Watercolor Therapy

I haven't felt myself lately.

Not to knock all graphic design-centered classes, but they just aren't my cup of tea. I've been taking a web design class this semester, and while I have been learning a lot, it's been monotonous, headache-inducing work. Sometimes, after that, all I want to do is paint.

So occasionally I go visit my friend in watercolor class (4th session-after my classes are over) and paint with them for a while. It's fun, stress free, relaxing. Watercolor for me is fun. I enjoy it, I do it as both a project and a hobby. It's therapeutic to just mix a bunch of watery colors in a palette and splash them all over a sheet of hot press. I just love it.

So yesterday, I sat in on their class (which is a Watercolor Figure Painting class) while they painted a reclining nude. It was a gorgeous pose and a great opportunity for me to work with skin tones, which I haven't done much. I worked on my small Hot Press block and this was the result:

I tried to make it more of an illustration piece with the addition of ink and again keeping with this new-found splashiness. I really like how it turned out. For a 2 1/2 hour painting, I think it came out well.

Let me know what you all think. Should I sit in on this class more often? It doesn't hurt to get some extra practice, especially if you enjoy doing it.

What's Your Sign?

My latest project for Advanced Illustration somehow morphed from cosmetics into Horoscope icons to be used in a teen girl magazine (ie: Seventeen, teenVOGUE...) I just wanted to show you all. I actually did a mock layout in Adobe InDesign as well, but I don't think it's the correct format to post from my home computer, so that might have to wait for another time.

But anyway, here they are. I like some of them more than others, and trust me, it's nothing personal.

 Aries

I redid this one only once and trust me, it looks a lot better than the original. The original was just too generic and didn't have the spunky, fiery attitude that is associated with this sign.

Taurus

I also redid this one, for the same reason as Aries. I think this one is a little bit sweeter and earthly, like I imagine most Taurus girls are. She reminds me of the Mona Lisa.

 

Gemini

This one was not redone. Of course, I drew and erased it a few times, but once it was inked and the watercolor added, it was finished and I was happy with it. I like getting to use not normal hair colors every so often, especially with a spot illustration for a teen magazine! Things need to pop! I think the pink is perfect for bubbly Geminis.

Cancer

Sorry about the variations in size. They all scanned differently. But anyway, Cancer was what one might call "the problem child" of the bunch--not in personality, but as I was drawing them. I redrew her three times before I was pleased. I did this one I think on a Monday night when I got home from school and it looked world's better than the ones I had spent class periods on. This one is actually one of my favorites.

 

 

Leo

This one was adorable from the get-go. After just penning it in, it looked great. Then I added the paint and it became my favorite. She embodies everything I think a Leo should: in your face personality, warmth, and fun. Another favorite.

 

 

Virgo

I'm not sure how I feel about this one. I redid it once and it probably could have stood to be redone again. She has this glazed over expression that I don't like. I've known a few Virgos in my time and none of them were glazed over. Though she does look earthy and peaceful which I guess is good.

 Libra

Another that could have been redone more than once. But take my word, it is an improvement from the original. My instructor said she looked like Wednesday from the Adam's Family. I have to agree with him a little, though all the Libras I've known are very theatrical with bright personalities.

Scorpio

Could stand to be redone again. I know that Scorpios aren't all tough, punk-looking people, but that's what I think of when I think of Scorpio. They are supposedly secretive, though. I don't like how I did the necklace, it looks awful and the unicorn horn hair doesn't help either.

 

Sagittarius

I was born under the sign of Sagittarius, so I knew I had to just nail this one. I actually really like how it turned out. This is the first one I did and I think she embodies the spirit of adventure and fun that we Sagittarians are known for.

 Capricorn

I like how this one turned out. It was another that was not redone. I took a bit of a risk using green for her hair and skin, but if you use it on both, she doesn't look like an alien, she looks like she's bathing in green light. Since Capricorn is an earth sign I think that works. 

Aquarius

Never mind how silly the water pitcher might look on top of her head and this one looks alright to me. I maybe should have approached the pitcher a different way, but it didn't bother me until my teacher mentioned it in the critique. I like the monochromatic color scheme. Very watery, like Aquarius should be.

Pisces

I always think of Pisces as dreamy and imaginative. That was the inspiration for this icon. Notice her head is in the clouds. Not sure how I feel about the fish earrings, but I don't think it's awful.

Anyway, feel free to let me know what you guys think! Please comment.

 

The Cutting Room Floor: Splashy icons

Hello, all

I've been neglecting again, but in my defense, I haven't felt all that great lately. I don't know if I'm sick, or if it's just the Winter blues, or whatnot. But I've been tired and stressed and just not in a good mood in general.

