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|

38: trail mix

Mixed media headshot commissions.

Corrected the wheel/pod anatomy on some sketches from a while back- P. Pullman's Mulefa species. Really rough background was slapped on there with no rhyme or reason, but I'm looking forward to playing around with it.

Doodles of a deity of peace, trying to figure out the head shape. (I love African masks, aahh)

...and a few more marker and pen doodles!

37: Two Side Views

All of my artistic culmination is side-views of whimsical antelope creatures. :'c

36: Artslam 2011 Roundup

The entirety of what I produced this month can be seen on my Flickr album, here. The following are some of my favorites...

35: Summer Blues

Over a month since my last update? I'm ashamed of myself! Although...my art has been sadly lacking lately, and it's been amazingly frustrating. Here are some recent scribblings in any case.

Silly requests from my tween-aged sister and her friend. Bling giraffes. :|

Marker experiement with one of my Insuti guys.

The One Who Cannot Concentrate on Baseball Games. In all seriousness, I'm loving the various stances of the pitchers.

Something from this year's Artslam which I quite like. Artslam is a Livejournal-centric drawing challenge focusing on world and idea building, and I partake every year. Here's last year's blog post on my Artslam work! This year, I'm out of my comfort zone as I'm not focusing on my Insuti world OR animal people, and it SHOWS with some of the drivel I've drawn thus far. Hopefully I'll uh...loosen up.

I will draw Pokemon until the day I die.

34: A Few Finalized Things

Watercolor assignment for Kovach's illustration methods class! Had a very interesting time with this, and it spawned a want to experiment more; always a fun feeling. This was my first time using my new Utrecht watercolor set, and I couldn't be happier with them!

A silly bunch of product design ideas. You might not believe it, but coming up with a name for the set was the most difficult part.

A few tiny, quick black and white illustrations for my three-part Leshy project, drawn with the scratchboard tool in Painter.

The two larger finals in my Leshy project- a simple character vignette in the first, and a more story oriented second piece in which he transfigures a path to befuddle a travelling woman. Both of these were completed in Photoshop, and it was my first time going for a cell-shaed papercut feel. The first piece is the one I lost the full resolution for. :c At least I've got the second!