28: No Rhyme or Reason

I don't post enough anymore, do I? Here's a mishmash of (more) school project concepts and some personal doodles. I'm working on a fairly ambitious sculpture project for my illustration methods class, for which I'll make a separate process post once it's complete.

The lowdown on my printmaking situation: As much as I love looking at woodcut prints, turns out I'm kind of awful at the process. And 18 credit hours overloaded me like woah, so I bid an unfortunate goodbye to relief printmaking. Thankfully, I recently managed a solid grasp on the lithographic printing process, and just in time for mid-terms next week! I need to have another photographic transfer plate and a traditional lithograph stone drawing completed fairly soon, so here's the concepts I've been noodling around with for those:
Trees and reptiles are the thing now.

A silhouette of this guy was another option, but it still seems strange to make numbered editions of a personal character no one cares about.







And on an ending note, here's an experiment from illustration methods; a traditional and digital collage. The end product is a bit...garish, and is another example of a project I wish I'd had more time with, but the process was very rewarding. I definitely need to try something of the sort with more personal projects.

27: The Grayscale Concept Post

Quickie concept for a Freddie Mercury portrait. And then I realized it had to be 7x10". Time for some revamps!

Quick-and-dirty mockup for my first woodcut. The process is proving frustrating as hell, but I need to remember that it's my first attempt. Pictured is a man about to make a bargain with an angry sea, a homage to the Decemberists song "Annan Water".

Acrylic painting on acetate for a positive photo-plate lithograph. The plate itself turned out rather well; I hope to have some printed by the next time I post.

Scribblings from the past few weeks.

We got to play with Painter's acrylic tools in electronic illustration class. The texture and form of the face could use work, but I feel that the colors I chose show a bit of progress. :] About two hours.

26: Products of Break

Howdy from the last few days of break! Only in the past week have I seemed to regain any artistic mojo, and just in time for the new semester. My goals for break were to work on human faces and scenery. I only worked on one of those. Can you guess which? :|

Poldi the vagrant, one of my guys. I looked at far too many animation concept art books over break and got all inspired to do some character sketches.
Finished up that Lapras from a while back. Pretty fond of how this turned out. Oughta' try this technique with some fully composed scenes.

A tree kangaroo for a friend's conservation website. Painter 11's pencil tools are just GODLY.

Didn't work on my Swidden story as much as I would've liked to over break...but there's this, at least! In short, Swidden is an angel who is given creative freedom to conjure anything into existence...save for other angels. In frustration, he creates humans and birds, two parts of a whole, and his father is quite angered by this. All of the busts above are ideas for Swidden himself as both an angelic and human being.

Face scribbles from the sketchbook.

Drawing video game fanart to get better at faces. Stay classy, Katie.

And lastly some silly sharpie scribbles of my Runner people.

25: Oops

Well. All of this stuff is from the end of last semester, but I completely forgot to post it. Forgot I drew all of this, even. Didn't realize I had lost THAT much sleep.

Some weird thing for digital illustration class.

Studies from my last class with Mr. Pirasteh! Charcoal on toned paper.

Later this week I'll spam the blog with face studies and things.

24: Weekend-stealers

Pfff. THIS THING. It stole away my weekend and didn't give it back until three in the morning on Monday.



I dearly wish I'd had more time to spend with this in order to make it more anatomically and biologically correct. Guess I'll have to revisit it someday to rid all of these animals of their noodly legs. This was for my advertising/graphic design class, in which we were to redesign an existing exucational or instructional poster. Text was omitted to focus on the illustration. Here's a few detail shots of the nicer looking bits:

Dimetrodon, Ivantosaurus, and Cynognathus

Coelphysis and Diplodocus

Baryonyx and Pteranodon

23: Christmas Corgs

IT'S ALMOST CHRISTMAS, so have some celebratory corgis. I'm throwing these together into little cards which will be sent to family and friends.

But not these friends. Their present is living with me. My presence. (These are my roommates, plus me on the far right)

And here's a few more things from the illustration methods sketchbook:

"Be excellent to each other."

22: Black and what

I've felt pretty stressed recently; school's finally getting to me, I guess. Hopefully my next post will have a little color...and perhaps an abundance of obnoxiously cute cartoon dogs. Evidently, I hate myself, because I want to doodle custom watercolor Christmas cards for most of my family. :[ In the meantime, here's a few assignments from my Illustration Methods sketchbook...

A ballpoint pen cloth study and Rita's face in charcoal.

Some hands of mine. I'm proud of the one on the left!

"Weird Raider 1", an assignment for my Design for Illustration class. The objective was to move value through the composition. This composition is made up of things I found around my room, which accounts for the nonsensical...nonsense. Gaaad I cannot talk I am GOING BACK TO BED. But first, a detail shot to show off my hatching! Media: Acrylic and colored pencil, 11x17 inches, watercolor board