I've been working on various projects for Advanced Illustration since I last posted here. My critique for the food icons went well. I hope that I can someday use them for real life things--although that might be sooner than I think since I used one of the teacups on my business card that I made for portfolio class (which I intend to have actually made), as well as the cherries on a cd label for the same class.

After that project, I decided to do cosmetic icons to be used in a similar way (as stickers, to be put on journals, address books, etc.) But for some reason, I just wasn't feeling them. I'll show you anyway, for the heck of it. I do like them, but something just didn't seem natural about painting them. Art is also about feeling and emotion to me as much as it is making money in the future. If I don't feel right about it, then I move on to something else.

Then I wanted to do some fashion portraits, but I also wasn't feeling those.

I don't know, I've been really into water and oceanic things lately. I've never even seen the ocean in real life.

And jellyfish. I just love jellyfish!

Anyway, I just wanted to show you some icons/paintings that maybe didn't make the cut right now, but possibly will in the future. Tell me what you think of them!

More Icons for your viewing pleasure

I've been working on a lot of icons for Advanced Illustration lately, as you might know, from a previous post.

For some reason, they've all been food-related. I think I just like food. I watch a lot of Food Network and Cooking Channel and I just can't help the fact that food is awesome. And some foods are just so pretty and/or cute that someone like me wants to draw and paint them.

So here is what I've done lately:

cookies

sushi

A teacup (surprise, surprise)

more teacups (messier ones)

a mocha...or hot chocolate. Either way, delicious.

 fruit

Some of these have some thicker lines incorporated, that is a result of using a brush pen for some of the linework. My instructor suggested I do that, after showing him some of the icons. I think next week in class, I'm going to try incorporating some of these into some actual real-world uses, like on the fronts of journals, address books and recipe books.

Hope everyone has a lovely weekend, I plan on doing a lot more icons. I'd also like to try incorporating this looser style into maybe some portraits or faces. I bought a Nylon magazine today and I was starting to get a little inspired to recreate some of the pretty bows, jewelry and makeup in watercolor and ink. I'll keep you posted.

Let down your hair!

As promised, here is the first piece I did for Advanced Illustration:

It's Repunzel, and it was meant to be a book cover or an illustration for a storybook, and also sort of a continuation of the Sleeping Beauty/Briar Rose painting I did in watercolor. I had my critique on this piece in class today and we discussed that it probably would not be most fit for a book, but perhaps a poster for a play. The reason being, since her hair runs down the center of the piece. If the braid had swayed slightly more to the left, then there would be more room for type, and maybe even the painting could somehow interact with the text. My instructor also said I should have added some more contrast (I agree!) and that it was really "stupid" of me to make her hair smushed against the floor like that. he said I should have just let it sway there. I'll agree, it wasn't the best decision, but I stuck with it. Constructive criticism is never a bad thing!

But minor problems aside, I think this piece came out nice. I always have a picture in my head of exactly how I want a piece to turn out and it never comes out exactly that way (perhaps it's just the perfectionist in me), but this piece is good. I like it. Not my best, but certainly far from my worst. I truly enjoy using the walnut ink to accent certain parts of paintings. In this piece, I used it in her hair--the most important part of the piece, since it is Repunzel.

But anyway, I learned a lot from this piece...most of that, things I should not do in the future. I'm not sure yet if it deserves a spot in my final portfolio. Maybe after I make a few changes.

Bring on the Sweets!

So, I am two weeks into Spring 2011 semester at school and I've already done my first project for Advanced Illustration. Unfortunately, though I have no pictures or scans of it so you can't see it just yet. But I will try to get those up as soon as possible!

But, after having a chat with my instructor, we decided that a good route for me to go this semester (to strengthen my portfolio) is to do some splashy little watercolor icons. It sounds like a breeze, right, but it's not. For me, being spontaneous in my art is actually a lot more difficult than being meticulous.

We discussed these icons possibly being used on stationary, restaurant menus, greeting cards, cosmetics...etc. I could be a maven and have my own brand! That would be awesome! So, today I decided to start practicing a little bit...

It's really no secret that I have a really big sweet tooth, so cupcakes and chocolate were the first thing that came to mind when starting these. I'm in the process of thinking up more subject matter for these. My mom suggested sushi, but I would like to do more than just food--as cute as sushi would be. I told my instructor that I'd like to do a bunch of "girlie and cute" icons, because, well, I like things that are girlie and cute. I'm thinking possibly nail polish, perfume, jewelry, bows, umbrellas, and even animals might make future appearances.

