a secretary for a local government office. That last job reminded me a lot of Parks and Recreation, for those who watch the show, so merely pretending I was April in the office got me through that haha. Luckily now, all three of those jobs are winding down. I also designed the posters for the children's productions being put on by a local theatre this summer! I can't share all of them because some copyrighted material had to be used in the posters due to contracts with the production company they are being licensed from. Here are two of them that I can share though:

I have a couple more weeks with the painting lessons and the show, but the temporary secretary job is now over and my free time is starting to open back up thank goodness so I can finally get to work on some real work! Here's what you guys can expect from me over the next few months: a huge load of work coming in! I have so many techniques and so much subject matter I am just itching to get my hands on. I'm vamping up my portfolio to get ready to apply for grad schools for next fall some time around the end of this year. You can also expect some revamping of my portfolio site as well as the blog and my other social media aspects. Importantly, on the blog, I will now be making weekly blog updates. If it comes to a point where I'm making a lot, I might end up setting up a certain two or three day a week schedule for it, so stay tuned on that. Also, for the first time EVER! Get ready all of you convention goers because i'm making the transition and I'm going to be attending cons this year! It's such a great social networking opportunity, and honestly they all just look so freaking fun, it's about time I finally made the plunge and started traveling to some!

Lastly guys! I have a VERY exciting project that I will be announcing somewhere around the middle of the month, involving some very talented illustrators along with myself. So get ready to have your socks blown off!

Thank you all for sticking with me through the small quiet period and get ready for a lot of upcoming work!

New mailer!

2011-05-03T15:30:00.001-07:00

Well guys! The time has finally come for me to put my big boy pants on and step out into the illustration market! This was completed for my self promo class to be used as the image for my first big postcard campaign. Since this is my first image I'll be sending out to really represent my name as an illustrator, I really wanted to depict a subject that hits close to home with me, and that of course is: fairy tales. This image in particular is based on the Brother's Grimm tale of Snow White and Rose Red. This was always one of my favorites as a child, and I've never addressed it in my work before, so I was excited to use this opportunity to do so!

Also, I thought it might be nice to share with you the full process I went in creating this image. I left out the thumbnails I did however and skipped to the rough comp phase for you guys. Enjoy.

SCAD Sidewalk Arts 2011

2011-04-30T22:08:00.001-07:00

Well it's that time of year again guys! It was the Sidewalk Arts festival this morning in Savannah, and this year it was absolutely beautiful! The weather was perfect, and I had a blast! A lot of my friends won prizes this year, which is so great! Being my last year to participate, I just wanted to do something silly, so I decided to do Hipster Princess Peach. I have to admit, it was a huge success! I'm glad so many people got the joke!

a Victorian study

2011-04-15T16:01:00.000-07:00

Hey guys! I hope everything is going well! Things have been really busy here in Savannah what with getting ready to graduate, the career fair, sorority business, teaching fitness classes and school work too, of course! One of my courses this quarter is Survey in Illustration, which is half studio, half art history. All of the projects for the most part are just sort of for fun, and our first assignment was to do a small piece inspired in some way by Victorian illustration.

Within the next couple of weeks, you can expect some new self promotion pieces, as well as the branding and redesigning of this blog, my website and my twitter! I'm also trying to find sometime to get back to doing some small pieces for Illustration Friday! So stay tuned! =)

Princess Everything

2011-03-10T21:13:00.000-08:00

This is a double page spread I completed for my portfolio class. I designed it to be a wrap around cover for a children's book I've entitled "The Princess Book of Princess Everything." Due to finals going on at the moment, I don't have the time to play around with the typography, but I look forward to doing that over spring break just around the corner!

strange dreams

2011-02-28T15:19:00.001-08:00

This is my latest illustration for my portfolio class. I chose to do a spot illustration for a children's book. This image is actually based on this really odd dream I had a couple years back and wrote down. I've been meaning to put it on paper for a while, so I'm glad I finally got a chance to use it.

Pollen Nymphs

2011-02-14T15:45:00.001-08:00

After quite a grueling weekend, I cranked out all four of the flower girls for my tissue box! When I have time, I'll have the actual box photographed, as well as the tea box I designed last quarter. I'm thinking of opening up an etsy shop to sell prints by the way, thoughts?

busy busy weekend!

2011-02-11T15:51:00.000-08:00

Here is the completed Harpy painting from my portfolio class. There are a couple more edits I might make, like taking the canvas texture down a bit. I'll have to worry about that next week though. I have those four flower women to paint by monday evening! Yikes!

and the winter continues

2011-02-08T16:44:00.000-08:00

I don't know about y'all but I have to say that I am just SO ready for the spring! I'm absolutely tired of the cold weather. In illustration news, I have a fair ammount of projects going on at the moment so there is a good bit of in progress stuff to share with you guys as well as a couple of finished pieces! The first thing I wanted to share is from my Portfolio class. For my first assignment I decided to do a mock book cover for an imaginary novel of my own invention.

