Cake Topper

I really am alive and well and doing art! Really! Its just, I can't really show you most of the art I've done lately, at least not for a few more months. But there is sonething I made recently that I can show you--my wedding cake topper! As of now I can only show you the digital version, but I cut this out of paper using a Cricut Explore and - voila! - awesome personalized wedding cake topper.

I can't take all the credit for this, because although there are tweaks and stylization, these are heavily based on photos by the amazing Kate Jeppson. Check out her website: http://katejeppson.com/

EDIT:

Here's how it looked on the cake. Again, photo by the talented Kate Jeppson.

Let Them Eat Cake

When drawing Marie Antoinette, its all about the hair.

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.

Catching Up

I know--I haven't posted art for two weeks. SORRY. Actually, as far as anything anyone has said to me I'm the only one who has noticed I'm behind on my goal. BUT. I still feel bad for falling behind.

I actually tried to post something the other day, but for some reason blogger didn't like the image. It showed up fine on my computer, but when it was uploaded to blogger it only showed up as a black rectangle--I have no ide why. Lets see if blogger will cooperate today. I'll post two things, one for each week that I didn't post something.

This is my design for an ambigram stained glass window. Its a reflective ambigram, which means that it reads differently when you flip it--so, as a stained glass window, you read a different word when you're inside than you do when you're outside. Cool, no? Combining the design limitations of an ambigram with those of a window is no walk in the park, though. Despite that, I think I've got a readable design. Right? Please comment and let me know whether you can read it. :-)

These are a few banners from the course I recently finished a splash for, British Literary History. I actually edited a couple of these banners since saving this image (namely, the ones for Great Expectations and Heart of Darkness) but I'm too lazy now to put in the new versions. Also I don't have access to the files on this computer. 

  

In case your screen is small or whatever, these illustrations are for:

Northanger Abbey, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Ode on a Grecian Urn, the Lady of Shalott, Great Expectations

Heart of Darkness, The Dead, the Journey of the Magi

Now, I'm caught up! I have a few more pictures I've been working on I plan on posting soon.

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.

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!

Latin banner piece

This is for the Latin 43 course I'm working on right now... its juts a small part of a bigger banner, but I liked it all by itself. I may play around with it a bit more at a later date.

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.

Monster--Kelpie

the dichotomy of ability and understanding

Over the years as I've been trying to improve in art and in other areas, I've noticed a pattern that I thought I'd share. This pattern has to do with the relationship between the ability to do something well and the understanding of how to do something well.

First off, I think our understanding of how to do something is always beyond our ability. As we study, observe, read, etc, our understanding (hopefully) increases.

Our ability doesn't always improve at the same rate as our understanding.

Lets pretend that we can graph ability and understanding, which we can't, but we're pretty good at pretending so we'll do it anyway.

Understainding: -----
Ability: ----

So we're feeling pretty good about ourselves, because we can do art (or whatever it is) about as well as we understand what it means to do well.

Then we study. We look at awesome pictures, take some classes, brainstorm some awesome ideas.

Then our graph looks something like this:

Understanding: -----------
Aility: ----

And we don't feel so good about ourselves. So we work and sweat and stay up all night and fill fifty sketchbooks and try new things.

And then we have a graph looking like this:

Understanding : -----------
Ability: ----------

And we're feeling pretty good about ourselves at that point.

I think this keeps on going indefinitely. Our understanding will pull ahead, and we work hard for awhile to bring our abilities up to that level again. When understanding and ability are close to the same level we might get kind of comfortable. But as we continue to, like, live and expose ourselves to good art and hopefully learn stuff, it happens again, and our understanding pulls ahead. When there is a large gap between understanding and ability, well, thats a pretty uncomfortable place. But it's important part of this pattern.

I feel like I'm currently at the high-understanding/insufficient-ability end of the cycle right now. Not a comfortable place to be. Understand, I'm not asking for sympathy or "your art is so awesome don't say bad things about it" type comments right now. I'm just saying, I feel like I have so many ideas and sources of inspiration and my current abilities just aren't measuring up to the visions in my head.

Not such a bad place to be. But you know what that means?

Time to get to work.

Idea for splash of History of the American West

As My Whimsey Takes Me...

Given a little incentive, I finally got around to vectorizing a few of my whimsey designs! Hooray! I've been interested in making these types of embellisments for years and have made dozens, but all have been pen-on-paper and never really brought to the computer. But thanks to Illustrator and a couple hours which probably should have been spent on homework... voila! Fancy computer whimseys!

Barnyard Buffet

We all know what a buffet for humans looks like.... but what about a buffet for animals? This was our first assignment in Senior Illustration Studio. We were supposed to make something that could be submitted to an illustration competition hosted in Italy. The prompt was "buffet" and the entries had to be square. I haven't done much with squares in the past... and now I know why. Squares are HARD. I think the composition worked out OK though. I haven't done many things previously that are this complex, so this was a fun challenge. I've been thinking alot lately about how to lead the eye around a composition, my original idea here was to have the viewer move around the painting in a sort of sideways figure 8 pattern.

Writing for Children Objective banners

Writing for Children Lesson banners

Here are the finished lesson banners for ENGL 320 R, Writing for Children. I was trying to emulate Eric Carle's Style. (As always, open them in a new window to see bigger).

Clown Feet

Trying out some really bright fun colors, as opposed to the more muted palette I've been using lately, at the recommendation of Nathan Fowkes, who visited BYU this week and gave us some ideas to strengthen our portfolios.

another experiment...

In the past, I've drawn my ambigrams freehand and then traced them freehand on the computer (on those rare occasions when I have computerized my ambigrams). This time, I decided to use a different approach--while I designed my ambigram freehand as usual (during Church on Sunday, also as usual) after scanning it into the computer I used pieces of a "real" font--Lucida Gothic--to piece together this ambigram. I think in some ways it is more successful--more consistent and recognizable style--and in other ways less so--readability in particular. But I think it was a good experiment to do in any case.