Holidays and Such.

Thought I should update. :P This is for you Sharon.

Been working on sketching and some painting the past couple months. Didn't do too much during the summer besides sketch, but now that school is in full swing for most of my friends here I've gotten into the habit of painting at least once a week, usually at the college I gradated from, in the company of my boyfriend as he works on homework. Would be more if I didn't have to, you know, eat and pay bills by working retail. Another toy store for me, though this one is much more...strict? Driven? Business-like? I assume this is how they've managed to stay afloat in this economy, but I miss KB still. You got to play there.

Anywho. Back to art. Been working on a new portfolio, to market to card companies. Here is what have so far, as of characters.






Christmas, Hanukkah, Thanksgiving and Halloween (click on the images to see bigger and better scans of them at dA). Many more planned, and some silly ones like Talk Like a Pirate Day sketched. After designing and coloring all the characters I'm going to do some with backgrounds, and do some mock-ups of cards, and make a cover for the portfolio featuring most of the characters interacting. Halloween is my favorite so far. <3

Not planning on updating my official site with these till after I make better scans and get some backgrounds going. And the holiday card portfolio may have to go on hiatus, since for a lot of gifts I need to paint something, as I won't have a lot of money for gifts when loans start collecting (which is this November. Dun dun dun).

So that's it for now. May take photos for Halloween, as I'm going to be a witch (hey, I've never been one, and I think it will be fun) and Barry is planning on being Hellboy, with my help. Should be interesting. :)

Thesis.

The show was great, it wasn't as nerve wracking as I thought it would be. A lot of people took post cards, I'll need to get more soon. Here's my thesis:











You can see them better at dA or on my site. I picked the children's book category, and had the idea to do nautical myths, since I like painting sea life so much. The first image is the mock cover, the second is from a Japanese tale called "Why the Jellyfish Has No Bones", third is basically the "Selkie" myth, fourth is from the myths connecting the nautilus with the moon.

I graduate this Saturday, I don't really believe it. Moving to a new apartment seems more real to me right now. I'll be somewhere new on the 1st of June, it's exciting. My room is bigger there. :P Been packing books and stacking old art while doing laundry all day. Energy level still pretty high considering...but I'm going to need a lot more boxes. So far I have 6 average sized cardboard boxes just full of books...and I still have more, not counting dvds. Moving all this is going to be interesting. Well, back to the laundry...

There's A Bumble Bee Outside My Window...

It should stop watching me. It's creepy.

Soooooo yeah. Been busy. I graduate in like two weeks. It's weird. Only one more class to go, then the Sr. Show, and graduation. I'm looking forward to the show more so then the grad ceremony...I barely remember my high school one, my dad had given me his prescription anti anxiety medicine because I was freaking out at him for making us late. So I was very calm, but don't remember much. But walking in front of lots of people isn't my idea of a good time. At least at the show I can stand by my art, or mingle around looking at my classmate's work. Here's my oh so lovely postcard I had made. Need to order more soon.



























My thesis is complete, I just need to scan the last one. I linked my online portfolio here, it's that new little white, pink, and orange button on the side. Went with happy colors, as I think children's books is what I'd like to get into.

The gallery has the sr.s work up in it currently, our 4 thesis pieces go up for the show, all around the building, but the main gallery has one piece of ours each. I used this one:





















Here it is all spify and matted:

















Got put by itself by Kevin's animation. Not sure if that's the best placement or the worst. Hm.

In other news I'll be moving soon, Sam (and Sam's bf) and I are moving in with Sharon. So rent will be pretty cheap with four people, so that's good. I'm worried about money now that I'll be all on my own and with loans coming to collect soon. I think I'll manage. My one job went bankrupt, but I have managed to live on employment, and I have another retail job lined up for after I graduate. Also jason and I have called it quits again. For the final time, cause seriously you can only break up and get back together so many times. And I really like someone at my school, something I didn't think possible before. So I'm doing fine, things really feel like they are coming together now, with school, and everything else.

I'll try to post my thesis pieces up next...

Nautilus and Ragdoll

Whooo. Concept for "creature" turned out well. I picked the naiad (or nyad) character from the book The Lightning Thief. I did like 10 different ideas, only one had tentacles....and the class liked that best. Works for me. I actually visualize the character to be more bubblely and part of the water but this was more fun. So here's the turnaround character sheet:

See it bigger and better here.

