Working on a book: Postgal

I always wanted to start a personal long term project and actually finish it. Of course I worked on long term projects for school but never for myself. So I decided to write, illustrate, and self publish my own book. Even though I wouldn't consider myself a great writer I wanted to try anyway. I mean it is a personal project, it shouldn't matter. But I do want to give it my all and not cut any corners with this project. My goal is to have the book printed and bound by June, or at least be done with the whole book by June. If the book is done I could print and bind it anytime.

 The story will be called postgal and it's basically about a girl delivering a package in a busy city. It all started with the image to the left. I always liked postal stuff so I did a collage depicting a delivery girl looking at a map. After looking at the finished illustration I begin to make up a story for the girl and it eventually turned into postgal. Right now I have some of the character designs done and I've typed out 50% of the story. Typing out the beginning and end was easy but filling in the middle is more challenging. But I figured out how to fill up the middle it's just a matter of actually typing everything out and making sure it flows the way I want it to. 

I've been reading children's books and short stories for reference. I was hoping they would make me a better writer lol. But I guess I'll get better the more I write. I want to visit the closest library and check out some more book and study them too. It's been so long since I've been to an actual library and I'm actually looking forward to it.

I made a sketchbook specifically for postal sketches. I'll be posted progress pictures once I start the actual illustrating process. I made a schedule for the book and I'm suppose to have the whole manuscript typed by March. I'm glad I'm about half done with that. 

Store Signage

This post is late. I wasn't going to post it but I decided to go ahead. This project was for store signage which is art that you see in stores. I was really interested in chalkboard signage. I was thinking of doing the signage for Whole Foods or Fresh Market since I know they use a lot of chalkboard signage in their stores, specifically something for the bakery section since I like baked goods.

I did two. I like the first one better since the image is bigger. I wish i would have made the image on the 2nd one bigger or used the space in the composition a lot better. I used chalkboard spray on matte board to create my own chalk board. Then I used chalk markers on the homemade chalkboard. They were erasable like regular chalk, except they came off with water. I had to start over a few times before I started making something that worked for me. 

My friend recently showed me this bakery (that makes the best oatmeal cookies ever!!!) and we both really want to do store signage for them. They don't really have a lot of art work in the store area and it would be nice if they did. I noticed that had little chalkboards and I would love to do work on them. So today when we visited the bakery we got their business card and I think I'll be contacting them in the future. 

Shoe ad

Here is a proposed shoe ad. I chose to do mine on creepers. I thought I could come up with interesting imagery because of the name. Although this wasn't my first choice in terms of composition, I still liked how it came out.

I usually post my work after I've had a critique so I could have more to talk about, but I can't wait. And I already printed this out to be mounted. Basically the creepers are in a coffin shaped shoe box with roses and thorns, pretty simple. It took me a long time to ink all those roses though. But I'm really proud of this poster even though it doesn't feel like an ad to me. I don't even know why. I do think the illustration would catch the eye of someone when they're flipping through the pages of a magazine though.

Our next assignment is to do a performance poster. I plan on doing a gig poster for Toro Y Moi. I always wanted to do a gig poster so I'm excited. So far I'm really liking advertising, I just don't know if I'll get a lot of advertising work in the future. But it's definitely something I'm interested in.

Children's book pitch

For my first assignment in my portfolio class I decided to do a children's book pitch for blue apple books. after critique I felt like I have a while to go before I actually make really good children's book illustration. Nothing really bad was said about my work, but I just personally feel I need to work on it some more before actually pitching something. I still plan to put it in my portfolio though because I do like the illustrations.

 This was my cover and it still needs some work. I wanted the "ABC's" text to go into the magnifying glass (which is why I drew it so big) area but I couldn't get it to look right. I also rushed the whole thing. I mean i like the drawing, I just wish it would have worked out the way I wanted it to. The basic idea was that I wanted to have the "ABC's" text in the magnifying glass but also have the girl included in the cover illustration. Still have to work on it though.

I felt like the area on the lower left was too empty. And I was surprised that no one said anything about it. 

This was my favorite page. I just really like the trees. and over all composition. I had some little green leaves in the right tree but took them out to put the text in. 

Um not much to say about this one. I think it's ok. You may have noticed that it was kind of difficult to see the letters, like the "A", "F", and "M", in the illustration itself. My professor told me I should put the letters on something, like the A on a book, or F in a flower. I really like that idea and I will do it whenever I get to redo these pages. Because I really like this idea and I really want to pitch it. I just need to do better.  And another thing I need to work on is leaving a bleed space.

I feel like I need to do more research, like actually look at more children's books. I wish I had transportation to a bookstore or library. But I guess I should just look at the children's books that are available in the school's library, it's better than nothing. 

This was a maze I did at the beginning of my children's book class last quarter. I really liked it. I like doing maze illustrations (even if coming up with the maze is kind of difficult). I would love to do more children activities for children's magazines and activity books. I do want to pitch this to some children's magazines in future. 

