Society of Illustrators {final}

So ... dragon again. 

I did a few revisions for this piece, I added more weight to the feet and the head and things like that, and majorly beefed up the line quality in the "fire". Which I think worked well. I did the extra lines in the feet and legs and other things with pen, and then did the lines for the fire with the tablet in Photoshop. Also, this time I scanned it in with a scanner that accommodated the entire piece, which was nice.

Book Cover Redesign

So ... 

I chose Anne of Green Gables, by Lucy Maud, as my subject for the cover art. 

So I chose this with the idea of just using the protagonists's iconic red braids and straw hat as the subject for the illustration. I wanted to be able to do this without it looking like she's just missing a face or something. So that was the goal. 

I used watercolor and pen for this piece, and learned how to draw braids so that was fun. 

I knew that I wanted to integrate hand lettering into this book cover, so I whipped up some gold metallic powder + ink + gum arabic and went to town. #perksofbeingacalligrapherskid 

So after painting the braids and hat and adding in some hand lettering, I scanned the whole thing in. It wasn't working very well as just the plain white background, so I took it into Photoshop and added a green background, played around with the layout of the type, and changed the hair ribbons from green to white. 

Below is the original scan. 

And the illustration + text + background. 

And then the square version: 

Annnnd I'll probably have to redo this about a million more times but this is what I've got for now.

Society of Illustrators

So ... Society of Illustrators Poster. 

So I started on this buddy yesterday afternoon, strictly following Rusty's 24 hour rule on getting projects done. I mean, at least it was more than 12 hours more than before it was due, right? Right. 

So I had no idea what I wanted to do for this illustration, and then I randomly decided that I wanted to draw a dragon. Weird? Yes. Very much so. I did some internet researching whilst watching What Not to Wear and became good friends with a website entirely devoted to drawing dragons which I think is really just for boys ranging in the 7-10 age group but whatever. 

So I started with some line art (because line is life, apparently) and then dropped in the watercolor. 

Also, I didn't have a concept for this poster but then I came to class with just a dragon and got some feedback from a classmate (aka they provided me with said concept). 

"Good Illustration is Not a Myth"

Native American Heritage Month {Revised}

So ... let's try this again. Here is the final version of the Native American Heritage Month poster. 

Things that have changed since the last round: 

1. That whole duotone (is that spelled right? hopefully) deal. I brought in some of the teal-ish color into the illustration itself, and that integration of the spot color helped connect the illustration to the text. 

2. I bumped up the font size on the "Native American" and toggled with the opacity. 

3. I lightened some of the highlights in the illustration and added some more hair texture. 

4. I played around with the spacing of the text layout, and I think it's a much stronger structure now. 

5. I think that's about it. The end. 

Native American Heritage Month

So ... Native American Heritage Month. For this illustration, I used the gouache pick out technique. I was pleased with the way that this illustration turned out, and used this simple imagery for the poster. 

I edited the image slightly to make it work for this poster, and ended up using part of the background of the gouache to create the background of the poster. How about that? This isn't 100% finished yet but this is what I have so far and I really wanted to blog about it so here it is. 

Teacups and Stuff.

Real life scanned in image of the teacups. 

World Record

So for this piece I went with the world record of "World's Largest Tea Party". I had initially did some research (note: google search of "weird world records") and settled on the aftermath of the World's Largest Tea Party, which, apparently, is a thing.

So once again we've got the stellar iPhone picture ... but it's too large for the scanner at this point so when I get it actually scanned in I'll repost. 

So ... time budget. Can we just start measuring time in the amount of Netflix watched whilst working on these projects? Because this was about seven episodes of Say Yes to the Dress: Bridesmaid Edition. (Please feel free to judge me as much as possible for that one.) But this was about six hours on final art on this one. I would say about three hours on marker comp, so that's eight hours overall. Also, Rusty, here are your three favorite words to hear: you were right. I started this less than twelve hours before it was due, and finished it about six hours before it was due. Good. 

So challenges in this illustration: teacups. Drawing each one of those teacups individually was a bitch. I drew a few stacks of them, and then developed a system to give the impression of a million and a half teacups in the background behind the defined stacks. So I sketched everything in in pencil and then went over it with a Micron pen. Another challenge was figuring out which colors to do the teacups, as I didn't want one color overpowering any other. I wanted it to be bright and colorful but not muddy. I used different techniques for various teacups, and did a few with polka dots and stripes for variety. 

After doing the bright and colorful and obnoxious teacups, I wanted to stick to a somewhat muted palette for the rest of the kitchen area. I went with browns, grays, and a weird yellowish hue. There's an awkward shadow on the bottom of this photo but the floor is a strange mixture of green and gray and blue. 

"3"

So for my illustration depicting the number three, I chose three peas in a pod. 

So for this assignment I used gouache on a raw piece of watercolor paper. I used a wet on wet technique for the peas themselves in order to get the effect I wanted to achieve. One of the main struggles in this piece was choosing which hues to utilize for the work to be dynamic. I really like the way that the effect that I used turned out in this piece. I spent about four and a half hours on this piece, which was half of the budget allotted.