It's a Little Seashell House, You Guys.

Spiral Cove; Digital Painting, 2012

This is a little digital painting I did for Cliff Cramp's Digital Narrative Illustration class. The assignment was an exterior environment, and he gave us a list of prompts to choose from. I chose treehouse.  It was my first piece using Corel Painter, and it was pretty fun for the most part, although I am still getting used to the software. Cliff showed us some really cool tricks using photos to lay in texture and color key. I got a little tripped up on this piece because Cliff paints so incredibly fast in his demos, I really underestimated how long it would take me. I mean, I didn't think I would be as fast as him, he will pretty much finish a painting in one class meeting, but I thought it would take me twice as long, not ten times as long.

 Anyway here are some process images you may find interesting:

Brainstorming and Sketching Ideas

Value Study, Adding Textures and Color

These are the Cliff Tricks I was telling you about. For the color one I used a sunset photo and a few close up shots of opals.

Painting and Color Adjusting

Thanks for stopping by, friends! See you soon.

Some Head Sketches

 I had a lot of fun with my homework last night for my Head and Hands class so I thought I'd share my sketches.

This "Bitchface" one was inspired by Tavi Gevinson, this sixteen year old fashion blogger who was recently interviewed by Jimmy Fallon.

Zodiac Ladies and the Wonders of Photomerge

Hello Friends!

I recently discovered the Photomerge feature in Photoshop, and I'm in love with it. Since most of my work is too big for my scanner, I was stitching my scanned images together manually. It was pretty time consuming and difficult to get the images exactly lined up, but Photomerge stitches them in about four mouse clicks and it's perfect every time. I had to scan Sagittarius in three pieces and it still came out seamless. This feature is probably obvious to a lot of people, but in case you haven't heard of it:

Go to File>Automate>Photomerge, select the files you need to stitch, click ok and watch the magic unfold before your eyes. Sometimes I am overly impressed by technology. I love you Photomerge 8D

Anyway, here are (finally) the last two ladies in my zodiac series. It felt really good to finish these. I have a lot of projects in various stages of completion and it's nice to cross one off my list.

Sagittarius; Watercolor 2012

 Some of you may recognize Sagittarius, it's my friend Kelsey again :) She was kind enough to pose for me for about half of my zodiac series and since Sagittarius is her sign, I decided to make this one look like her. Thanks Kelsey!

Virgo; Watercolor 2012

Virgo apparently time traveled here from 1991. I didn't realize just how 90s she was until I painted her hair and I was like "Oh hay, Stephanie from Full House, what are you doing here?"

 Hope you guys enjoy these! Thanks for looking!

Hot Noodles

Hot Noodles; Illustration for Dish Clips Website, Adobe Illustrator, 2012

So I recently started an internship with a start up company called Dish Clips. They are developing an app for iPhone and Android that allows users to share videos of the food they are eating at different restaurants.

It's like yelp but with video, or like youtube for food.

For my first task as Mobile Graphics Intern #2, they asked me to come up with an illustration for their website, based on their concept of "Food Porn."

Thumbnails

More Thumbs

A Sketch for an Alternate Idea

I was a bit surprised that they liked my babe-in-the-noodle-bowl sketch because I thought it would be too silly, but it was the one I wanted to finish the most so I was glad they chose it. This was a pretty fun project, I wasn't expecting to be doing so much hands on stuff at my internship so that was a pleasant surprise, and I hadn't used Illustrator in a while so it was nice to get some practice in with the pen tool. And I actually remembered to save some progress if you're into that sort of thing. Hope you enjoy it!

 Sketch for Hot Noodles

Tracing  Large Shapes with the Pen Tool

Painstakingly Tracing Each Individual Noodle for Ten Years

Adding More Details

All Done :)

Kelsey Loves Sloths

Kelsey Loves Sloths, Watercolor, 2012

Here's a little painting of one of my favorite subjects, my friend Kelsey. All you need to know about Kelsey is that she is awesome and she loves sloths. She also loves manatees and spaghetti, but that won't be on the exam. This piece was 100% Pure Fun for me, I hope you guys enjoy it!

The End

Fin, Acrylic and Colored Pencil on Paper, 2012

In an earlier post, I mentioned a collaborative project I was working on. Unfortunately we decided to put the project on hold for the time being. It was a really exciting idea, but some of us are too busy at the moment to devote the amount of time we feel is necessary to continue the project properly.

This piece is my last entry for that project, at least for the time being. It's sort of funny that we agreed on our latest theme before we ever discussed stopping the project, and that theme happened to be The End. This piece is a response to that theme, or more accurately my attempt to make what I wanted to paint somehow fit the theme. I've just finished re-watching every episode of Mad Men at an alarming rate and I had an urge to paint a pretty lady with Betty Draper hair. That show is really great. When I watch it I like to think I would be like Peggy, but I would probably be more like that dumb bitch that crashes the lawnmower.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun painting this, and I really hope you all enjoy it!

Going Places

Carolina, Graphite with Digital Color, 2012

Here's another little fashion drawing! This one is based on a really cute peplum top from Prabal Gurung's Resort 2013 collection.