45: Lotti & Basil

First finished piece from my children's book illustration project. Another experiment with watercolor and pencil...for a while there I was trying to get away from that combination, but it seems to be my calling! This one's fairly large for me, measuring 18x12" on hotpress watercolor paper.

44: Zebra & Quagga

A mock spot-illustration intended to illustrate a factoid. I chose to bring light to this interesting breeding project going on in South Africa, The Quagga Project. Whether the 'quaggas' they're attempting to revive are considered legitimate or not, I still find it absolutely mindblowing that dormant genes can be tapped into so easily! Quaggas weren't really bright orange, but I'll admit to being heavily inspired by Terryl Whitlatch's portrayal in her Katurran Odyssey illustrations. It also helped to obviously differentiate the two species, so I went with it. Like most of my work thus far, this piece was created with a haphazard mixture of media. I took some fairly awful photos in attempt to illustrate the process...

It began with a watercolor wash, which ended up being far too desaturated. Cue the bright blue marker layer, another watercolor layer, then the white gouache on the zebra's stripes. I followed up with alternating layers of watercolor and colored pencil detailing.

...and we finally arrived at a finished piece!

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!

42: Incoming!

The semester's almost over and I'll have quite a few pieces wrapped up in a week or so. Stay tuned!

41: Ruby Project Update

This project has been eating me alive, and I've only just figured out the overall plot of the story. It'll be typed up in its entirety fairly soon, so have some of the better concept sketches and heads in the meantime:

40: Scenery at Last!

You read that right- I finally hunkered down and attempted some proper backgrounds! So many firsts in this post; first time painting water, first true attempts at a little town, first real attempt at a night scene...whew. All but the last image is work for my Illustrative Drawing class with Professor Tardino, in which we're required to write/compose a story and develop the visuals and characters. I got off to a rocky start, hence the lack of posts since I arrived in Columbus, but everything's starting to fall into place.

So far my story is geared toward something like 7 year old children- a fairly typical adventure tale about getting lost in the woods and finding unlikely friends...I'm purposefully keeping the story rather simple since plotweaving isn't my strong point. We'll see how it develops! The main characters are a young moose, as yet unnamed, and a young tortoise, Mabel, who live in separate allied villages on an alpine mountainside.

Our class has been going to the Columbus Zoo every Monday for the past few weeks, and last week I decided to try some field acrylics. It worked. Something worked. In any case, I'd love for something like this to happen again please. :'D I rarely post my paintings here, as they're incredibly subpar compared to my normal work, but this one has promise.

I ended up mammal-izing practically every limb on the tortoises' bodies- It was unbelievably difficult to make reptillian forearms look 'normal' without reversing the elbows. These are based on the patterns of the Indian Star Tortoise, and Mabel's design is going to be a combination of the two.

The three compositions above are quick color-blocks of landscape sketches. It was unbelievably refreshing to color these! Photoshop

And as a closer, some unrelated scribbles of my angel beings!

39: A few More Floating Things

My art has become the Menagerie of Floating Animals, so my next post will be filled with environments and backgrounds and all sorts of fun stuff. Hopefully. 8|