busy busy weekend!

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

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

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

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

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.