editorial illustration

one of the classes i'm taking this quarter is editorial illustration. i was kind of intimidated by editorial illustration. it seemed so serious and required me to think outside the box. but after doing my first illustration for the class i felt better about everything.

for our first assignment we had to pick an article about going green. the article i chose was about a school that incorporated the environment into their curriculum. they even taught classes outside. so after i showed the class my thumbnails they gave me more ideas and suggestions. i took their suggestions and ended up going with a student at a desk. and in the desk was soil and sprouting plants. (i know my desk is wonky, but i think it works) and there's trees in the background.

i learned a lot doing this project. i learned how to make brushes and how to use textures i create with traditional media and turn them into brushes and textures i could use in my illustrations. and i'm so glad i learned this. i think this is a way i could make my cute illustrations more sophisticated. i also learned that i need to work on my palettes more. i mean sometimes i get and sometimes my palette is all over the place. but i'll get better.

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.

little commission sneak peaks

i actually got commissioned and that made me happy. these are little sneakpeaks of them. i'm not posting them yet since i don't feel comfortable posting them before the person who these were commissioned for sees them. the person asked me to make these because they were going to be a gift for someone. their birthday is at the end of the month...so i'm going to have to wait a while before i post it. i might post them here earlier since i don't have to worry about someone reblogging them.

some character sketches

this is my character lydia. she's not a major character, but she's in the story somewhere. she does have arms, it's just that she's wearing a poncho dress thing. so her arms are underneath it? e w e

today i did some stream of consciousness writing of all of my story ideas. and i still can't make up a decision...and i'm debating if i want to post what i wrote on here. but i am glad that i got all my basic ideas down. i love them all...but i don't know which one i want to work on...so hard to choose. i guess i want to eventually work on them all, but i want to pick one now, so i can work on it during the summer. hopefully i'll get it together before the end of the quarter (which ends in like 5 weeks, it's going by so fast).

linoleum print 1

this is my first linoleum cut print. we had to do the first one in black and white. i'm very proud of this. i even stabbed myself twice. ; u ; like i feel proud because i worked so hard. and i have some thumb cuts to prove it. but i didn't hurt myself too bad. um this print is about my own personal demons. they each represent something. i don't think i'll say what they represent. maybe later.

monotype prints

our first assignment was to make 5 monotype prints. they could all be different. my professor just wanted us to play around and get use to the printmaking lab and all the equipment. we made stencils. we played around with different combinations of images and our stensils. i guess this print was about how i like cityscapes, but i don't really like being in the city. i'll be posting the rest of my prints one day at a time.

i used a stencil for the bg and cat, even though it's not perfect. and i painted the buildings directly on the plexiglass. used some pieces of chip board to make the windows and stuff.

different combination of elements. like i changed the colors and the bg.

i wanted to do a cool (temperature wise) to contrast with the other ones. so i did this one. again with the cityscape. and i used a stencil for the bg to get the clouds. i painted the raindrops and swirls on the clouds directly on the plexiglass.

used the stencil for the clouds again. and painted the rain drops on. i can't explain how i did the texture on the clouds...well i'll try to explain. i put the paper directly on top of ink and scratch the back of the paper with the end of a paintbrush. i just wish i could have straighten this up a little. i mean sometime it's not good to have everything centered in a composition, but i think this need to be a little more centered. but that's just me.

petite artist

i'm really proud of this. i wanted to make my stuff look more children's storybook illustration-ish. i was inspired by peachifruit. she's amazing. i love her stuff. i was also inspired by adrian molina's illustrations in the toy story 3 little golden books. i'm so glad i decided to try something new. another thing i did was sketch digitally. i use to hate doing it until i did this picture. because i usually tried in sai and nothing ever worked out. but when i tried sketching in photoshop, the lines flowed and were sketchy like my traditional sketches are. i will still do traditional sketching. but i know there are going to be times when i'm going to have to do things digitally. so i'm glad i have something i can digitally sketch in.