~Fashionista~

As a warmup exercise, Ive been drawing my outfit of the day! I was inspired by Tiffany Ford's "color blocking" exercise. It's been fun, and I've been experimenting a lot with style.

Some Summer Sketches!

I've been lazy summer, not gonna lie. I've been keeping up with my sketchbook, and doing lots of doodles with my tablet, but haven't made a legit illustration yet.

I'm thinking about making something for the fantastic Tommy and the High Pilots, and giving them a print when I see them on tour. I made this thing for them a few years ago:

ANYWAY here's some of the digital things I've made this summer

Summer!

Gatsby comic

Lucy Liu/Joan Watson!

Duck Ballerina Lady

By hair my business (◡‿◡✿)

doodled while watching LotR

Fire Lady Monster!

Quick cover for Malinda Lo's "Huntress"

Nichelle Nichols!

The Enchanted Snake

"The King and the Snake"

"The Princess and the Snake"

My second project in Illustration. We had to design vignettes based off of any work of fiction. I wanted to illustrate the fairy tale "The Enchanted Snake" from the Green Fairy book, but I decided to place it in a middle-eastern/arabic setting, rather than in a boring and overdone medieval fairy tale world. 

I experimented with a new coloring technique with these! I used lots of layering of custom brushes in photoshop to give them a watercolor-like look. 

The Princess and the Snake is actually hanging up in the illustration building at my school, along with my Mary Margaret Alacoque vignette, and a poster I made for the Ohio Roller Girls!

Red Moon

View Here

I made a comic for my freshman design class! The assignment was “interactive design.” 

I’ve been a big fan of Emily Carroll’s creepy and awesome webcomics for years, and wanted to take a shot at making an interactive webcomic.

You’ll get to a point where you’ll have three choices! I can't say what happens when you click what, but each ending is different!

Illustration!

Here are some the illustrations I've been working on all semester!

I'm pretty happy with both! My instructor really liked the second one, which is a supposed to depict Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, who introduced the "Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ" to the church. He recommended I re-do the first one. For the assignment, I had to make 2 illustrations with one being done in any style and the other realistically rendered. He thinks the first would be more successful if I just did it in my own style, and I completely agree. Another project to do over spring break! 

I'll try to post the individual process for both illustrations next week! For both I had to go through a thumbnail, sketch, sketch, line drawing, value paintings, then final colors done digitally. 

Design: Essence

My first design project of the new semester! THe assignment was to capture the essence of something, and I chose to capture the essence of "misery."

I was inspired by a few quotes from my favorite book, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. He writes:

"So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age—the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless."

From there, I decided to try to capture the essence of misery in a single person. I went back a forth between child labour and prostitution, and came to the terrifiying conclusion that child prostitution exists. I did research, and re-watched one of my favorite documentaries "Born Into Brothels" for inspiration.

I did a quite a few value studies in watercolor, then used photoshop to make color studies. My professor ended up really loving the color studies as a group, and encouraged me to use them for the final project. I ultimately decided to use a finished illustration for my final, but I still think the color studies are powerful on their own.

 
 

Final Version

I based most of my research and visual inspiration off of the sex trade in India. Here are some statistics:

• There are estimated 900,000 sex workers in India
• 30% are underage

source

Some Doodles

Just some musical-related doodles

Kind of going back to Jesus Christ Superstar as my go-to listening material, especially the broadway revival with Josh Young's Judas! 

The "Masquerade" sequence of "Phantom" is one of my favorite parts of the show. SO many awesome costumes, great choreography, etc. My favorite costume is the monkey with cymbals. 

(image source)

New Semester!

Once again I keep forgetting this blog exists haha
Winter break is over and a new semester has started! I've been busy with class work and such, but here's some a of the work I've done over break!

 I did some commissions over break, as well as a few Hobbit doodles that got pretty big on tumblr and I guess memebase and a few other websites! Pretty cool

Hobbit doodle! 

A commission for a friend, Russell Crowe from the movie "Gladiator!"

Another commission, an animated illustration featuring Katniss and Johanna from "The Hunger Games."

Painting Final

My painting final. We came up with a color and word pair, and made an image reflecting it.

 My color/word pair was "red and delicious."

I really wanted to challenge myself and make something disturbing and creepy, as I tend to lean towards cute/girly in a lot of my personal work.

Finals, Finals, FINALS!

Haven't posted in a while again, sorry! Like most college kids, I've been facing the finals frenzy these last few weeks. BUT I'M DONE IN THREE DAYS. WHOO.

Anyway, here's some of the work I've been doing for finals.

My final drawing for "Art Design and Culture." We were to make an image inspired by a piece in our textbook. I chose Gustave Caillebotte's "Paris Street Rainy Day," and redrew it in my own style and added animation in photoshop.

Sorry for no update!

School's been keeping me busy! Here are some of my more illustration-based assignments for design class!

This was an animated assignment, we were supposed to have a dominant and subdominant features in a composition, and use animation to switch them.

Well here's the only real "project" I've done this summer! A fake cover for my favorite book, "Les Miserables" by Victor Hugo! 

(ha as if you couldn't tell it was my favorite based off this blog right)

Week 2 for the CCAD sketch group! This week's prompt was to design a monster based off the monster generator. I got: "Pleasant bear girl who wears fall clothing and likes fish."

For the fall clothing bit, I googled "fall clothing lines" and tried to find something that matched the character description.

 I used the middle as inspiration. 

LOOK I animated a thing.

Usually my animations include some sort of les mis character dancing and/or stripping so this was a nice change of pace. 

"Dead and Alive"

This piece was prompted by opposites. And because I'm apparently "creepy", I chose dead and alive.

Originally the lady was supposed to be a lady-knight. BUT I found that armor didn't look like armor when it wasn't a metallic color, and I felt very limited by a metallic color scheme. I suppose in hindsight the armor could have been gold and still worked out ok. But whatever I like the cloaked figure too.

"The Huntress"

This is probably one of my favorite illustrations I did this year. There are things wrong, obviously, but I really pushed myself with composition and texture here and I think it paid off.

Here are some character sketches I did for the Huntress. Definitely a character I plan on exploring in future illustrations.

"Spoonfuls of Hope"

This was my ISAP (independent study art portfolio) final from 1st semester. We chose a headline from a pile of newspapers and made an illustration inspired by it. This final really made me feel like a proper art student. It was a lot of fun and I ended up really liking the final product. My headline was "spoonfuls of hope" and I think the article was about soup kitchens.

"Ea Este Singur"

which translates into "She Is Alone" in Romanian. I think. ha.

This was my second piece done in the fall semester. It was a loooong break between this piece and "The Maiden and the Sea". I got some work done between them; a self portrait, a still life, and a loooot of doodles. 

For this piece, I ended up doing a lot of character/value/color studies for. I had several different colored versions of the character, before going with this final one. The sea in the background is based off this really lovely photo. I really loved the colors.