My Watercolor Process

Hi guys! As I've posted on my facebook and tumblr, I have recently completed my latest spread from my Snow White and Rose Red project. This one will be the opening spread of the book. Since I post images a bit more often and quicker on my tumblr, I like to use my blogger here to speak a bit more expansively about my pieces. So for this painting, I decided I would take photos throughout so I could share a bit of my process when I'm doing a watercolor painting.

I hope this was something enjoyable to see, and if so, perhaps I'll do more posts like this with my other methods as well?

I have one more spread of this to bring to completion this weekend, and I'm really looking forward to it. It is of the scene when the bear is revealed to be the prince! I also have a fair amount more of my Wish Academy project to complete for next Thursday, so I look forward to sharing that as well! Until then, best wishes!

~Josh

Princess Book Preview

I just thought I'd share some of my watercolor studies of characters for my upcoming princess etiquette book! Hope everyone is having a great Windsday! (I hope at least of few of you guys caught the Winnie the Pooh reference ;) )

Best Wishes!

~Josh

Tan Lines

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 =)

Happy New Year!

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 ;)

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!

Where is this year going??

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! 

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!

Poisoned Honey

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!

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.

Princess Everything

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

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

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!

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 =).

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 =)

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.

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?