adele painting process

my first assignment in my materials and techniques 2 class was to do a portrait of a music artist. i chose adele. i was able to scan my painting a few times to show some sort of process.

this was the tight sketch done in pencil. it took me a while to get it to look like adele. but i'm proud that i did finally make it look like her. 

i inked it with microns. we had to use ink that was waterproof since we were going to paint it with watercolor. microns worked really well with this. i started laying down some watercolor in the background. i still was iffy about what colors i was going to use in the piece. so i didn't do a lot of painting in class that day.

i layed down some watercolor everywhere. again the mircons worked well with this. they did not smudge or fade when i was painting with the watercolor. i added some warm colors to the smoke in the background to kind of make it pop a bit. it looked kind of boring without them. i was afraid that by doing that it was going to take some attention from adele, but i only used a bit of the warm colors in the smoke. so it worked out.

here's the final piece...before critique (i have critique today). i added more to her makeup to the best of my ability. and i added some highlights to her lips with some white fluid acrylic paint. i feel that my professor will want me to work on the face more. but i really like it like this. adele's skin always looks soft to me so that's why i want to leave it like this. but overall i really like the way this came out. it's nice to make school work you actually like in the end. 

first days of classes

the winter quarter began on wednesday. and i was really excited to be back. i saw everyone that i wanted to see except one person. i don't know where she is...but i hope i see her soon so i can give her her gifts.

on the first day of school i wore this. i felt so cute e///w///e i only had one class on wednesday and that was materials and techniques 2. i'm kind of intimidated by the professor...i mean he's nice, but i'm still worried about how i'll do in this class. our first project for this class is to do a portrait of a music artist. i chose adele. i wish we could have started off the quarter with a different project. i didn't want to do a portrait first, i hate doing portraits. but at least we're getting the portrait project out of the way. but i like that we're using ink and watercolor for this. i like those mediums.

today i had 2 classes. the first was an art history elective called indian art and architecture. i'm really interested in the class. i just didn't like the fact that i had to have like 4 books for and i eventually have to write an 8 to 10 page essay e n e. and these professors say it like it's nothing. 8 to 10 pages is hard...well for me. i can barely write 2 pages. if this was creative writing i wouldn't be so afraid of it. but it's not. oh well. my second class was a collage class for illustration. i'm really really excited about this class. i get to make some plushies! and i might be learning needle felting! i always wanted to learn it. it will be neat to make my own plushies, it will come in handy for the holidays. oh and i did the doodle above in my collage class. eyes and crosses are one of my favorite motifs in art. i would like to incorporate them into my personal work more.

over all this first week of classes went well. i already feel like i have a lot on my plate. i'm going to need me a planner to keep things together. but even though i feel like i have a lot to do, i'm still excited for this quarter and i hope to do even better than before.

art work from fall quarter

i decided to show some of my school work here. just to show people that i don't always draw simple cute stuff my personal work is simple, but for school my work is different. last quarter i made work i actually like despite the fact that i wasn't really working in my style.

here is my first project of the quarter (water color and color pencil). we had to do an illustration of an endangered animal. i chose the red panda. even though when i show it to people they're like "oh that's a cute fox". and i sit there like e w a. i mean at first i was correcting them, but then it got to the point where i was like bump this. with this project i learned a way to blend color pencil with turpenoid. it's so cool. i really like using it. this was the first project where i worked with water color. when i show people my work, this tend to be their favorite.

 our next assignment was a collage illustration. we had to do the abc's of atlanta and i got "g" and "z". so my g is for grant park. i collaged pictures of leaves in the bg, did a was with fluid/liquid acrylic. and i did more collaging with printer paper (the pole thing), newspaper (the owl), and bristol (the g).

here's the second part of the assignment. z for zoo atlanta. i really didn't like how this one came out. i wished i did a color comp for this one. if i could go back, i would have just sticked with primary colors and the color green. and just picked different areas for the color to go. but my choice in color is the biggest thing that bothers me about this. but this has collaged grass in the bg covered by a wash of fluid/liquid acrylic. the z is made of bristol and some of the stripes were made of tape. the cut out of animals were made of bristol and india ink.

this was the 3nd assignment (water color and pastel). we had to do an illustration with an octopus as the main subject. i really enjoyed this project. it was perfect when it came to trying to work with my style. and i was really shocked. my professor didn't mind me working so simple. the only thing he said about my style was to add sophistication to it by working with more value. i'm always afraid of going too dark in my work, it's something i need to work on. but this is just an octopus, fried noodles, and takoyaki. a lot of people didn't know what takoyaki was. a lot of people thought it was ice cream or cupcakes...a few people knew what it was though. we talked about how  this could be for a specific audience, like people who actually eat this would know what it was. maybe not. my style is so simple...but anyway i really enjoyed working on it.

our final project was to do a conceptual portrait of an artist for rolling stone (fluid/liquid acrylic). i chose janelle monae, because her hair is really one of her most distinguishing features and i thought that people would be able to recognize her. my concept was basing the portrait on an old metropolis poster (one of my favorite movies by the way. need to get it on dvd). i wanted to stick with blue, yellow, and orange type colors. this was the reason i made her skin tone the way it is. i needed to make it lighter than the city behind her so she could pop. again my professor didn't mind my graphic, kind of simple style. i had to go through so many color comps before i chose a palette i thought was ok.

overall, fall quarter was a good quarter. i actually made art i liked and didn't mind showing people. e w e hopefully i will be able to do the same this quarter.