Character concepts for children's story

I have been working on the above characters for my Illustration for Publication class. I first designed the characters, based on descriptions given in a children's story manuscript, and then did drawings of what they would look like from various angles. The characters themselves are four girls, two older than the others, and they are supposed to be racially diverse (I don't want to give away too much, but that is the gist).

We had to do one drawing of each character fully rendered in the medium we would do full black and white (no color :-( illustrations in, if we were chosen to fully illustrate the manuscript. I would have done the illustrations in a digital medium, but given the story's sort of outdoorsy nature, I wanted to stick to a media that was more organic. Not that this can't be achieved digitally, maybe i just wanted the additional challenge of something non-digital. I dunno.

I decided to render the characters in graphite first, to get a feel for how i would render them in gray tones. Then I chose to do one character each in Payne's Gray watercolor. (The characters with the shadows underneath them have been rendered in watercolor, with some blacks added in Micron pen.) I used a surface that was new to me, Aquaboard, which is a clayboard meant for watercolors. I actually really liked it. I got relatively clean gradations, and was able to work with the brush in a way similar to my Prismacolor colored pencils.

Let me know what you think!

ArRrRRrr-tist Statement writing

For the beginning of my Directed Projects class I needed to write an artist statement. This is something I have had to do for other classes, maybe about two times prior, but I always felt like they were terrible attempts at trying to encapsulate who I am and what I do. I drew the above doodle to give me some inspiration and motivation. I taped it to my wall, and whenever i was having a hard time writing, it was nice to know my little fictional character was rooting for me. I ended up coloring it in Photoshop after I was done with the writing process. I feel like I owed the doodle that, and a little spot on my blog :-) As for the artist statement, it was my best attempt yet. Hopefully, I will be able to polish it up for posting on my (coming Summer 2009!) website.

Art Cards

I have been sending out holiday cards to friends and family for some of the last few holidays. They are a lot of fun to make and it's something I want to do more of both to show off the art I am proud of and also keep in touch. I have plans to add more images, but I wanted to include some pictures of my cards on my blog, just in case you didn't receive one or want a second look!

Colorado

Colorado is cold. I can't resist staying in the warm lounge, especially since it has unlimited hot chocolate.

Watercolor pencils


Pastels

"God Bless Us Every One!"

As part of our effort to get some Atlanta culture, Pat and I joined Liz and Chris Schwitzer and went to the Shakespeare Tavern to watch the performance of “A Christmas Carol.” The theater itself is quite spectacular. Inside it I was instantly transported back in time to Elizabethan London. The theater even has two levels and made beautifully out of wood, reminiscent of original Globe theater. The performance was truly enjoyable and would have made Dickens proud. It even included some singing of ye ole Christmas favorites, which softened even my inner Scrooge.

Not only did they put on a wonderful show, but at the Tavern there is also the opportunity to enjoy some wonderful foods. On the menu for this performance were some traditional holiday favorites, and I partook of some yummy Shepherd’s Pie before the performance, and some gingerbread and hot apple cider for dessert at intermission. Pat had the Cassoulet (which I have no idea what it was) but looked tasty too.

I look forward to maybe seeing some other upcoming performances. Shakespearean classics like "Romeo and Juliet" and "Hamlet" are playing in early 2009.

It was nice to hang out with fun people and I would highly recommend the Shakespeare Tavern to any other ATL peeps!

I give the Shakespeare Tavern four and a half out of five Renee ratings of AWESOME-ness

Adobe Power!

With the premiere of the newest version of the Abode suite of programs, CS4, came a drastic drop in prices. Even the student rates were reduced, making the Adobe programs only moderately outrageous. (I shouldn't complain though, the software does basically everything short of backflips...) So, finally, i purchased my first piece of legal software. It is a long time coming too. I have been using CS1 and Dreamweaver 8 at home, but mostly going to school to use the more up to date programs. The files were especially tricky in Illustrator, working from one version to the next, if i chose to work partly at home.

I am anxious to try it out, but i need to get my laptop fixed before i install (and i may try to upgrade the operating system), so i am holding off for what probably will be a week or so. However, i did learn some about the new programs through the Adobe presentation at SCAD-Atlanta toward the end of the quarter. The suite is even more fantastic than the last go-around, CS3, (no surprise!). In Photoshop CS4 the 3D upgrades were pretty impressive, (although i doubt i would use them). The program also has the ability to rotate your image canvas while working now. There are also advances in the automerging/photomereging that were demo-ed (so awesome!). All this made me very excited, and i will probably blog later about all the other cool things i find out about the programs, but, all in all, I am just happy to be current! Yay!

Final Projects

Concepts and Composition: Create surface designs to apply to a box in a christmas/holiday theme.

Box #1: I created this pattern in Illustrator. I tried to use Argyle as an inspiration for a playful Christmas pattern.

Box#2: This is the artwork I created to wrap around the below box. This was definitely another experimental piece. I drew the image in pieces, inked each with a thin Micron, and then brought the images in Photoshop to assemble and color in a messy style. The messy style of coloring originated when i was creating a quick color comp in the computer. I liked the way I was coloring outside the lines-- I was concentrating on just getting a sense of how the colors interacted together at this point-- and thought it went well with the rough sort of inking i did. I decided to carry it through into the final image.

I cut glass, and made a sort of shadow box for the lid.

Drawing for Sequential Art: create at least 5 images that illustrate a story of a character stealing something from another character. A struggle will ensue. Must demonstrate 2 examples of each of the three types of perspective, at least one panel of dramatic lighting, contain an animal, be set in a specific city, etc.

For this project, i tried the same coloring style as i did with Box#2. I had a lot of fun coloring it. Once i was done drawing the images, i basically reverted back to my childhood and colored it without being mindful of the lines i had carefully created.