Amelia Earhart Wannabes

Watercolor!

Wow, it's been a while!

So school has been pretty busy the last couple of semesters, because... I'M GRADUATING! Wahooo!! So I'm afraid I've been neglecting my poor blog... although I'm not sure anyone actually looks at this anymore. Helloooooo out there? Anyone? Well... here is some art! Finally!

P.S. I'm also getting married! So exciting! But it's also keeping me pretty busy!

Lederhosen!

I think the giant walrus mustache is my favorite part.

The color is looking pretty washed out on here, I'll have to fix that eventually... if I ever have TIME!

Captain Hook

A project from my children's book class.

The Emperor

So I'm finally learning how to use Illustrator! For this project we each picked a movie monster and created a portrait using only the pen tool, which behaves absolutely nothing like a pen. Why do they even call it that? But anyways... I noodled a little too much with the eyes and then had to rush to finish the rest of the face, but I still think it turned out pretty well. He needs to get some sleep and see a dentist, STAT!

*and the image I worked from does not belong to me, although this art does. This character belongs to Lucasfilm Ltd... just throwing that out there. I'm also learning about copyright law :)

Another Watercolor

So for our final in Illustration 2 we had to design a 2-page spread for a children's book. I chose "The BFG" by Roald Dahl, because I loved all of his books as a kid. I was really surprised by how many people had never heard of this one! (Just in case you haven't heard of it either, the BFG stands for Big Friendly Giant)

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, especially after I decided to completely change my design last minute!

It's been a while...

Wow, looks like I'm due for a post. It got a little crazy at the end of the last semester, so I never posted my last few projects.

We worked on realistic watercolor paintings of animals.

And then got to create characters out of them! SO MUCH FUN!!

Pastels

It's gangster Brandon!!!! Apparently I need to learn what a cigarette looks like when it's burning...

And here is Brandon's portrait of me! I'm so eeeeeeevil! I should start working on my evil laugh...

I love all his color, he has a much more painterly approach than I do. Check him out at http://brandonpikeart.blogspot.com/

Clothed Figure Dump

I love clothed figure drawing! These are all 20 minute poses, from throughout the semester...

Cattle rustlin'

Come an' get it!

Ok this one was 30 minutes...

An evening (or two) with Mike Mattesi

So I had the opportunity last week of going to a two night workshop with Mike Mattesi, author of a book called Force: Dynamic Life Drawing for Animators. He has worked for Disney, Dreamworks, Marvel (and many others) and is now teaching at Pixar. His philosophy revolves more around the movement of the figure rather than finding accurate shapes.

So these are the drawings I did at the very beginning of the first night, before he taught us anything. These ones were two minute drawings.

So these are 30 second poses, where he told us we could use only ONE line to find the "biggest event" of the pose. So each line here is a different pose. We did a TON of these, pretty much spent the entire first night on this. 

By the end of the night we were allowed to add a few more lines, while still focusing on the main action. (One minute drawings)

So the second night we focused on the rhythm of the figure, while still holding onto the principles we learned the night before. He showed us how the forms flow into each other... (all of the following are 2 minute poses)

Almost.....

Getting there....

Yes!! Got it!! Finally!!

Aaaaaaaand then he made us do blind poses.... (drawing without looking at your paper) yuck!

But after a ton of those it finally started to click! It actually looks like a person! I swear I didn't cheat and look...

Some final 3 minute poses (we could look for these)! So although it started off a bit rough... it was a great experience!! My quick poses improved a TON! Plus it was great to learn a different way of thinking about figure drawing. Yey!

Editorial Portrait

Watercolor portrait of Chris!! I'm pretty happy with how this turned out, I spent a lot of time on this one. Plus now I know how to paint smoke and fire! Yey!

I wonder what will happen?

A pen and ink assignment from Illustration 1, emphasizing pattern and texture. This is a little bit of a play on Alice in Wonderland... a very little bit.  So what do you think will happen when she pulls the rope? Hmmm... DOES she pull the rope?

ZOO!

Another watercolor assignment. Why I chose to paint a polar bear against a white background? I don't know... perhaps I like to torture myself. And once again... terrible picture quaility, blah blah blah, I'll get a proper camera someday.

Perhaps not so Wicked after all...

Who'd have guessed that we'd ever be rooting for the wicked witch? I LOVE this play, so when we got an assignment to create an entertainment poster, I knew what I wanted to do before our teacher could finish explaining the project. This one is done in pen and ink, and then colored in photoshop.

Freaky

I love circus freaks... they're so...freakish. Ugh... sorry again about the terrible picture quality. My camera hates me.