So Much for the Cake

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!

Testing new techniques

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

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! 

Death of a Tribute (the Pretty Face)

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

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!

New mailer!

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.

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 =).

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. =)