unchain

Here's a new piece I finished a few weeks ago. Again, it's mixed media on wood. I actually got this piece of wood for free from a guy I stopped to talk to to who was working at a construction site! He was super nice and actually was an artist himself, and gave me all these gorgeous pieces of really nice wood for painting on. Anyway, here:

nature/nurture

Here's a new piece I've been working on for a series that I'm planning to put together for potential MFA applications (!). It's a continuation of the traditional/digital melding that I've been working with recently. This one is fairly fully rendered with pencil and then I took it into Photoshop, where I added layers of color and texture in a way that reminds me of glazing in traditional painting.

"Queering" Illustrations

I realized I never posted about this here, but last year I did a cover illustration and three interior illustrations for a new student publication at my school called "Queering". The whole publication turned out really well, and I was honored to be a part of it. Here are the illustrations, which include the cover and three interior pieces:

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lyra and brainz

Two pieces I did in the last few days. They're, uh, rather unrelated as you will soon see:

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the sunburned limbic system is my favorite part!

smorgasbord

Here is a big mess of art from the last few weeks. I really enjoyed working more with "traditional"/mixed media type of works, as demonstrated by these guys:

Also I love me some watercolors and feminism, no surprises there. (contains a rad cat doing an angry gesture, if you're gonna be offended by that):

 

 And then as always, I am really into the incorporation of non-digital techniques - ink, pencils, etc - with digital color and effects. For example:

 cuties.

 

I went to a bookstore and read picture books for an hour yesterday, and I was super inspired by all the beautiful illustrations in them. I've been really into this new technique lately, and did some new illustrations that I'm really diggin. Basically it's a pencil sketch, with shading/values, and then washes of watercolor and more pencil as needed on top of that. Here are some things I did today:

The last one incorporates Photoshop too. I also had to use Photoshop to fix a place on the first one where the paper ripped - I'm using drawing paper and not my super expensive watercolor paper, but that doesn't count.

mixed media piece

Here's a mixed media piece I did today:

it's pretty rough, but I love doing more traditional media stuff. I get caught up in digital a lot (which I've been neglecting to post here a little, oops), so it feels good to do something with a bit more physical presence.

run.

Working on my digital painting techniques. Here's a new one from today:

(large so you can see the details.)


This was done to practice with digital painting over/under a pencil sketch, and also an exercise in values (i.e. avoiding lots of greys and having lots of variance and interest within values). Working on getting these two characters all sorted out. I also tried to think about using effective color choices.

Unfortunately, I did this sketch without thinking much about the composition or story behind it, aside from in a very general sense. I think that the composition is a little weird because of that perhaps, so that is something to work on. Also, handsss and avoiding tangents (I tried but there are some weird ones with the foreground person’s left hand and the door frame). I am also not super happy with the wood floor; I gave up after a while.

distraction via drawing

I've been drawing a lot today and yesterday, probably because I just graduated and I'm trying to distract myself from the facts that I miss everyone a ton, and that I should probably unpack sometime soon. So, here:

 

(that one is supposed to be a self portrait)

With the first and last piece, I tried some experimenting with a new technique in Photoshop, mostly involving an overlay layer over placed over a greyscale version with additions on top. It often leaves things looking a little washed out and weird but it might be good to continue with -- I think it makes things go a little faster.

More art updates!

The newest image for my portfolio. I really like doing all the organic shapes in this, as you can see - the trees are my favorite.

Concept art process

So! I'm working on my portfolio to apply to concept art/game art/movie art related internships and jobs. Here's a piece I just finished:

This piece definitely helped me work on my digital painting skills! I also documented my process with this piece, because at least one of the internships requires process images. Here you go!

These were my original sketches for the character. Basically, I just wanted to create someone who was totally badass. Then I did some color tests for the final piece:

Ended up going with the bottom right.

Then I just went in and painted! During the process, I made a few modifications - basically, I realized that the rifle wasn't working out in that angled position (it seemed super awkward), so I straightened it out some. I also reworked her left arm using a reference picture, since I realized that hand position wasn't very realistic. I also used a lot of other references throughout to make things accurate looking:

Boot - corbis.com. Photobucket pictures - me (the weird collar one is to see what the fabric would look like backlit). Desert - this site.

And that's about it! Here's a close up of her face:

Singer

Observational drawings are my favorite. Case in point:

 

Painted in Photoshop, 2012. It was my mom's high school graduation present, which is pretty neat, but I use it now (she has a new one). 

Here are the steps I went through to get this, if you're curious.

1. Relatively careful sketch

2. Lay in local values/colors

3. Render, keeping in mind shadows and reflections

4. Render more (add/fix reflection on base).

I might still go in and do some subtle color correction, but it's good for now.