World History Splash

I was inspired by the book Dick Whittington and his Cat, and tried to kinda get the look of Linocuts even though I was working digitally. I'm mostly pleased with the result.

Knight Banner

No art for a couple weeks... then, a whole bunch in a couple days! When it rains, it pours. (Especially in the Philippines ;-)

This is a banner I put together as an example of the style I'd like to use for a course I'm making the splash for. I wanted it to look like a picture book I remember my mom reading to me when I was little, "Dick Whittington and His Cat," which had awesome linocut (?) illustrations by Marcia Brown--it got a Caldecott Honor, I believe.

Do Not Offend The Gods

I was going to work on this longer and then I was like, You know what? I'm sick of looking at this. So I'm going to be done with it. So there.

So this week, I'm posting my art early. Does this make up for it being late before?

This illustrates a scene from Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief.


I was walking up steps into a small room with marble walls. There were no windows, but moonlight came from somewhere to fall on the white hair and dress of a woman waiting there for me. She was wearing the ancient peplos that fell in pleated folds to her feet, like one of the women carved in stone beside old altars. As I entered the room, she nodded as if she'd been expecting me for some time, as if I were late. I had a feeling I should recognise her, but I didn't.
"Who brings you here?" she asked.
"I bring myself."
"Do you come to offer or to take/"
"To take," I whispered, my mouth dry.
"Take what you seek if you find it then, but be cautious. Do not offend the gods." She turned to the tall three-legged table beside her. It held an open scroll and she lifted a stylus and wrote, adding my name at the bottom of a long list and placing a small mark beside it.
When I woke a moment later, Pol had dinner ready.

.....

I had been dreaming again of the lady in the chamber; her hair was held away from her face by a string of dark red stones set in gold. She used a swan feather pen to put a second mark by my name, and she seemed concerned for my sake...






Yeah, I know I did a little column thingy instead of a three-legged table. I thought it looked cooler.

I also didn't have any photo reference for this... at all. So yeah.

Stained Glass Class

Today is the final for my Stained Glass Class! I've really enjoyed it and I want to be able to keep on making stained glass things. Except, glass is expensive. Hmm.

We started the class working with tissuepaper and posterboard instead of glass. Familiar territory.

Then we learned to cut class into little pieces, to make mosaics! We glued them onto glass containers and filled in the gaps with grout. Ta-da! Fancy candle holder.

Next project... fancier candle holder! I had fun being creative with my shapes. It reminds me of a flower, especially with the colors I used.

Final project--a leaded window! This one actually didn't turn out as nice as it could have because there were some little holes where my pieces didn't fit together quite as well as they should have. But next time, I'll do better.

Two more banners

...making a total of three.

New splash--British Literary History

I put this together to try and nail down the style I want to use for my next splash package. This is essentially the same process I used for the Latin 43 splash, but I'm using dark outlines instead of white and I created brushstrokes that will give the lines a slightly more flow-y feel, I hope.

This is an illustration for James Joyce's "The Dead"

This week--paisleys!

I decided to try something really different this week. The Illustrator CS6 pattern tool is apparently really cool, so I decided to try it out (not that I really know what it was in the previous versions, so I can't really compare... so.) I decided to try making a paisley pattern, because I really like paisleys. Turns out to be harder than it looks... unsurprisingly, haha. What do you think?

Edit:

This is the first one I made.

This week--red rocks!

This week I combined two things I'm not very good at--landscape/environments, and photoshop. So its no wonder that I'm not yet satisfied with it. It still looks really... photoshoppy. Ugh.

The reason I'm stopping know is that my hand hurts, and I really need to give it a break. So. I think maybe my art for next week will be edits on pieces I've done in the past few weeks (including this one) rather than an entirely new piece... but we'll see.

This is based on a photo from a trip my family took to Southern Utah. I didn't go on the trip, but I still liked the picture.

More art.

So I've just been posting all kinds of things here in the past week or so. Probably because it's finals season, and I've been finishing off some projects. But alot of the stuff I've been posting have been personal things.... so I dunno. I've just had a really productive streak I guess.


I'm being done with this one because my hand hurts. I have a tendency to squeeze a tablet pen, but not a regular pen or pencil or paintbrush. This makes painting things in photoshop problematic. This was started as an oil painting, then brought into photoshop to finish the details. I still want to finish the oil painting, but for now, here is the finished-in-photoshop version:

Quail in Fall

Deer in Spring, Foxes in Winter.... Quail in Fall.

I struggled with this one a bit more than the others. The patterns on the quail were hard to simplify, and I had to give in and use a mesh rather than have everything a flat shape. I may revisit this again after I haven't seen it for awhile to see what fresh eyes can do.

Grumpy Mark Twain progress photos

Today, I had my Illustration 5 final--only 1 more final to go, hooray! For the final, we had a "rush job", to kind of simulate a job that would have only about a 2 day turnaround, which happens sometimes in illustration. Yesterday we were emailed our "prompt" photos, one of which was this:

Hello, Mark Twain!
So for the assignment, we were supposed to use the prompt image but incorporate another object as well to show something about the person. So I looked at the photo and started brainstorming.
He looks kinda grumpy, I thought. Why is he grumpy?
Well, what makes me grumpy? When I'm trying to read and someone comes and TALKS to me, is what.
So I put together my reference photo.

It makes me laugh.

Then, painting. I took photos periodically throughout the process, just to see how it looked. Because sometimes when I'm almost done with a painting, I forget what it looked like before.

Many people seem to try to get a very accurate drawing before diving into paint. However, drawing is my weakness, while painting is my strength. So I tend to skim over my weak point to get to what I can actually do well.

Once I got the mustache in it started to actually kinda look like Mark Twain.

Finished! Then, I brought it into photoshop...

And there he is--grumpy Mark Twain!

And the actual painting part of it took about 3 hours--not bad!

Winter Foxes

As a sequel to the deer in spring picture, here is one of foxes in winter! Summer and fall are forthcoming.... but first I have to work on finals. Meh.

Mistborn cover, and arguments with photoshop

I've painted a few things in photoshop. Honestly, I still don't really love photoshop. When I'm painting, I want to, like, PAINT. You know, with brushes and turpentine and canvas and that kind of stuff. As much as you can play around with the brushes and layers and filters in photoshop, I still miss my paint.

I'm trying to develop a better relationship with photoshop. This is what we were able to do together. Not that great... I am very not satisfied with it, but... its coming maybe? Meh. Maybe I'll just be the illustrator who does huge oil paintings instead of jumping on the digital bandwagon.

Chracters, etc. belong to Brandon Sanderson, the art is mine. Thanks to Brooke for being my awesome model. 

Doe and Fawn

This is a personal piece--it wasn't for homework, just something for me, myself, and I. I just wanted to experiment with shape and simplification and...stuff. There is definitely a whole lot of Secret of Kells influence going on here as well, though the designs are completely mine. I'm not sure if I'm totally done with it, I'm thinking about incorporating some textures. I may leave it alone for awhile so I can come back with fresh eyes.

more from figure painting

I only had 2 class periods (less than 6 hours) on this one, so I only focused on the head.

Senior Studio 2--another figure painting

I've really been enjoying my Senior Studio 2 class. I fell in love with oil paint and painterliness and colors all over again in this class. We recently spent a series of 5 class periods of 3 hours each on this painting. And no, after 15 hours of work, it still isn't done. We'll have another 2 class periods with these models in a couple weeks so that we can complete these paintings, but I decided to show what I have so far anyway.