Digital

Finishing digital paintings leaves me in a bit of a funk I think. I do rather like working digitally (more so now than before anyway) but when given the option of traditional it currently doesn't stand a chance. I can see that changing somewhat in the future- this time round I really enjoyed how on the computer I learned different things that I can bounce back and forth between traditional or digital pieces (huzzah for learning!)
Either way I finished one of the pieces for Electronic Illus (The Ram) and I'm actually rather proud of how it turned out! Two more to go by Wednesday....

WIPS

They're everywhere.....Finals are to blame.

(roommate contribution)

Notice how reference images get replaced by movies....and how friends like to help each other along by drawing helpful adjustments on separate layers.








Not sure if this post was going anywhere....basic process for me digitally seems to be blocking everything in back to front, adjusting colors, then refining with lots of canvas flipping. Can you tell I'm still struggling with faces? Onwards and upwards I suppose.

Fairy Tales

Ouch, it's been a while since my last update- spring break messed with my internet time and to be honest I was kept pretty busy anyway. Mostly on electronic illustration. Our presentations were today and I got the green light to get going on finals! (huzzah!)
Anywho, everything that was expected from us today was a description of what we were doing, what our media application was going to be, thumbnails and sketches, reference and inspiration, and final line drawings. We have to do two illustrations. Being a glutton for punishment, I'm doing four.
First up, thumbs:

Hedley Kow

Hedley Kow

Hedley Kow
Glass CoffinGlass Coffin

Ram

They certainly aren't the prettiest things and quite honestly they're hard to read unless you've inhabited my brain. It helped that I had a very strong mental image of where I wanted these pieces to go but thumbnails should be legible. As such they're something I'll be spending a good bit of time on this summer.

Onwards however...reference photos! I have a problem with being addicted to digging around the internet looking for gems of reference photos. It's not exactly a problem I guess but I spend a lot of time doing it. When it came to setting up the presentation boards for class I had to exclude about half the reference photos I had printed (and I didn't print all the ones I had found either). I'll only post a scattering here but trust me, I have a LOT more.









Would also like to note that none of these images belong to me, I used them for reference and inspiration only.

We were also expected to gather sources of inspiration which I enjoy even more than digging up reference photos. I won't post the images I printed out but here's links to everyone (definitely worth a look through -winkwinknudgenudge-):

-John Howe
-Jean-Baptiste Monge
-Petar Meseldzija
-Alexander McQueen (actually not many great images on the site as far as I could find but if you search for them elsewhere there's some fantastic work)
Then a couple of classics that obviously don't have websites:
-EA Abbey (love, Love, LOVE, LOVE) and
-Herbert James Draper.
Both are fantastic artists and absolutely awe inspiring work.

Then there's the finals:

The Hedley Kow:

The Ram:
The Glass Coffin:

All of them (with the exception of The Hedley Kow chapter title- also the font there is mostly Serpentis Black: http://www.dafont.com/serpentis-black.font) will be painted in corel. The title will be done up in Illustrator (we have to use Illustrator and the pen tool, so yeah...will also probably just lay in the font and manipulate it as needed). All in all I'm actually pretty pleased with how they turned out. Hopefully the painting process will nudge them up a few more notches. (oh, and those white boxes are where font will be going from the stories).

And there you have a vague-ish kind of sort of Klang process.

No blogging during break equals a long post I suppose.
Oh! And to end this on an even happier note, Wacom is going to be replacing my lost Tablet buddy! I was so surprised when they called and told me today. My year has been made. They were wonderful to deal with (UPS however....grumblegrumble) and this really topped it all off. They're definitely going to get a very nice thank you card.

Experimenting, Sophomore Reviews, and Fairy Tales.

Ok. Now this was a fun piece to work on. Mainly because I didn't know what I was doing most of the time. Haven't experimented with media like that for at least a year and it was definitely worth while. Now I feel all loose and free (in an artistic style way, mind you.) I do have to point out that the scanners weren't large enough for the whole image so it's kind of cropped- in real life it's compositionally spaced out on the page much better. (Also, media used- ink, charcoal, gesso, graphite.)
And wow- sophomore reviews were today. (If you want to hear me gloat and rave, read on, if not skip to next paragraph...) I was nervous, I didn't really want to go, my work wasn't up to par, blahblahblah. Now they did point out a couple of things I need to work on but nothing major and nothing I didn't know already. Overall they really liked my work ("they" being a few teachers from the illustration department). Apparently my line work and sketchbook nonsense has a lot of energy and I know my anatomy well. Also I'm strong on design and shaping (?? their words, not mine lol) and my type integration is pretty good too. About halfway through CF Payne wandered in (apparently he was kind of bouncing around randomly) and I'm pretty sure my face was something along the lines of this:
He looked around and LIKEDMYSTUFFHOLYCRAP. His only critiques were to respect my artwork more and take a little better care of it and to work more with environments and interiors (knew I was right on that when I posted before....). Overall though it was a much needed confidence boost. Since the beginning of the year I've felt like I've been drowning but now I found a raft. And Wilson.
And life is good.

But that's not to say any of it got to my head. I'm ready to buckle down in my extra time off tomorrow and this weekend to get some stuff DONE. For instance- fairy tales. For Electronic Illustration our final has a theme- Transformation. We have to do at least two digital illustrations. Ok cool. The past couple of weeks I've been digging up obscure fairy tales and trying to pick a few to illustrate (the plan is to do a book cover and two page illustrations- each for a different fairy tale). I have one picked for sure- The Ram (http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/aulnoy/1892/ram.html). Rather sad and beautiful but I have that final scene burning in my brain so that's on the list. Now I'm hoping to be smart enough to post all my process here so first off- reference! I've been digging up these images yesterday and today (no I don't own any and am not taking credit for them).
Obviously- rams. More specifically in this case- Dall's sheep.



Then there's the princess. For her outfit I want to do something that looks like it has historical roots yet modern.
So, some Marie Antoinette (can you get more extravagant?)

But for the modern bit....um yeah Alexander McQueen all the way. Hauntingly beautiful to say the least.



Then the princess herself- well while looking up images of McQueen's work I came across the model Gemma Ward. Now, I'm not a big fan of models typically- something very alien about their bone structure. But Gemma has such an innocent, young, and fragile look about her that there's going to be some definite inspiration there.

Then last but certainly not least is the environment. For some reason I keep envisioning it as a really grey winter scene but I need to do more research on what kind of trees are the most common in France, what some typical landscapes could be, etc.

I'm really psyched for this project and need to keep going on research and pick out my other two fairy tales so we can get some thumbnails going.