illustration class, check.

well i'm all done with everything illustration class related for the quarter. here are the final pieces that i'm turning in tomorrow.

"conversations", pen and ink.



"the star money", mixed media.



"bj kocen, the breaks" cd cover, cut paper, colored pencil and digital text.



"growing up", aacpu magazine cover, acrylic and digital embossment.



"celebrating 150 years", westerville magazine, cut paper and digital embossment.



"tree 1", acrylic and pen.



"tree 2", colored pencil and pen.



"tree 3", collage.



"tree 4", cut paper.

everyone should go!

TONIGHT: CSCA Creative Best at the Arena Grand 6:30 Social Hour-and-a-Half 8:00 Awards Show!

end of the quarter is almost here.

2 weeks plus finals is all thats left of this quarter. i turned in my graduation forms today, making it all too real. on the good side, i had a major break through the other day with finally coming to terms with truly wanting to be an illustrator instead of a designer. apparently some of my friends figured that out way earlier, but decided to let me discover it for myself.

other news: i might have gotten the cover for the bj kocen cd. just a few minor changes to be made. i believe this would be my first published piece!

also i might be quitting my job at the coffee shop and going back to my old one (retail). my hours keep getting cut and promises getting broken. i might not like the actual work as much but at least it will be reliable, plus it'd be a slight raise since i had taken a pay cut to work at the coffee shop (i worked for less than min. wage because of "tips" but tips are a joke there)



the fish and umbrella painting has evolved yet again. i don't know if i'll ever be 100% satisfied with this one. if i could go back easily i'd probably tweak the composition quite a bit. actually i think i would make the canvas much more narrow, taking out the face entirely and cropping out quite a bit of the big fish.



for this one i was assigned to do a still life based on the style of either van gogh or cezanne. i was shocked when i realized half my class didn't even know who cezanne was! i chose van gogh just for the fun of it. while i have a lot of respect for cezanne and van gogh has become a bit cliche, i always thought it'd be fun to do a piece in his style. in true impressionist this painting only took me a couple hours if that. i worked in a very classical sense in that i worked from background to foreground.



this is a magazine cover illustration for AASCU. mine is in the top two for being chosen, somehow i just need to make it relate more to the main article. i have a few ideas in mind, so i'll be sure to post updates as i make them.

experimenting.

mid term progress

midterms have already passed, where has the quarter gone? here are some of my latest pieces from my classes this quarter.


this was a piece done for illustration. based on the grimm brothers fairy tale called "the star money". the figure was done in colored pencil, cut out and placed onto the background. while for the background i decided to use a combination of marker, pen and acrylic. i was the only model i had at the time which sort of makes it a self portrait as well. this is one of the two pieces of mine that my professor entered in a Society of Illustrators ILW 48 contest. i'm keeping my fingers crossed to place in that one.








this is the second really complete piece i've done for painting. (the fish and umbrella has evolved since my last post) it was supposed to be a timed piece done in about 7 hours. pretty sure i finished this in about 4.5-5 hours. i can't help but paint fast. the dry brushing technique done for the details was a lot of fun and something that i don't do too often. this one didn't evolve too much from start to finish. our assignment was to do a portrait, specifically a headshot. i knew i wanted to use a comedian, and after much research and deliberation i chose charlie chaplin. his history with women alone made him interesting enough for me to paint. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Chaplin. my professor absolutely loves this piece, which is a definite bonus.





here is the latest piece i've done for my illustration class. it is a cd cover for bj kocen. we were given the name of the cd, the breaks, and basically told to run with it. the only stipulations were no beach scenes and no just black and white. i decided to use cut paper. it's a method i haven't really used in this kind of scale. but it was a lot of fun (i didn't even cut myself!) and the whole look goes very well with bj's style. i connected really well with his music and i think it shows in this piece.

painting

this was my first painting for class. i decided not to do the assignment (i get to skip 2 projects to do my own pieces). this was done from a sketch i had done last winter while doing a piece call mouse adventures for computer art. (http://sportybillygoat.deviantart.com/art/mouse-adventures-113255067). it was just something fun to do. captein is a much tougher professor than joanne ever was. so much more structure which is helpful in the long run but very frustrating at times. i changed the background probably half a dozen times before being satisfied.







these are pictures from my second painting. the assignment was to use 6-10 recognizable objects in an unrealistic background. i kind of twisted the definition of 6-10 objects since i believe they were all supposed to be different objects. creative license right? i focused a lot on texture, although i'm not sure how well that comes through with the pictures. click on them for a full few, the texture is much more noticeable then.

baaaaack to schooool.

here's a few more mucha studies. of course i should probably start doing some compositional studies so i can start the actual pieces but these are way more fun.

so i've survived the first couple weeks of senior year. crazy. graduation is just a few short months away. i'm doing my best to prepare myself for the "real world" i suppose. i only have 2 classes this quarter, painting and illustration (my favorites!) plus my work and my internship.

finished my first projects for both painting and illustration this past week. i'll post some pics later on after i remember to take my camera to the art dept. with me.