Jewels and Jems

Still busy busy as I'm heading into the final three weeks of my thesis! I'm currently working on my last set of patterns which is themed around royalty, and I thought I'd share some variants of one of the first patterns with y'all! Also for my morning warmup I participated in sketch dailies 80's week and drew Jem, which I've been meaning to do for ages!

Best wishes!

Joshua

Thesis Continues

Hey everyone! It's been absolutely beautiful here the past couple of days, and if it has been by you as well, I hope you've been enjoying the weather! Unfortunately we are to get another arctic blast, but hopefully Spring will be on its merry way afterward! Good weather or bad weather aside, I'll still be working away in the studio haha, but I'm really enjoying it. It's hard to believe that my graduate school experience is coming so rapidly to a close! I only essentially only have two months left! Crazy right? It has been one heck of an experience, and when it truly draws to an end, I'm sure I will have an elaborate post on the subject. For now though, there's still much work to be done so I thought I'd share some of what I've been working on with you guys! I have another pattern for the air travel series, and some characters for both that series and the upcoming pattern collection as well. Once the patterns are complete (likely by the end of this upcoming week), I will be moving onto the final stage of my thesis which is narrative. I will be telling stories within the worlds of these patterns with each cast of characters. In the mean time, enjoy! 

Best wishes,

Joshua

Characters and Patterns

Well firstly, I hope everyone had a lovely Valentine's day and for those of you in the Northeast, I hope the nor'easter didn't get y'all too badly! Frankly, it dropped way too much snow on us here in Baltimore for my taste. Hopefully I'll be escaping this climate soon enough though, haha. The cold has certainly made it easier to keep inside and keep working though, so I thought I'd share the patterns from the air travel series so far with you guys as well as some of my work for my character design course.

So for my Character Design class we were all split up into two "gangs" and were given random names and a random weapon to create a character for which we will be battling with throughout the semester aside from our regular homework. I got "Apollo" and his weapon is a machete.

Keeping with the Greek names, I also whipped something up for Sketch Dailies' Valentine's Day theme "Aphrodite" 

There is a lot more work on the way, so stay tuned guys! Until next time, best wishes!

Joshua

Air Travel Fun!

Hi everyone! It's busy busy busy around here in the race to the finish as the date of my thesis exhibition (March 28th) draws near! I don't like to go too long without updating the blog though, so I thought I would share some of the imagery for the prints and patterns I'm currently working on alongside my dummy for The Little Merprince. I'll also have some work from my character design class to share within the next couple of days.

Anyway, the series I'm currently working on is under the theme of travel and exploration, and I'd love to hear what you think! I was planning to do land, sea and sky, although I may just stick to air at this point and move on, but we shall see!

Until next time, best wishes!

Joshua

Collaborations

So I've taken a part in a couple of collabs in the time before revving up for school. The first was a Hayao Miyazaki twitter collaboration put together by @Jmieldesigns. For those who aren't familiar with the character, I illustrated Honey Hatter. She is Sophie's mother in Howl's Moving Castle. The second batch is for an elf zine put together by a fellow illustrator at MICA, Jabari Weathers. The artists were all given randomized prompts and these are the result. Both were a fun little break from thesis work, but now let the madness of my final semester begin! Happy Hunger Games...

Joshua

Happy New Year

Hi everyone! I hope y'all are all enjoying the year 2014 so far! There are so many exciting things ahead and lots of new work on the way. For now I'm happy to share some doodles with y'all that I've been doing as I get back into the swing of things post holiday. The latter is for a joint blog I mentioned in an earlier post of doodles of animals in clothing that some of my peers and I have started, be sure to check out Animals Outfitted and follow us to see some talented artists' work! Until next time, best wishes!

Joshua

Wrapping up the semester

I feel like I have no idea where the last four months went? This semester has absolutely flown by! And if the spring semester is anything like my last one, it will to! I can't believe I am now three-fourths of the way finished with grad school. It's been absolutely insane and there is still a long way to go! I'm really looking forward to moving forward with my thesis next semester as well as exploring a new medium: screenprinting! I think it will be really interesting to see how the thought process behind that informs my work. 

In the mean time I have a couple images to share with all of you! Mostly thus far, my retelling of The Little Mermaid has lived within the numerous filled pages of my sketchbooks. I decided I needed to stop floundering around with sketches and figuring out what I want this world to look like and just bite the bullet and create an image! So I created a spread where the little merprince is making his deal with the sea witch for the magic to turn him into a human. There is space for the text on both pages, hence the large open spaces. I have my final critique on Thursday and this could go over horribly and the imagery of next semester may look nothing like this, but I'd love opinions regardless. =)

Also I have a couple more patterns to share within my under the sea collection. Designing imagery for prints and patterns is something I have definitely really come to enjoy in my time here at school, and it is an avenue I will continue to explore both next semester and upon graduation.

I hope you are all having safe travels during this holiday season, and if I don't post before then, have a merry Christmas y'all! Best wishes!

Joshua