Colored Book Illustrations

Here are the finished drawings with color! I did watercolor separately and then combined it with the drawing in photoshop.

Advanced Book Illustration--In Progress

Here are two uncolored drawings for the illustrations I'm working on in Advanced Book Illustration. The story I'm working with involves a boy living far into the future, where the structures of previous years have been submerged in water from some massive, disastrous flood. He retrieves things from the old world to reconstruct the past--it's sort of a reverse Little Mermaid narrative. Anyway, here's a scene showing the view from the top of the houses, and one with him jumping into the water.

Naturalist Center

For Nature Drawing this week we took a field trip to the Smithsonian Naturalist Center in Virginia. There's a huge room full of taxidermy animals and all kinds of specimens to draw. I spent some time drawing the image you see here. . .yes, that is a fawn in a jar. I'm not sure if I was more fascinated or weirded out by it, but the baby deer itself was so beautifully intricate I couldn't stop looking at it. The image you see here is a WIP, hopefully later I'll post some finished drawings as well as some of the thesis stuff I've been working on.

Nature Drawing

Studies from trips to the zoo and taxidermy animals (fox)--I have some larger pieces I need to photograph. For my ongoing project in the class I'm making a giant star map with illustrated constellations.

Sketches from Italia

Wow! So it's been a really long time since my last post and I have a ton of catching up to do. I was in Orte, Italy for the month of August working on a horse farm through WWOOF (WorldWide Opportunities on Organic Farms). It was an amazing experience, I got to eat lots of delicious home-cooked meals, get lots of fresh air, and see some art on my time off! I'll be starting up my thesis blog shortly, which will tie in some of my experiences from Italy. For now, here's a few sketches from my trips into Rome, and two watercolors done at the house where I was staying. I'll have a photo post later when I get all my film developed.

Sea Woman

I did a quick sketch of a Jules-Joseph Lefebvre painting ("Graziella") at the Met last Saturday and decided to do an inking based off the piece during studio time today. I just recently discovered his work and love the way he handles figures--I think more studies will follow! I'm going to color this piece later, but for now, here's the black and white version.

Pretty Boy Reservoir

I don't normally post pictures of my everyday happenings, but I snapped these two photos right after sunset at Pretty Boy reservoir and could't resist sharing them.

Elijah Mural by Ann Arbor Area Youth

So about a month ago I met with Carol Tice, the art director of Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, to see how the murals for Elijah turned out. The girls all did a great job taking inspiration from my sketches (see bottom sketches) and running with it. I met with the group (mostly high school and middle schoolers) once over spring break and it was cool to see the fruits of their labor. The mural is for the Blue Lake International Youth Orchestra and Choir's performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah, in Hill Auditorium on July 27th. Here are some photos of the finished mural.