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.

Industrial Revolution banner

For the Survey of World History part 2 course.

More Grisaille Paintings

 Velasquez Master Copies

Mom and Lynz sat still for me during conference so I could paint from life. I didn't have as long as I would in class, but I'm working on getting a likeness quickly. I think I'm getting better.

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.

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.

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"

ELANG322 Spalsh

We're doing silhouettes with a sort of retro-ish color scheme. Forward Momentum! :D

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:

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. 

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. 

ENGL 220

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