When doing these pieces, I first loosely sketched them out in pencil. I did this from both memory and online photo references, then I added ink using Micron pens. That was different for me since I usually ink after the addition of watercolor, but the ink didn't run. I think I was probably just paranoid in the past that it would once water was in the equation. But it was all part of the free, go-with-the-flow experience. And it didn't run, obviously. The ink lines stayed clean and the translucent watercolor looked great over it. I tried to give each icon a bit of life and personality by painting outside of the lines, mixing colors right on the paper and adding accents outside of the drawing (like the sprinkles and hearts are jumping out of the dessert).

I'm liking how these are turning out and I'm enjoying the process of making them. What do you guys think?

2011- A Big Year

It seems like every time I update here, I am apologizing for not making many updates. Once again, I'm sorry! It's been two months and nothing, although a lot has happened. I don't usually make New Year's resolutions, but if I have to strive to make one thing better this year, it's to update more and be more on top of things art-wise. I'm not exactly lazy or unorganized, but I am busy. My art has to be one of my top--if not THE top--priorities this year. This is my last four months of school!

So anyway, Fall semester has ended. It ended a few days before Christmas last year. I was sad to see it go. I thoroughly enjoyed my classes and I feel like I learned a lot. Ended up getting a lot of good art out of it, as well. Ironically, even though I am an Illustration major, the bulk of that good work came out of my Watercolor II class.My instructor didn't push us to do a bunch of still-life paintings, which was nice and so I ended up with quite a few illustrations, done in watercolor.

Some of the ones I was most proud of:

 I titled this one Briar Rose because it tells the tale of Sleeping Beauty through the use of watercolor and collage. When discussing what I should do for my collage piece in watercolor, my instructor suggested I do something that I could see myself working with in the future. As I've said before, my style lends itself towards children's book illustration, fantasy, and fairy tales so he said I should do a book cover. Brilliant idea! I knew I wanted to do a Grimm's fairy tale, but which one. And I didn't want any trace of Disney (as awesome as Disney is). After much debate, I picked Sleeping Beauty, and decided to read the original story to help bring the piece to life. I also wanted to bring in elements of Art Nouveau because that is such an inspiration to my work. So here we have "Sleeping Beauty" or Briar Rose, which is her name, pricking her finger on the sewing spindle about to fall into a deep 100 years sleep. The string is actual string that I attached to the piece and the thorny vines along with the blue-gold space behind the spinning wheel is all tissue paper. The rest is done in watercolor and ink.

That's another thing-ink! I have developed a passion for using Walnut ink in my watercolor pieces. It gives a very deep, rich, antiqued feel to things which I believe really adds something. Also, this piece started my love of hot press paper. I will never go back to cold press. Hot press is just so much more smooth and works better with my style, I believe.

Another piece I was immensely proud of was the time machine piece:

 First of all, can I just say how incredibly excited I was after hearing this was to be our next project? I was beside myself with excitement! As you all might know, I'm a big fan of a little show called Doctor Who, which is all about time travel. Plus, what is more ambiguous and enigmatic than the idea of time-travel. Since there is no known proof of it, it is strictly up to one's imagination. I love getting to imagine things. And I will admit, our class got into an hour-long (or more) debate on what constitutes as a time machine or time travel. It was so ridiculous, but the good kind of ridiculous. I decided to just be blunt with it and design my idea of a "cool time machine", since it couldn't be the TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space). So here we are. It is shaped like a rusty old metal tea pot because I love tea. The teacups surrounding it are other space crafts. I drew out the machine and teacups in ink first and then blended the ink with watercolor. I really love the look. But my favorite part was doing the wet-in-wet stuff in the background. I added some salt resists for that cosmic starry look.

For our final project, it was going to be a self-portrait without ourselves in it. But no one wanted to do that. We were all fascinated with what the Watercolor I's had done for a recent project. They had to read this book called Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. Look it up, it's very interesting! Anyway, it's about Marco Polo describing all these cities that he has traveled to. It is just entirely detailed descriptions of cities (in reality all the same city) making them sound fantastical and impossible. I can't describe it any other way.

 Sorry about the not so good quality, but this is basically it. Yes, it is finished. I embraced the white of the paper, I guess you could say. It was a conscious decision to do so. I wanted that feeling of emptiness surrounding the "city". This is Octavia, the spiderweb city. It is basically a city of nets and ropes suspended between two mountain peaks over a deep chasm. Scary, right? This is how I saw the city in my mind when I read the book. I don't believe it mentioned anything about floating, but I thought that added an even stronger feeling of precariousness and frailty. Such is life. Again, I used ink for the actual city part and watercolor for the rest. I like how puffy and marshmallow-like the clouds came out. It was a high note to end on.

I start Spring semester on Monday. I'm nervous, only a little excited. This is my final semester of school. I've got my fingers crossed in hopes of a great four months!