inside edition: my sketchbook!

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

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

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!

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

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.