Life and Death.

So ... final artwork for life and death. For this assignment, I chose a pumpkin in a pumpkin patch and then a rotting jack-o-lantern sitting on a porch. I this is my fourth version of the live pumpkin, so that's good. It really took a while to get the hang of the scale of the pumpkin in relation to the rest of the piece. I had initially had some little pumpkins in the background of the pumpkin patch but did away with those in the final version of this artwork. I added in some leaves in order to balance the color and make it not all just dirt, as well as to bring out the green of the stem as well as the accent color in the pumpkin. I used a flat brush to achieve the grass effect in the back of the pumpkin patch, and a wash of light blue (which didn't translate well in the reproduced image) for the sky of this piece.

Now, moving on to the jack-o-lantern. This one was much more of a struggle. I had been working so long with gouache that I kind of forgot how to use watercolor. Also, this piece is watercolor, which I neglected to mentioned in my earlier ramblings. But anyway, my entire technique was wet on dry and I miiight have been just a little tiny bit "fussy" in doing this assignment. But anyway, instead of scrapping the whole piece, I went in with water and "erased" a lot of what I had laid down earlier. And then I went back in, while the piece was still wet, and added in pigment. I used darker reds, oranges, yellows and browns in addition to the black in order to get the decaying effect. I had initially just had a brown floor and a weird grayish blue background but I decided to change to bricks.

From start to finish, I would say I probably spent about 11 hours, possibly more, on these two pieces combined.

I Was Drunk the Day My Momma Got Out of Prison

So ... not to inflate your ego and give you the impression that you're actually funny, Rusty, but I informed my mother of this morning's events and this was the response: 

 

 There is now only one person  another person in the Rusty Nelson Fan Club. 

... so there's that. 

But in real life news, here are the re-submissions for my midterm portfolio.

According to the little grade sheet thing, I am resubmitting these for Watercolor 2, 3, and 4, as well as Gouache 2. 

Watercolor 2: This was part of the 10 A Days, I believe on the ones focused on skyscapes. I spent about twenty five minutes on this piece, fulfilling the time budget. I think I utilized the medium well here in this piece, especially in regards to the reflection of the sky in the water. If I were to redo this watercolor, I would approach the boat and ripples differently. 

Watercolor 3: This piece was in the first set of watercolors, and took a little over twenty minutes. I liked how I handled the tone in the trees, but wish I would have spent more time in the foreground. 

Watercolor 4: This piece was a part of the "Skyscapes" Assignment, and took a little over twenty five minutes, which was the budget. This is a painting of a sunrise, and I think I depicted that scene well. I like the interaction between the two hues in the sky, achieved through a wet on wet technique. If I were to do this piece over again, I would use a less harsh hue than black to depict the trees. 

Gouache 2: This gouache piece involved a lot of layering of the medium to achieve the effect. I had initially utilized the pick out technique, but it wasn't working to my liking so I just started adding differing layers of gouache to achieve the darkness and highlights. If I were to redo this piece, I would approach the bright white highlights differently, and only use them when absolutely necessary. 

Product Illustration

So here's my product illustration. 

I chose a bottle of Coke for this illustration, and used about three different reference photographs in order to compose this illustration. 

In regards to time, I was pretty near the budget of 12 hours. However, contrary to a certain professor's theory that all homework for his class is done within twenty four hours of the deadline, this was not the case. Only the last four hours or so was like that ... so, you're kind of right, Rusty. But only kind of. 

One triumph (if you can call it that) of this piece was the way in which I rendered the form. I think I did well with this aspect, and am happy with the way the highlights worked out as well. However, I ran into a bit of a roadblock when I worked towards the top of the bottle, as the photo I was using for reference featured a clear bottle. So naturally, I made up a green color and used it for the glass, and threw in a few green highlights towards the bottom. 

Life and Death and Marker Comps

How good is this marker comp, right? 

