56: A Few New Scapes

I've some weird addiction to landscape classes, it seems. Here are three media experiments in preparation for two much larger pieces to be completed before May, all 5x7" acrylic and colored pencil (for the most part) on bristol:

54: Painting in the Field

This post is dedicated to the first person to pull my head away from characters and force me to look around; my high school art teacher Debra Payne.  :]

I was very excited to return to Landscape Painting with instructor Neil Riley.  It already feels as though I've improved a lot since my last attempt at this class. I don't think painting will ever be my main mode of expression, but this course has certainly taught me to love it all the same.  Here's what I've produced since the beginning of the semester in roughly chronological order:

Underneath the Broad Street Bridge, about 2.5 hrs

O lord.  This bridge scene was the first time I had touched oils in probably a year.  

Studio interior, about 4hrs

Basement of my apartment complex, about 1.5 hrs

 These two interiors were meant to explore our perception of what a landscape is.  In the first one I definitely got carried away and ended up far from the point of the assignment, but I'm happy with how my focus on light temperature came out.  The second feels a little more landscape-y, but could be miles better.

Whetstone Park. About 2.5 hours

The streambed painting above is, I think, where I finally started to GET it.  Mr. Riley, challenged me to use only one or two brush strokes each time I put paint to board, and this exercise was definitely for the best.

Amanda, Katie, what are you doing, get out of here

Autumnal Highbanks Metro Park, 3hrs

Autumnal Highbanks Metro Park,  3 hrs

HIPSTER PAINTING at Highbanks Metro Park, about 2 hrs

You may be able to tell that Highbanks Metro Park was my favorite location.  After spending a couple years simply trying to replicate exactly what I see, I’m finally learning to instead exaggerate and amplify what my mind finds interesting about a landscape.  Through doing so, you end up with a piece that looks more real and tactile to the senses, more like what you remember seeing.  It’s very personal, and very rewarding.

Schiller monument at Schiller Park in German Village, about 1.5 hrs

The statue above is my most recent painting, but also one of the sloppier ones due to how cold it's getting hereabouts.   The projects we're currently working on in-class are studio based projects with loads of layouts, compositions and the like- they'll get their own post in a month or so.  

48: Noodling from the Summer

...Oops, I appear to have fallen off of the blog-o-sphere.  Apologies, followers!  I have a slew of posts queued for the next couple days; this one focuses on sketchbook fun.

Aardvarks are made of endlessly fun shapes to play with.

 Fiddling with gargoyles yet again- I quite like the face on the bottom-right, and I hope to do more with that character.

 Turtle hands.  Not much to say here!

Most of my summer seems to have been spent waiting for appointments, and these guys were a direct result of one of those waits.

More of my little alien guys who never seem to have a finished piece to their names...someday!

Silly dinosaur scribbles from the sketchbook- brush pens are excellent.

Three watercolors drawn from life at the Shoal Creek Living History Museum-  these were all created before Missouri was blessed with almost a month and a half of 100+ degree weather.  I can't wait to do more studies in this vein!

43: A Slapdash End of the Semester Post

I said I'd update by the end of the year, and by god I will. First up in this motley lineup is some of the character-based work I completed for my Illustrative Drawing class- I ended up calling the childrens book project 'Ruby & Dun: Arborfall' to insinuate that it's part of a series which could be expanded upon.

I was intrigued by Angela Rizza's technique of traditionally inking and digitally coloring her pieces, so I decided to try it out for the last two projects of the semester. The scenes above and below were completed in this way...it's definitely something I'll have to try a few more times to really get.

Trying to print this image gave me hell- another reminder that I need to work on my fluency with the digital art process.

Some adaptations of medieval gargoyle designs into characters. I didn't have to change much about them at all- gargoyles are truly one of my biggest inspirations in character design.

An extremely quick Christmas card illustration, and a mini-test of the digitally colored line technique.

And on a much more fine artsy note, here are my two favorite pieces from my landscape painting class, both oils on illustration board. The second is a 1-2 hour on-site study while the first is a studio adaptation of another study. Painting has always been a struggle for me, but I learned a lot in this class. Mr. Riley's passion for his craft and acceptance for different majors and skill levels was infectious!

Next semester should see an increase in the amount of art I produce- this one was clogged with a lot of liberal arts credits and slow-paced illustration courses. See you then!

29: A Smidge of Productivity

Finally, some finalized lithographs! First up is the pterodactyl plate, the acetate painting on the left and one of the prints on the right, and second is an edition I'm calling "Baumsaurs", star-crossed lovers of the Deciduous and Conifer houses.

This...this poor plate. I murdered the thing- I...ouch. But it was a great learning tool, I'll give it that.

The orignial for this piece was drawn digitally in Painter, with a few resolution issues while I made the transparency for the photo-plate. The actual printing for this edition went nigh-flawlessly, and I'm eager to make even more plates now.


In Electronic Illustration, we were assigned a very open-ended project, given only the theme "Transformation" with which to work. Clunking around various mythology sites on the internet waiting for something to click, I discovered a Slavic forest spirit called Leshy, who shapeshifts and changes size to befuddle wanderers in his woods. Forests and guys with glowing eyes? I can do this. So now I need to design the man! Above are some initial concepts out of my head, working with strictly the theme of the spirit. Tonight I'm going to do some proper research about historic Slavic people, what they looked like, and what their spirits would look like.


Also for Electronic Illustration, we made pen-and-ink drawings of landscapes based upon our own photos and colored them with Painter's transparent tools (watercolors, markers, anything on the 'gel' layer setting). Not sure I like how this turned out, but as far as landscapes go, it's something, right? The photo was taken on Mt. Pilatus in Switzerland a few years ago.

...and this is more personal nonsense from the sketchbook, but I quite enjoy how it turned out. Her name is Lli, and she kills little runners For Religion. :c