Illustration Update

 

 

Once again I haven’t been on a for a while. I created this blog during a time in my life where I was extremely stressed, and I felt the need to share my frustrations and general life to an anonymous population on the off chance someone might like to read it. Lately, my life has actually been pretty good and stress free. I’ve been keeping to myself for the most part and have actually been writing rambling gibberish in a journal I acquired about a month ago. It appears I mainly use this blog to put my artwork out there, and I have to say I am very appreciative of everyone who likes the posts. They always bring a smile to my face.

Anyway, this semester I might be posting more on here since I will be taking five classes (18 credits) and my best friend Ryn won’t be returning for a semester. Good news is I’m still going out with the boy I wrote about in a previous post. We reached three months yesterday, and he sent me roses. Below are some illustrations I did over the winter break that I wanted to share. 

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Concept illustration for the Virgo zodiac with liquid acrylic paint on marker paper and outlined with pen. 

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A much lighter concept art for the Virgo zodiac. I wanted to contrast the two concepts. Prisma markers in my sketchbook. 

 

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Little Red Riding Hood concept art done with Prisma markers in my sketchbook. 

 

Rocky Horror Picture Show

The Film Society and gay straight alliance organization at my university are putting together a Rocky Horror Picture Show performance and asked me to design the poster for them as marketing chair for the gay straight alliance organization. Below is what I whipped up in three hours yesterday after I ran out of things to do at my grandparents’ house (which is where I am spending my Thanksgiving). They are 92 years old, so there isn’t much to do in general. I’m stealing a very weak internet signal from someone living around them who hasn’t quite caught on to locking their wifi. Praise the Lord! 

On a tangent, I got to ride a train for the first time coming to visit my grandparents. I decided not to go through the hassle of flying home to see my parents since I only have a week off and am flying home in a month for Christmas. I’m pretty sure the girl sitting next to me thought I was a nutter because I wasn’t exactly sure what I was doing or where I was suppose to go, so I was tweaking a bit to put it lightly. It also didn’t help that my boyfriend sent me a text that made me burst out laughing in the middle of the trip. So, yeah, just another person in the world who now thinks I’m not quite all there. The list is becoming quite extensive. Image

Infected

This is a drawing in my sketchbook from after the whole shenanigans happened whenthe guy I was going out with dumped me for his platoon leader. I think it pretty much speaks for itself, but all is just dandy now. 

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Best of Figure Drawing Sketches

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Drama with an Extra Side of Drama

I am aware that I have not posted in a long time. The school year started up, and next thing I know I am swamped in drama (non-school related drama). First, my best friend here starts having problems with her fiancé, her mom’s murder trial is coming up, she can’t get a job, she is struggling with her classes, and she is depressed (she recently started Prozac). Also, we have our first huge fight that lasts an entire weekend because I’m not getting sleep and behaving like a “bitch” according to her, and she is being snappy and rude to me because of all the stress she is under.

Second, I started going out with this ROTC guy who I thought was great at the time and actually developing very serious feeling for, but it turns out he had feeling for his platoon leader who wants to enter into a relationship out of the blue right after he and I started dating. Two hours after we officially broke up, the two of them are Facebook official. Apparently, the situation stressed him out so much though that he flunked his midterm, and he stopped sleeping, and blah blah blah. Good news is that through this whole experience I found out what a great guy one of my friends was and have now been going out with him for a month. 

Third, my roommate found out she likes girls this semester and officially has a girlfriend. That’s great for her, but my suite mates and I keep walking in on them making out on the couch, or they keep locking me out of my room (thank god I have a key). For the first two weeks of them dating, I was NEVER alone in the room because when my roommate left her girlfriend would stay since she was a commuter. I need alone time. It comes with part of the description of being an introvert. However, I do really like her girlfriend. She works at Starbucks and has brought me free coffee once or twice. Plus, she has great taste in movies. I just don’t want to constantly walk in on them, or anyone for that matter, making out. 

Fourth, I started loosing a lot of weight at the beginning of the year. I went from being about 115lbs (which is already underweight) to about 109lbs the first two weeks of school. It got to the point where you could basically see my ribcage, and my legs became very thin. I was working out daily but eating very little, but I wasn’t aware of it until all of my friends said something because I was starting to look anorexic. I am going to note here that I did suffer with anorexia for about a half a year in my life so that’s why my friends’ were especially concerned. After that I started doing little things like drinking whole milk instead of skim, consuming more carbohydrates and protein, and occasionally eating a small dessert after a meal. I’m back to being 115lbs. 

These are the major highlights of my life over the last two and a half months. There have been other little things that don’t exactly concern me but involve my friends. Such as my suite mate who now wants to transfer because she apparently hates here (however she just got into the nursing program so we shall see) or my other suite mate who is friends with a bunch of guys in the Sigma fraternity here and are worse than a bunch of sorority girls. After this post, I think I will post some of my figure drawing pictures. 

