Humanities banners

Before leaving for Thanksgiving break, I have 8 of 36 banners done! This is for the second half of a humanities class, the first half of which I did not draw but I'm still supposed to try and imitate the style that was used. What I'm finding hardest about that is that there were no shadows (cast shadows or otherwise) in that other splash package, and I feel like my drawings look flat and incomplete without shadows. Ah well.

Industrial Revolution banner

For the Survey of World History part 2 course.

Ship

I have been posting art weekly, but mostly on facebook.

So. Here is the cover of the project I've been working on lately at work. I finally got this ship put together, and I'm pretty happy about that. Still have to finish the dock and the water and put some people in it and such, but this is it so far, complete with illustrator screen and everything:

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.

Mission Comics

During my mission, I would draw little comics about funny things that happened or could happen. Most of them have only been seen by me because they're just in my sketchbook, and frankly aren't all that great drawing-wise--most of them were just quick one-off things that I didn't spend alot of time on. But a couple weeks ago when I was going through my sketchbooks I thought, why not post these? They're kinda fun, and if they're not drawn all that well, whatever.

So. Here they are. I just took pictures of them using my computers camera and fixed them in photoshop by playing with the levels and brightness and contrast, and when that didn't work I just traced over them, so all the bad drawing and sketchiness is mostly preserved. So.

Me:Why don't we tract somewhere really far away so we have an excuse to sit in a trike for a long time?
WALK, WALK, WALK, THAT IS THE SECRET.

This one doesn't need much background. Missionaries walk alot. In the Philippines there are tricycles that will take you places much faster than you can walk there :-).

Our mission song was to the tune of "In Our Lovely Deseret," with the chorus that goes, "Hark! Hark! Hark! 'tis childrens music" but in the mission version we sang, "Work, work, work, that is the secret!" Except walking is actually the secret.

 "You know, hand washing laundry really makes you think about whether you actually got something dirty." 

That looks like its supposed to be Sister Tumaliuan. She could hand-wash laundry much faster than me. Actually, all my companions could.

So no washers for clothes is a problem. But in a hot place like the Philippines, no dryers should be no problem, right? Well, the Philippines has a rainy season, where it seriously rains for days on end. And your clothes NEVER. GET. DRY. And yes, we actually did this.

 "So, whats our goal this week for lessons punted?"

From converstaions with other RMs, it seems that different missons have different terms for things. We said "punted" when an investigator (or whoever) we had an appointment with wasn't there. Or was hiding.

 I drew this one when Sister Marzan was my companion. She had a bunch of EFY music that she would play when we were at home. Most of it I liked. But there was this one song... it was SO ANNOYING. It was pretty much the cheeziest song ever. The chorus went "I'll pray for you and you'll pray for me..." I'm afraid I usually groaned really loudly when it came on. I also might have skipped it a few times.

Computer: Dear Sister Bowthorpe, You will be giving a 2 hour workship in Zone Con next week. Good Luck.

 So one week when President Peterson was still pretty new in the mission, he really liked one of the weekly letters I wrote. I can't even remember exactly what I said, or what he said. I hadn't even ever met him in person at this point. But he replied to my letter, and said (hopefully sarcastically) that I might as well be the one to teach the workshops in the upcoming zone con. Not quite sure of president's class of humor, I didn't know how seriously to take this. All that ended up happening was he made me and Sister Tumaliuan practice teach in front of everybody. But it didn't last two hours, fortunately.

 Sister Tumaliuan: Ayos Ka Lang? (Are you ok?)
Me: Mamatay ako sa init. (I will die of the heat.)

It gets really hot in the Philippines. And humid.

Little Spider: Rawr.
Me: You're not worth the energy.

 Sister Solamillo was was kind of amused by my obvious fear of the seriously huge spiders there were in our apartment. After seeing those, "normal" sized spiders just aren't that scary.

 Sis. Sola: So, what do you want to eat?
Me: ANYTHING but rice.
Sis. Sola: So, who do you want to fast for?
Me: Gnnnnnn

So, Filipinos eat alot of rice. And funnily enough, my trainer Sis. Sola ate more rice than any of my later companions. Rice for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and dessert. Well, maybe not always snacks. But basically, if you aren't eating rice, you aren't eating.

This is me, trying to figure out how to eat uncut meat with a spoon and a fork--the Filipino way. You mean I don't get a steak knife? How am I supposed to eat this?



There may be more of these to come, since there were some in other sketchbooks that I don't have here right now.

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.

This week--Season Series done, ambigrams to come

So last time I posted my raccoons picture I said that I wasn't entirely satisfied with it and would return to it later. So, for this week I finished the raccoon piece and then combined all four seasons designs.

 

And I found my sketchbooks from just before, during, and just after the mission. I went through them and marked all of the ambigrams or little comics I drew that I want to fix and share, so those will probably be my piece for next week, or maybe the next couple weeks. 

Can you tell what the ambigram on the top says both rightside-up and upside-down? 

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

Greek Sphinx

My favorite of all the things I drew today.

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!