auld lang syne

This will be my last post for the year 2010. Overall, this was a pretty amazing year but I won't bore you with the details ^.^
I wanted to test out the gorgeous new scanner and honor the spirit of "auld lang syne" by posting the portraits I did of my sister and myself.
Each piece on the left is done with color pencil and sharpie on computer paper back in 2005.

Each piece on the right is an india ink and watercolor painting I did this year for my parents as a Christmas present.

The skinny brunette is my sister Caileigh and I'm the other one XD. I tried to incorporate a couple of our interests and our school colors now that we've both graduated.
I'm pretty proud of how these came out and of how much I've grown as an artist in the past 5 years but I still have a long way to go.

Happy New Year's! Next time I post it'll be 2011! :D

so much to say, so little energy to say it with

Well, as is fairly obvious, I haven't updated in awhile. With exams, the move, and the holidays all in a row, I haven't exactly had time to work on this little pet project of mine. That being said, I'll try to get better about that. I don't really have workspace at the moment but I now have a massive new light box and a stunning scanner, as well as some animation software on the way, so once I get set up again, I can get back to work with gusto. In the meantime, here is a WIP of the Ruffnut picture using Sumo (what a pain! >.<) This has been a huge pain so far since the program is giving me issues, I'm still getting used to the tablet, and my computer is wicked slow.At this rate, I dunno if this is ever going to get finished.
Ruffnut (c) Dreamworks

end of an era

So today was my last real final. Tomorrow I have an exam period in which we'll clean the shop but I'm not counting that. We were greeted with muffins and coffee and we displayed our last paintings. The assignment was to do a painting that will inspire the next few years of our lives. I hated mine XD but only because I wasn't able to get it to where I wanted it to be and the critique was wicked helpful. I suppose this was more productive overall and inspiring since doing the same thing that I have been doing wouldn't have taught me anything new. I'll probably post that tomorrow since today I want to mention the professor.

Frank Owen is easily one of my favorite professors at the University of Vermont. I've had him for three courses altogether, two this semester, and I have grown so much as an artist because of him. He's one of those professors who drive you crazy, his assignments are frustratingly vague and he is so demanding, but you know as you're working that you're gaining so much from every minute spent working on his class. He taught me how to build a stretcher and use acrylic paints. He also taught me about the Slant Step, of which he is the current caretaker. As a thank you and in honor of his retirement, our class is working together to make a massive collaboration for him. One day, we started talking about hoarders and little old ladies who feed their cats...post mordem, and he wanted to do a collaborative piece the size of the wall. In response to this, we are each doing a 12" x 12" painting in our own style that he can hang all together. Here is my contribution to his wall of cats.Of course, I worked in the same vein as the Body Modification series. I wanted to make it creepy cute. He seemed to like it. ^.^

Ruffnut

Few, now all I have to do is pack up all my belongings, finish three paintings and get my ceramics ready for crit. Yay! Just for that, you get more fanart. I'm going to clean this up eventually but here's what I had in mind originally.Here's an older version of Ruffnut from How to Train your Dragon. Love her!

Exams

Exam week. Too tired. Here's a Pikachu for Christmas present for friend. On coffee mug. yup.

Happy Birthday to me! :D

It's my birthday! Yay! I'm 22 now and in honor of that, I'm taking a break from studying (8 am exam tomorrow morning >.<) and posting the next page of the Little Mermaid adaptation. Not too much else to say.

Exoskeleton

We had a "large" painting assignment for Adv. Painting and I had always wanted to paint on a dress form. Luckily for me, Darshana (another painter) had a dress form she was trying to find a home for. This fits in with the rest of the Body Modification series and is supposed to evoke the idea of a wrought iron and (frosted) glass exoskeleton to encase organs. I abstracted the view of the organs themselves because it wouldn't be especially appealing to see kidneys and mammary glands but I did use the metal to mirror the muscles and skeleton of the body. In the front there is the ribcage, sternum, abs, etc. and in the back: spine, pelvis, and shoulder blades. I'm tempted to go back in with 3 dimensional aspects but for the assignment I kept it painted only.
I think the hardest part of this was putting the gesso on. There was this fuzzy felt, jersey fabric covering the adjustable plastic form so I had to get past that in order to get a relatively smooth surface. This was easier said than done. Each layer took forever to dry and started to crack in places. Sanding it was also a pain and I'm fairly certain I have a nice cakey layer of gesso on the inside of my lungs now ^.^;;. Oh well. Stapling the skirt on the bottom wasn't especially easy but I think it gives the overall piece a nice finished look and ties it back in to the sheath dresses from the other paintings in the series.

This was on display with the rest of my class's response to the assignment at the Colburn Gallery at Williams Hall.


In other news, the majority of construction is now done. Unfortunately, tumblr has been down for the past few days which has been a hindrance but I'm pretty pleased with my results. Please check them out! ^.^

Big Dig

Please bear with me over the next few days (or weeks, this is a pretty big endeavor during finals time) while I update my blog. I want to make it as professional as possible and as thorough as possible now that my career will depend on it. I've gotten a lot better about posting regularly so I might as well get it ready for potential employers and colleagues to see. Some of the links may work one day and not another or won't work at all for awhile. I'll keep posting so please don't get discouraged by the links. Thanks! ^.^
This was for my first Adv. Drawing assignment when I was on a comic drawing kick (not that I don't love making them now but I go through phases of which medium I prefer) and wanted to play with the "square and cube" assignment.

second page

Yesterday, I had the privilege of meeting Jason Lutes. He's the amazing graphic novelist responsible for Jar of Fools and Berlin: City of Stones (my favorite novel in my current Graphic Novels course). "Berlin" is the first in a series of three books that takes the "clear line" technique you may recognize from the "Tin Tin" series and shows the points of view of Germans from various social classes during the Weimar republic, the time period between the World Wars. If you would like to know more about him or creating comics in general, he is currently a faculty member at The Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, VT.

In other news, here's the second page of the Little Mermaid adaptation. Not too much to say about it, technically, that I didn't say in the previous post. Here's the first we see of the protagonist with her grandmother and sisters. They were a lot of fun to design and individualize. Originally, I had a page for each of the sisters depicting their journeys to the surface but I had to cut them to make the story more concise. Would anyone like to see a tutorial on making a watercolor block on here? I know there are plenty out there but I need to make another block soon and I thought the viewers at home might be interested. Please let me know! ^.^

Edit: New layout! While I should have been napping to make up for lost sleep last night, I felt playing around with the blog layout was more worthwhile XD While the other one was cute, it was pretty loud and I wanted something softer that I made myself.