Finished Project

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This is a project I’ve been working on this past week. The canvas is 4″x4″, and the nails make it 5″x5″ (I’m proud to say I hammered those in all by myself!). The white area is acrylic paint, and everything else is done with Prisma Color markers. The outside of the canvas is colored with a black Prisma marker. It was a last minute decision I made after I decided that white edge left the girl disconnected with the nails. I almost decide to paint the nails black to create a frame-like feeling but decided against it because it makes the nails look as though they are actually part of the canvas. Personally, I think this gives it a more edgy, interesting look, but I’m also a bit biased since this is my piece.

There isn’t really anything profound and meaningful to say about this piece. There’s no hidden message to provoke some deep contemplation. I just wanted to draw a women with rainbow hair. Because I like colors. And markers. And graphic black lines. And thus this was born! No deep meaning. Maybe next time. Probably not. Enjoy!

I’ve cleaned it up a bit since taking this picture, but I’ve packed away my camera to head off to college tomorrow, so I can’t take a new one. Plus, I have a lot more packing to get finished before I leave, so I don’t have time to set up another shot and edit it. Here you might be wondering “but you’re on the computer writing this blogpost”. Yes, I am procrastinating. Much to my mom’s exasperation.

Anyway, I hope everyone has a fantastic day.

Community Service T-shirt Design

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Hello, again. 

I work at as a graphic design assistant at the Public Relations Office at my school, and I was requested to do a t-shirt design for an annual community service day that the university organizes. I wanted to share one of the designs I created. Unfortunately, this was not the design chosen because the Director thought it was too young for university students. Instead, she requested a peace sign made out of the information. I told her my concerns of the information actually being legible with the warping and whatnot. In my head, I also added how tacky, overused, uncreative, and plain dumb I thought it was, but I took the idea and mocked it up while also giving her an alternative design where I presented the information in a square format and then overlaid a peace sign on top but deleted everywhere the peace sign didn’t touch the text. I hope that makes sense. I’m only not posting it because it is the design they are going to use, and it has a lot of information in it that I don’t want to share on a public blog.

Evolution

I just recently got back from a family reunion at Hilton Head, which is why I haven’t been posting anything recently. At my family reunion, my cousin, Alex, asked if I could create some sort of graphic for his new band called A Brilliant Idea (I think). Originally, he asked for a hippo with a lightbulb over its head but then revised it to anything with a lightbulb over its head, so I decided to exercise creative freedom and take a more edgy route. I was inspired by a conversation I had with Alex and another one of my cousins Olivia, an 8-year-old girl, about evolution. Olivia has been raised to believe in creationism and to think evolution is a load of bullshit. Personally, I am Roman Catholic, and I do have a belief in some form of higher power; however, to not believe in evolution is just ridiculous (in my opinion). But, I didn’t want to get in an argument with an 8-year-old girl who is only repeating what her parents have taught her and have her parents’ wrath directed at me for teaching their child “lies” created by atheists to take them down the path of the devil. I was already suffering through enough quality family time. Anyway, below is the graphic I created for him playing with the band’s name and evolution merely being a “brilliant idea“.

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Experimenting with Style

I’ve been experimenting with my artistic style over the summer because I’ve been in “artists block mode” when in comes to producing anything beyond a sketch. Below are two sketches with two different styles I’m attempting.

The first is heavily inspired by fashion design sketches, which is why her legs are so disproportionately long and she has a thin, elongated figure. I also used this sketch to experiment with water-soluble oil pastels and see how well they blend when water is applied. They don’t mix as well as the watercolor pencils, but I do like the interesting texture created.

The second’s inspiration is derived from when artists use bright colors in shadowed areas instead of using the typical mixture of complimentary colors or black. I used red in this case; however, I couldn’t just leave the red along and had to go and trace it with purple and then the purple with black. Dark, bold graphic lines are my kryptonite. Or strength in the cases where it works in my favor.

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Squid

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Another drawing in my sketchbook. I wanted to brush up on my watercolor pencils skills since I haven’t utilized them in a while. The paper wasn’t made for wet material which is what caused all of the puckered texture in the image, but I actually sort of like it since it kind of adds another dimensions to the drawing. I had some difficulty with the composition of the tentacles since I honestly only planned the left side before delving right in and is something I will definitely not ever do again when dealing with an illustration like this again. I purposely left the shoulders out because I think it makes the design more versatile if I decided to put it on a t-shirt, bag, etc and is also why I cut the neck off by having the two tentacles touch. I’ve seen this successfully used before this different designs for clothing products.

 I feel like I should also note here that I have never actually drawn a squid before or even seen a live one in person (though I do love calamari…I suppose it doesn’t count). I don’t think I have even really sat down and actually observed and studied a picture of a squid before, so basically what I’m trying to say is that this “squid” I’ve drawn is very, very, very much drawn from imagination. In fact, I’m just assuming that it looks even relatively like a squid. It might just look like some freaky tentacled monster. Anyway, I’m rambling now and am digressing to extreme levels (I blame lack of sleep). Wow, I really did write a lot about this. If you’re reading this right now, then let me be the first to congratulate you on actually having enough willpower to read this far!