Mermaid City

I have to say I had so much fun working on this illustration

that I could do a whole children's book on the story! haha

Yes, you can believe your eyes...this IS the MERMAID illustration! haha. So is it worth the wait? I spent 13.5 hours painting today to get this done...so it BETTER be worth it. (Haaaaaaand Craaaaaamp! X_x )

As a general announcement this will be the last full illustration for my summer program. Fear not loyal readers, I plan to complete at least 5 more pencil/sketch illustrations before the summer ends. Plus my last semester starts in a few weeks and by then I will have another heavy illustration program in place.

This illustration took about 3 weeks to complete. I am glad I took this long because it gave me the chance to do it right. At one point I hit a MAJOR roadblock...it was so bad that I couldn't even lift my hand to paint...no motivation! I overcame this issue by simply plunging in headfirst. No special formula to success. I have since discovered that I have the must fun during the planning/sketching/value-color comps stage and the FREE-PAINTING stage (which is just me, my brush and the canvas. The point in the painting where I do not need reference matieral, sketches, etc.) My problem occurred because I got stuck too long in the part in-between those two stages. (preparing what I call my "underpainting").

The key to this illustrations success is:

1.A solid SOLID sketch.

2.SEVERAL full-value exploring studies

3.A few different color studies.

I hardly used any reference for this illustration. Most the reference photos were used during the sketch stage. Hence the SOLID sketch I had!

Ceramics class and 3 birds with one stone poster

As promised here is the lineup for the 8 week Ceramics course I completed. I have to really thank my teacher who practically "babied" all of my pieces through the drying and kiln process. Not a single of my pieces exploded or cracked. Even my two Raku tiles made it through unscathed.

Once again I completed another required course for my illustration degree, of which I wouldn't have taken in the first place. Not only that, but like my sculpture teacher from several semesters ago, I was HEAVILY recommended to continue exploring in the 3D world. I have to admit I had a great time, but it was partly because it was a risk free experience, knowing that I am graduation with my BFA in Illustration this fall. I'm not sure what the future holds anything in store for me with clay, wood, or any other hand-building material, but I know it is something fun to dabble in.

It seems every time I take these 3D classes I have

too much fun just exploring and pushing myself

to the limits. haha Unfortunately, or fortunately

we had little time to dwell on them. There was a

project due every week. So I had one day for concept,

and 3 days for execution.

Some of you may recognize this particular piece from a painting

I did a masterstudy of last summer (Link)

of a Zinaida Serebriakova painting. Right now I don't have a good

color photo of the completed piece but will continue to work on getting one

I wish I could have spent more on the painting aspect,

but I had zero time to do it.

Here is a close up detail of my fountain pot

before it was fired the first time.

I really regret how dark the glaze came out in the end,

but I had no idea what I was doing. haha

As promised here is the three birds with one

stone poster that I completed this week.

Also plan on seeing the infamous "Mermaid" illustration by saturday evening. I was able to get over a slump I had by just plunging through a difficult part (which practically left me unmotivated to work on it). So expect it soon! ^_^

10 hour SURPRISE illustration!

Not the mermaid illustration. ^_^

Well there you have it folks, this is my MERMAID ILLUSTRATION. What? No MERMAIDS?! Oh...you are right. Sigh....haha. Once again I am posting and it isn't my mermaid illustration...but I have a good reason!

I was spurred on to make this illustration after I had a conversation with my good friend Amelia Parris about what my current work lacked. We came to the conclusion what I needed was to spend MORE time in the FINAL rendering stage. This is a bit difficult since most everything in my illustrations is made up.

My initial plan was to work at publishing size, double the inches after practically rendering everything, and then once done cleaning up and adding final details shrink it back down. This actually worked, but not in the way I anticipated. This worked in the sense it simplified my rendering at a lower size resolution so that I ARRIVED faster than if I had worked initially large.

My second solution was to break the single TRADITIONAL narrative format(which is what I have been doing practically my whole life) apart. THis allowed me to relax, have fun and actually kept me engaged for the entire piece. I found myself motivated to render every clear random detail, more and more because of this non-linear format. I had so much fun working on it that from about 3:30pm to 3:30am (I total of 9.5-10 working hours) I practically worked on it straight! (and let me tell you I had a BAD hand cramp! haha)

The other decision I made in order to spend more time in the rendering stage was to use more reference photos. In the end my characters were a bit more realistic than usual, but I was surprised at how much actually came from my head. (my personal practice is to render as much as I can from my head, THEN use photo reference, and THEN go back to my head.)

So I hope you enjoy this monday surprise. Plan on at least seeing the 3 birds poster by the end of the week. Based on how much effort and time it took to completely render my big-small illustration up above, it might take longer to complete my mermaid one...oh and I should mention that this week my Ceramics class ends...so I have those deadlines as well. See ya!

Portrait Illustration

Portrait of a girl. (completed in about 4-5 hours.)

So that I wont ruin my mermaid illustration I decided to complete it next week. The illustration is turning out good, but I didn't want to rush it just so that I could have another illustration just done. The 3 birds-with-one-stone illustration is actually pretty far along as well, but it is also not done. So instead of giving you a blank blog post saying "OOPS. GUESS YOU WILL HAVE TO WAIT" I decided to give a special bonus I completed as a practice illustration. Hope you enjoy!