Closure to 2012

I have been really inactive on this blog but I hope to change that. I wanted to post some of the projects I did in fall quarter 2012 that I should have posted in December. I just became a sloth in December. The first project I want to share with you all is my packaging assignment. We had to find something at Hmart to rebranding. I chose these peanut cookies, they were a Korean brand.

I decided to use the monkey from my "monkey shenanigans" book for the mascot of the rebranded peanut cookies. Here's the illustration on the very front of the box. I'm proud of the "peanut biscuits" type I did. 

Here is another side of the box. Overall I think I did a decent job. I still need to study more packaging so I can get better. I did this in photoshop. Had to do a lot of scanning because I drew most of the elements including the type in my sketchbook.

Another project we had to do was to design some nesting dolls. I called them "The Jolly Roger Nesting Doll Set". This was actually our first project of the quarter. I'm glad I was able to work in my style. I had to do my own munny dolls and I felt like I couldn't do them the way I wanted to because I wasn't able to work in my style, which is basically cute and simple. I used fluid acrylic and color pencil.

tarot cards

the quarter is over and now i can rest...for a while. i plan on doing a lot of personal art projects this summer since i know i won't be able to do as much while i'm in school.

our last project for electronic illustration was to make 3 tarot cards (2 from major arcana and 1 from minor arcana) and we could also do a card back illustration for extra credit. i really wanted to overachieve on this project so i did the 3 cards and a back illustration. i chose the sun and the fool from the major arcana and page of cups from the minor arcana.

this one is my favorite. for all my cards i took the imagery from the original cards and translated them into my style. so it was based on this.

based on this card. but i also did the card based on the phrase "mystical cleverness". i wish i would have put the dog next to him. like in my thumbnails there was a dog sitting next to him. but for some reason i forgot to put it into the tight sketch. and i just never drew him back in. i also need to move the stars on left, the ones that are too close to the border, over some.

i didn't start off liking this one, because i couldn't get the boy to look right on the card. like i basically had to enlarge him and move him more over to the left. that way the fish could fit in too. i also didn't know what to put at the top of the card...so i just threw in some random clouds. but it's based on this. in the original card i like how the guy goes in to drink but the fish pops out. like i thought that was funny so i decided to play with this and put in my own humor. i wanted to have the boy run on the beach holding the cup with the fish flying out of the cup. well i thought it was funny, it makes me happy. = w =

this is the card back illustration i did for extra credit. i wanted to make it pretty simple.

overall i am very pleased with my cards. the class and my professor liked them too. my professor even said they were "perfectly executed". when i read that in the comments i wanted to cry. and i got a perfect score (105!) on it plus the extra credit for doing the card back. my professor thinks that i should do a whole deck and use it in the self promotion class. i always wanted to do my own tarot card deck, so to hear that gave me more motivation to do more. it's one of the things i want to do over the break. there are a lot of cards in the deck so i'm just going to try to work on the major arcana over the summer.

the post was pretty wordy. but i hope you enjoyed the illustrations. thanks for reading!

playing with painter

before i started on my last assignment for electronic illustration i played with corel painter on the school's computers. i had fun playing with the different brushes. i ended up making something i actually liked.

i call it "small person" because the girl is actually really tiny. i made up a stupid story for this, but i'm not going to share that. e w e but i believe i used one of the charcoal brushes for this.

anyway, it's the last week of the quarter. only 4 more days of classes! i'm so happy, i have many plans for the summer. most of them are art related though. got to do some more stuff for my portfolio and make illustrations for zines. hope i work harder this summer than last. thanks for reading.

instructional comic

hello. = w = i finished another assignment for editorial illustration and just had critique. it went pretty well. we actually had a choice to either do a positive illstration for a bad article (like one with bad news) or we could do an instructional comic. i chose the instructional comic, it sounded more fun. and i really wanted to do a comic. i didn't come up with the instructions myself, i got the recipe from the instructables website. i used the recipe for chocolate coffee pinwheels. they sounded nice and something i would actually try to bake and eat. so let me show you my comic pages.

here's my first page. it's just a girl and her cat baking. my professor said the last panel was still too dark (he told me this earlier in a past class and i tried lightening it up with some highlights, but i should have added more highlights or made them stronger).

here's the second page. i still should have lightened up some areas. and i have this tangent on the last panel, like in the area with the right roll and the cloud. they're kind of touching or about to touch.

this is the last page. this one was pretty ok. my professor thought i could have used a light in the stove window. but other than that, it was ok. overall, he liked them and everything. he even commented on how flat and geometric things are but it doesn't make it boring. like i get that look to work. and most of my classmates liked my color palette (i used kuler in photoshop. they also have a website). i just wanted to try using another palette. i usually use bright saturated colors. so it was nice to try something new. i want to continue experimenting with different color palettes.

thanks for reading!