I based her on a Nautilus, and it was quite fun. This is what they really look like:



They are awesome. Funfact: they can live to like 20 years. Poor octopi only usually live about 3 years.

Annnnd here is the color final. Haven't had a crit on her yet, but I'm pretty happy with it so far:


Bigger and better here.

For my children's book class I'm doing an information book on squids and octopi. So far turning out well, have one finished spot illustration, and it look nice. Might have a scan of that up soon.

Oh yeah. Halloween costume turned out well:


Cheapest halloween ever. Dress was like 2 dollars at the salvation army, and most of the fabric my roommate let me have for everything else. And I handmade the doll. Her name is Susan. :P



Bleh. Slow day in Sr Illustration. I'm ready to go onto learning about the new project, but yeah....this class is rarely on schedule. Lunch time though! Es-cap-e!

My Concept of Hades.

I have realized, from my eating habits, that once I am extremely poor and managing my budget like Scudge McDuck (except I won't have enough money to step into, let alone swim in) that living off of $1 lunch meat and noodles in various incarnations will not be hard for me. Today I had a small bag chips for lunch (at work, around 2) and some nacho chips with what was left of some cheese in a jar. Of course, I had massive amounts of caffeine throughout the day, I should take that into my expense account once I start paying off loans.

Anyway. My concept class is going well, now that we are onto character designs and not buildings. Out of my drawings Hades was chosen, so here is my Hades (from the book The Lightning Thief) character sheet.



Novak wanted us to play with dressing our gods in modern and Greek cloths, so Hades here is wearing a toga like shirt and business pants and shoes. And he has gauges in his ears, and two rings (one wedding ring, one just for bling) and black nail polish for some more goth. :P We only needed 5 full figure images, but I threw in the bust shot because I was having too much fun.



Novak really liked it, but we have to take a full figure image to color, so he choose this one:



The Lightning Thief Hades is described in the book much like how I would describe my boyfriend (well, besides the cruelty). So guess who was my model? :P It was a fun photo shoot, he's a good model, and only laughed hysterically a couple times while I tried to get him to pose like he was angry.

In other news my Halloween costume is underway. Still need some more supplies, but everything is planned out, and my dress is cut up correctly. It should turn out well. :D

Oh, bought this bizarreity today:



He's so....freakin' weird. He's a neopet, and for the record, I think neopets are dumb, and making stuffed animals of your fake online pets that you'll just neglect in a month is really dumb. But...he was just too weird to not like. You can never have too many funky stuffed animals, right?

Children's Theater Pamphlets

So here are the finals from my illustration studio class. My favorites is Red, but I like Aladdin as well. Watercolor and some gauche.






Even though I wasn't too happy with being one of the students stuck with Raggedy Anne and Andy (no one wanted to really do that one), I think mine turned out well. Bob liked the concept a lot. Plus, it gave me the idea for my Halloween costume. :D Going to be a rag doll, and haven't decided how beat up it's going to look. Or how bloody. Went to the Salvation Army and bought a good dress to start messing with.

Anyway, these watercolors, along with the rest of the classes, are being sent to a theater and they will pick 11 to use for their pamphlets. Not getting my hopes up, but I'm feeling mine are just as likely as anyones else's to be chosen. We may know by Friday....

It's OCTOBER! And Here's A New Vector.

I like Halloween, to put it mildly.

Working on lots of watercolor stuff for school, but made a vector on my own, since Charlie was so fond of my other ones. Some day I will have two portfolios, one for the vectors, one for the traditional watercolor. For now I have to concentrate on one area. Curses. So I'm doing vectors in my spare time (Read as "at 2 AM").

And now I have this:


Which came from this doodled in a notebook while working on my Red Riding Hood watercolor school piece:



This is about the same size as the original doodle.

The wolf idea came from various sources, some personal, but one inspired by the 10th Kingdom miniseries where the wolf is mostly human.

I always feel disappointed seeing my vectors not in an ai file. No matter what I do they are distorted in some way. Sigh. Here the colors are a bit off. The colors are more vibrant here: http://roguehobbit.deviantart.com/art/Red-99563189 though more likely to be ripped off so thus the giant watermark on the full size version. You can also see the full thing there.

But I'm pretty happy with the final ai file. I had a lot of fun with shapes and colors and flatness of perspective which I just can't capture with watercolor. Hopefully I'll have more vector ideas and time to do them. Must work on Halloween costume as well though...