Prop Design

 In my concept design class this semester, we're pretty much entirely focused on making artwork for Uglies, a book by Scott Westerfeld which is amazing and everyone should read it and ... ahem.

We started out designing props, and these are my final renderings.  I might rework the hot air balloon at some point, but I liked how the hover board and wrist cuffs came out.  So did my teacher, actually.  It's always a nice feeling to get positive critiques XD

My Life is Ducks (A 3-panel Story)

My life is ducks.  Like... seriously.

In my narrative class, our very first activity was to spend 3 hours sketching a realistic duck.  We spent the next class period doing gesture drawings of the duck from every direction, and the next class period drawing ducks with different facial expressions.  Our final assignment was to draw three panels in black and white depicting a story that had to do with ducks in some way... but by the time this came around I was thoroughly sick of ducks, and since drawing kids seems to be my default, this is what came out.

I handed this assignment in a week ago, but ducks continue to haunt me.  One of my friends now calls me "duck" as a nickname, and another friend texted me a picture today of duck cookie cutters she found at Walmart.  It's just... ducks.  Ducks everywhere.  I can't escape.

...Ah well.  I guess there are worse animals to haunt me for the rest of my life than ducks.

Imprimatura

40-minute value study

Second post! That makes this blog official ;)

I was going to take portrait painting from Chris Thornock this semester, but in the end I had ZERO time for it, so I had to drop the class. I did manage to get a fairly nice imprimatura out of it before I left, though.  It was my first time picking up oil paints since April, and my first head study since way before that, so it was kind of fun to get into that groove again, even just for a day.

My teacher showed us this awesome painting ground I'll have to try sometime where he mixes shellac with old painting pigments from the bottom of his turps can. It ends up with a warm grayish color and a lovely texture from being brushed on. I also learned that you can put gesso on watercolor paper and paint oils over that, which for some reason never occurred to me before.  I'm not sure how archival it is, but for the purposes of an illustrator, it's perfect.

I'll have to make sure to take a painting class from Thornock before I graduate, because I honestly can't believe how much I learned from him in just a week.  Why must I be so busy?? ;_;
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Chris Thornock's website

Influence Map

For my first official post on my brand-spankin' new art blog, I thought it would be fitting to post a recent exercise we did in my concept art class.  The assignment was to create an "influence map" of artists who inspire us to help guide our stylistic development, which I did using this template. 

I'm already noticing that when I'm stuck on an art piece, looking at this helps me decide what direction to go on.  Plus, it's fun to see all of this art I admire put together like this. :)

Included are:

• Nicholas Kole
• Ryan Woodward
• Richard Schmid
• Justin Taylor
• Zhaoming Wu
• Lawrence Alma-Tadema
• Shelly Wan
• Arthur Rackham
• Hayao Miyazaki
• Bernie Fuchs
• Caspar David Friedrich
• Jake Wyatt
• Alphonse Mucha

Some are young artists, some are older, and some are dead, but they're all worth looking up. ;)