For my Character Development class we designed a comic book character that was inspired by an interesting object we brought into class. My objects were an assortment of doll hands, which eventually developed into the idea for a character with interesting/additional hands and arms. I have not thought of a name for this character yet, though I imagine her to be a villainous jungle-queen of some sort. The final piece is done in watercolor and ink, with graphite sketches.
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Part of a sketchbook alphabet I developed further for my Hand Letters class. The dragons are hand-drawn and colored in Photoshop.
An older hand-drawn alphabet, but I recently resurrected it for another project I'll post later this week. I've been behind in my updates due to a sudden and catastrophic hard drive crash, where I lost everything from Spring 08 until now. After researching hard drive data recovery, I have found the expense to be upwards of $1,000; so unless I can find another (affordable) alternative I am going to suck it up and replace the hard drive with a new one. The massive loss is mostly my fault--everyone knows how important it is to back up all your files, but it's something I failed to do. Since this is the second hard drive crash in less than two years, you can be sure I'm going to purchase an external hard drive and back up everything from now on. It still doesn't help the sting of losing everything---personal photos, class papers, photographed/scanned artwork, etc. Hopefully my next post will be a brighter one...
My Illustration II class got the opportunity to go see "A Circus Family: Picasso to Leger" at the BMA before spring break. The exhibit was worth every dollar--I have always taken an interest in Picasso's paintings and studies of circus people, and it was amazing to see some Toulouse-Lautrec prints in living color. I wasted no time filling my sketchbook with studies of the posters--their strong compositions and energetic layouts will be sure to inspire me in future Illustration assignments. For our "circus portrait" project in Illustration II, we were to depict a well-known celebrity as a circus performer (acrobat, lion tamer, ringmaster, etc) that somehow related to their image or persona in the real world. I was inspired by Amy Winehouse's towering hairdo, and so she became a circus freak known as "Queen of the Bees." (it was between her and Mary-Kate Olsen as the Incredible Shrinking Woman) As always, click for a larger view!
These are from last semester--all Illustration majors were required to attend a lighting workshop in the BBOX performance space. I'm not sure if you can read my scribbled handwriting, but the topmost sketch is drawn from 2-point side lighting, the middle from "Rembrandt lighting" (creates a triangular patch on the cheek) and the bottom from bottom lighting (also called "up" or "foot" lighting..) All are five-minute exercises executed in sharpie.
For my Hand Letters class we were assigned a project entitled "Nature's Alphabet," where we had to render an alphabet inspired by natural elements. (Leaves, birds, vegetables, etc) I chose the circulatory system, and used my handy 1940s anatomy book to aid me in depicting realistic vein and artery structures. I apologize for the low image quality; the file size had to be greatly reduced in order for me to upload. We used this alphabet in a later project---I will post it later this week, if I can recover my lost flash drive!