I am starting to learn that I have far greater strength in smaller illustrations that are less complex...so maybe I will spend more time on those and eventually work my way up to the more complex ones.

Sketch illustration- 3 birds with one stone

Three birds with one stone.

The good thing about working pro bono is that I can share with you whatever I am working on. This sketch is in preparation for the new poster I was asked to do for a class at MCC Longview.

For those who are regular followers my mermaid illustration is turning out great, and I plan to have it done by the end of the week, and maybe the birds poster will also be done.

In my sketching ability I am undergoing a great transformation, and I think the greatest reason is my refocusing on my memory sketching (photographic memory) and then portraying by what I know and remember. Due to the nature of my school classes a large void has been created of reality vs. imagination, so this is me finally bridging it back together. Too much measuring, looking, and rules can cloud the mind where as gesture, knowledge and intuition can bring freedom and stability.

Sketch illustration- new paint method

This was meant to be just a quick test ( spent about 2 hours on it)

I guess we will count this as my first pencil illustration for the week. ^_^

Initially I wanted to attempt my traditional Colored pencil/watercolor wash technique digitally(For both application and color methods), but ultimately ended up with a quasi colored pencil/watercolor/acrylic look. This test might be an indicator for future work. It definitely has a more FINISHED look...and I am very pleased with how easily the colors turned out.

Illustration 6* - MACATUTOR!

I'm really starting to get the hang of my painting style and methods.

This weeks color illustration is part of a self promotion poster for the tutoring services available at MCC Longview for art students enrolled in the basic computer courses. Right now I am the only tutor. haha Eventually I will put text and information on the picture.

I have already started work on my next color illustration, and it involves the childrens illustration group on deviantart. Their theme this month is "mermaids." I'm really excited about this piece, so look forward to it!

*(Btw I count Grimm as illustration 4. and then the poster for Dance as illustration 5.)

Dance poster & Figure Painting

Sorry for the lack of updates. Last week I completed two color illustrations and so I kinda took this week off to relax a little bit, plus I am dealing with a pretty heavy deadline in the summer class I am taking (more about that in another post.)

Here is the poster I completed for the dance classes offered at Longview.

Spent the most time on the figures, and rushed the design aspects.

Kinda on the same theme as my figures above I thought I'd throw in some of the work I did in my Figure Painting class last semester:

This is about where I ended up in my acrylic painting methods. I achieved this by painting completely greyscale, and then building the color up first with light washes and then punching it with solid colors from a limited pallet. I hope to continue this method in my Plein aire class this fall.

I'm going backwards in my progression. This was another mile-marker in the sense I got a real control of form and value by using a monochromatic range of color...but my problem occurred because I would then lose control of the figure when I started to add light washes of newer colors over the top. (an effect easily satisfied in photoshop with the multiply function. sigh...)

18"x24" on gessoed strathemore drawing paper (how I did all my paintings for this class). Our first class we painted her nude and then the next we could either paint over our old one with her wearing the dress or paint a new one. I painted over my old one. This was my first full session figure painting in the class.

At first I just jumped headfirst into painting unsure of what I was doing, but by the end of the semester I had really built up my confidence...most of this was due to the dozens and dozens of small test paintings I did at home (none of which will see the light of day. haha) I hope to do more of these in the future and should maybe spend more time with acrylics (since it really helped me understand more about my Photoshop painting process).

GrIMM fairy tale - part 3 -FINISH!

So this has been a crazy week (including my 11 month old getting the flu today...) . I will show you later the work I did yesterday for the poster I am working on. Meanwhile you get to look at my completed GRIMMest GRIMM FAIRY tale rendition of King Thrushbeard! (for the contest over at ArtOrder -link-)What do you think?

This was my first full illustration using:

1. my abbreviated illustration method (see previous post regarding 3 hour illustration)

2. Limited Pallete of colors. (broad first, then limit early on...but as go along allow to evolve from those limited.

Other tidbits of info:

1. I can no longer run from my past. LINES! you will notice I internally left or even created black outlines. Wow! I love it. Essentially it works because I combined it with my painterly method and did not allow the lines to dominate.

2. Blur eyes constantly. As I was painting it was occaisonly hard to see the forest through the trees...so blurring my eyes helped focus and see where I needed improvements.

The rest of the story: KING THRUSHBEARD:

Ok we left off our main character, the princess who had been married by her father to a bard who had come to the palace to sing and beg....and after experiencing the hardships of reality by losing all her merchandise she decided to be a scourly maid...and coincidentally got work at the palace. As she was doing her duties there was a ball or party going on. It was in honor of a visiting King, King Thrushbeard. He noticed her beauty, though, in tatters and dirty. He asked her to dance, though she initially refused she eventually gave in since she didn't want to offend him. As they danced she suddenly realized, or he told her...that HE was her husband the bard. He wanted to teach her a lesson and had done all those things, including dressing up as a bumbling solider who shattered all their pottery. Well that is it. ^_^ haha