2nd assignments

hello. i finally got around to doing another blog post. i decided to do an update on my latest assignments from my electronic and editorial illustration classes.

this was the 2nd assignment for my electronic illustration class. we had to make a menu cover for midtown diner. we also had to make it look old/vintage. we started off in illustrator and did some stuff in photoshop. i started off not caring too much for the illustration while it was in illustrator. but once i put it in photoshop and made it look aged i loved it. i loved it even more once i got it printed. a cool thing happened though, it got put up in a case at school. i'm so happy and proud.

this was my 2nd assignment for my editorial illustration class. we had to do an illustration for a book or movie review. i did mines on a book review on coral reefs by jason chin. i'm going to be honest and say i'm not too crazy about this. i think it's because it's so busy, i like my compositions to be a bit more simple than this. but the picture being busy is appropriate because of the setting. but i do love all the colors though.

midterms went great and i'm looking forward to the rest of the quarter. thanks for reading.

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 & stuff

spring quarter just started. after this quarter i will have 3 quarters to go before i graduate. so i'm happy about that. but so far i love all my classes. if i don't procrastinate it should be a smooth quarter. i'm taking electronic illustration, editorial illustration, and survey to new media art.

i drew this last weekend. i wanted to do a picture where i used pastels. i like how it came out. at first i was using all the colors you see now plus pastel blue and yellow. and i thought it looked horrible. so i took out the blue and yellow and just stuck with the purples and pinks.

i hope i can post more personal work this quarter. i plan on drawing more in my sketchbook. i'm determined to do a really good sketchbook this quarter just for self-satisfaction.

wild things collage

my last assignment in collage was to do four more 8 x 10 pieces and they had to be illustrations. i couldn't really think of anything, but i did know i wanted to do something for children's book illustration. so my professor asked what my favorite children's book was and i said "where the wild things are". so i ended up doing my last collage illustrations based on the book.

i'm only posting one of them. this one is my favorite and also the last one i did. and i was mad because i came up with this technique on my last piece. and this technique i did would have made my life easier and i wouldn't have wasted a lot of time.

the background is just torn tissue paper. the first layer being yellow. then i laid on the pink tissue paper. the pink tissue paper was suppose to act as a speech bubble. for max and the wild thing i drew them on tracing paper, inked them and then colored them in with color pencil. i went over the color pencil with turpenoid. i love this stuff, it help blends in the color pencil. i felt like i was painting without making the tracing paper too wet. after that i glued it to the surface. next i drew "i'll eat you up" on some tracing paper, went over the letters with a red marker, cut them out, and pasted them on the board. oh and i did the collage on some canson board. i really like it. it's also within my budget. e w e

over all this specific process went so quickly and i wish i would have came up with it at the beginning of the assignment. next time i would use vellum instead of tracing paper. i only used tracing paper because it's something i had. it worked pretty good though.

thanks for reading.

monkey shenanigans

i had to make an artwork for my indian art and architecture class. i decided to make a picture featuring monkeys.

here's the final product. i'm so proud of it. it's a 10 page perfect bound book. i did the perfect binding myself. and it just came out better than i thought it would. i'll be posting the illustrations from the book here:

since i only did 10 illustrations, i needed something to put on the back of the illustrations. so i decided to put simple patters on the back of each illustration. i only made 3 so they are repeated throughout the book.

overall i'm really happy that everything worked out. i think my professor is keeping the artworks. so i probably would have to make myself another one. but i now know i can perfect bind. i would love to make my own art book to sell and have it perfect bound. so i had fun doing this. and i'm looking forward to creating more books.

second set of collages

for our next collage project we had to do 4, 8 x 10 collages. two had to be abstract and 2 had to be illustrations. overall the whole class did better than before. like everyone improved. my professor was so pleased to see how we evolved from the first set of collages. here are mine:

here are my abstract pieces. my professor said i'm good at them. she really liked the layers. i liked these. i found them relaxing while i was working them. like i could lay back and just watch them come together on their own.

these were my two illustration ones. when it got to these two, my professor thought i was too stiff with these. and i agree. i wish i had more time to work on them. she thought i could have slanted some of the elements like i did with my abstract pieces to make them more interesting.

for our next assignment, we are doing 4 more in the same size. i really want to produce better ones. and try a different technique. i hope i get my ideas together before class so i can just get started on them so i can spend the appropriate time on each piece.

a few collage trading cards

we had to do 10 trading cards. here are my favorites.

this is the prince hare. i love my line work on him. this one is my favorite one of all. i also like the colors i used. i just love the way these colors look. i don't know why. i feel like purple is a royal color. it's also pretty cool in temperature. i also like colors that are analogous to purple.

this is my bunny girl. she has a hood, but i cut it off here. she's walking away from the castle. again i love the colors i used. 

i'll add this one in here. i wish i would have added more line work into these two. i think it would have made this one stronger. because of the three this one feels week. i don't know. maybe that's just my opinion. maybe if they had more color? like in person, they're covered with pink tissue paper, but since i edited it, you can't really see it here. but even if i could see the pink tissue paper, i still feel like i should have added more to the figures.

i used pictures of cathedrals to make the castles. like some i just cut parts of them off. some i added with another building to make a new one. and i painted over them. after my professor saw these she asked if i like cute and of course i said yes. she feels that i need to pursue this because it's marketable, but i need to figure out how to make them sophisticated. and i agree. but i'm kind of loss on how i would go about doing that. if you all have any suggestions please share them with me.

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.