So for this project of juxtaposition of life and death, I chose a healthy little pumpkin (which I suppose is already dead but let's forget that) and a rotting jack-o-lantern. I shot the photo on the left on Saturday when we ventured out to La Plata to go to a pumpkin patch, and then I found some photo reference on the left on the almighty internets.

I'm not sure yet which medium I will be using for this project. So there's that.

Global Slavery.

For the submission to Truman's Lincoln contest depicting modern slavery, I chose the topic of modern child slavery. To convey this concept, I drew a pair of baby feet wrapped in chains. Here is the marker comp: 

And the final: 

There was no budget for this project (according to god) or I'm just blind and can't find it on the blog. But I had an initial concept that wasn't working but probably spent about three hours on the marker comp for that one. And by marker comp I mean it was actually Prismacolors because I only have 12 markers and about 1 of those 12 was one that I could actually use for this assignment. So regardless, I spent three hours with the initial marker comp, about one hour on this marker comp here, and from about 11 until 2 on Friday night (I'm super cool, I know) working on the final. So all in all it was about eight hours. I still have a little bit more to do with this one but I will upload the file I use for printing to my blog when it's all done and pretty (and doesn't cut off a chunk of the image, thanks lab scanners)

Pleasing the gods of the Liberal Arts

So this isn't Illustration ... but I haven't gotten around to scanning in my (now completed) project for the Lincoln assignment. So I'm blogging about this instead. 

So here we have the artwork for a mural proposal for Kirksville Skate Park for my Drawing III class. It's Kirksville themed and pretty hokey and apparently one of four in the running to actually be painted in real life at the skate park. So, sorry Kirksville. 

These little ones here are all gouache, with no pick out technique in sight. Here are the four together: 

And then each one individually:

So ... if you get a chance, apparently you will have the ability to vote for these on the Parks and Rec Facebook page at some point so if you want to see this hot mess on the Kirksville Skate Park (which apparently is a thing), feel free to throw your vote up there. 

Blog Murder.

So I haven't blogged in a week so sorry about that one ... does that mean my blog is dead?  but I suppose it's excusable with being gone for five days, right? Right. Okay good.

So in lieu of bringing a sketchbook and working on Illustration during my fall break, I went to Oklahoma to serve those who had been affected by the series of tornados that hit late May of this year and did not do any illustration at all. I brought my Nikon but did not take a single picture with it, as I really wanted to be immersed in service and did not want to hide behind the lens. Although I took some pictures on my phone, so here are a few of my Instagram pictures from the trip:

Naturally if you're on a road trip you need a picture of the road. Especially if it's an open road and you have nine more hours of driving ahead of you.

We spent a morning sifting through a pile of rubble and throwing away all of the glass, metal, toilets, trash, gutters, etc that had ended up in that pile from the tornado. Also in that pile of rubble was a large wooden stick (with nails sticking out of random places, let's hope everyone had their tetanus shots up to date) as well as a baseball. So we played some good old fashioned stickball in the dirt during lunchtime. 

We also got lost somewhere between Shawnee and Moore, but it proved to be a very scenic route through rural Oklahoma. 

I don't know what it is about water towers but this one was cool. Also, Moore is the home of Toby Keith so that's exciting if you're into that kind of thing. 

After one day of service, we drove through an area that was most physically affected by the storm. It was a very surreal experience, driving through what seemed like vacant lots. But as we looked closely, we realized there were sidewalks, driveways, and foundations of homes. There were areas that were completely sound after the storms and areas that were just flattened. But it was incredible driving through this neighborhood and seeing this message. 

But anyway, that was Oklahoma and this is Kirksville, and when I got home after driving all day on Sunday I worked on Illustration and came up with a few ideas for the modern day slavery assignment. After doing a bit of research on the different kinds of modern slavery, I decided I wanted to focus on child slavery in the modern world. I drew up a sketch, and am currently working on a comp of this piece. So here's the unfinished version of it so far.