I have a sample with type as well, but I haven't decided whether or not to include that in my portfolio yet, so as that decision is made, I may or may not upload that here.

I also wanted to share the final poster from my Fahrenheit 451 project with you guys! I think that we will be informed on Friday of who's poster will actually be used! Keep your fingers crossed! Even though it's not really my style, I think it would still be pretty cool to have my poster selected.

And I know I don't normally share process work on here, but I thought that might be a nice change so here are two projects I'm currently working on. This first is an in progress painting for my portfolio class. It's an illustration for a children's poem about a girl and a harpy sharing stories.

And lastly, these are the sketch/color comps for my next project in my advertising illustration class. We are designing tissue boxes with the theme "Issues for Tissues". So I came up with the idea for these little pollen sprites who live in the flowers and make people sneeze =).

something completely different

2011-01-24T21:45:00.001-08:00

For my Advertising Illustration class this quarter, our first assignment was to create a poster for the theatrical adaptation of Fahrenheit 451. For those of you familiar with my work, I'm sure you are all aware that this is not a subject matter that is very suited to my usual style and painting in watercolors. So in pursuit of artistic versatility, I made the tough decision to drop my normal methods of working and work in a digital, graphic style for this assignment. I feel this was definitely an appropriate route to take, and although I still prefer my usual stuff, it was nice to step out of my comfort zone and try something more adult for once. I made two variations, hope you enjoy them.

Some sketches and an update

2011-01-17T13:20:00.000-08:00

Hello all! Forgive me for my lengthy absense from the blog. I spent my winter holidays doing a lot of painting for family gifts as well as just some good old relaxing and a lot of catching up on reading. Unfortunately I did not document my family's gifts before leaving Louisiana and heading back to school, but perhaps on my next trip home I will make that happen.

So for now you must be wondering what is going on in the life of Josh. Well I am in my second to last quarter here at SCAD and I am currently taking Illustration Portfolio, Advertising Illustration and British Literary Art of the 19th Century. I'm really looking forward to the work that I have planned this quarter, so there will be weekly updates, don't you worry! I would also like to participate more in Illustration Friday. I'm trying to think of a day or two that I might make my blog update days, so when I have that decided I will of course post that on here.

Other than classes, I feel I should give an update on the current life plan. Of course over the next few months, my website will go up and running and I will be heavily promoting my illustration career. I have also decided to consider going to graduate school. I am currently considering SCAD for illustration of course, and then LSU for painting and drawing to get more of a fine art back ground. Of course this is not definite and I may not do grad school for a few years or ever for that matter. I'm just kind of playing it by ear at the moment.

So now that you are all caught up, here are those sketches I promised!

fall quarter wrap up

2010-11-21T15:02:00.001-08:00

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

2010-11-14T13:37:00.001-08:00

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

2010-11-07T19:31:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-10-28T22:57:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-24T23:00:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-17T21:16:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-10-14T22:36:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-12T10:19:00.001-07:00

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

2010-07-06T02:59:00.001-07:00

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

2010-07-04T00:20:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-30T02:42:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-24T12:32:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-05-12T22:49:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-25T11:41:00.001-07:00

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

2010-03-11T07:45:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-26T13:59:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-06T16:07:00.000-08:00

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!

sketchbook

2009-10-14T14:54:00.000-07:00

just a little update from my sketchbook; an insight into the many worlds inside my head lol.

Fall Quarter <3

2009-10-05T19:20:00.000-07:00

Hey guys! First post of the new school year, sorry it's taken so long but I've gotta say it's been busy busy busy, which I like! Surprisingly I haven't had any REAL projects to turn in yet, but I have some due this week finally. I've gotta say, something has definitely changed in me this quarter. I'm finding myself so fascinated and in love with art all over again and at a much higher level than ever before. I'm so excited to try new things and find my own voice, and I definitely think I'm on the right path. Anyway, I could go on about this for a while so instead I'll leave you with two practice pieces done for my Materials and Techniques II class. Both are done in acrylic with various gels and mediums.

first post!

2009-08-27T07:24:00.000-07:00

Hey y'all! This is my first entry here on my blog so I figure I'll tell you a little bit about myself. I'm currently starting my junior year at the Savannah College of Art and Design. I'm an illustration student with my interests lying particularly in children's book and book illustration. I'm from Slidell, Louisiana, a suburb near the New Orleans area. I also work as a character and parade performer at the Walt Disney World resort in Orlando, FL which is where I will be most likely moving upon graduation. So with that being said, I will now post my first piece on here.

This is a soft pastel piece done for my Intro to Illustration Materials and Techniques I class. The project was to come up with a piece based on the word "Secrets."