Illustration Fun

More sketches

2012-02-06T23:57:00.002-07:00

Experimenting with pattern & shape... more to come!

The horror!

2012-01-13T11:37:00.002-07:00

Here's a little picture from a book I just finished. I got to draw monsters and cake, it was heaven! I'll share more soon!

Monster Mayhem

2012-01-13T11:15:00.008-07:00

A few progress shots from a little book I just finished up about a girl who's house guest turns out to be more than she bargained for.

Watercolor & Gouache (on paper that I'll never use again so I won't even utter it's name!)

WIP preview

2012-01-05T18:00:00.002-07:00

Just a little preview of something I've been working on. It's not much right now, but it'll be fun when it's done!

Monkeys!

2011-12-27T10:17:00.006-07:00

This was such a fun project to work on! Since I don't usually draw monkeys I spent a little time sketching as many as I could.

I was trying to figure out their designs, different personalities and silhouettes. Throughout the book more & more monkeys show up, plus a gorilla, so it was challenging toward the end!

I also had this "brilliant" idea that I would have the background color intensify as the story progressed. (Otherwise it would have been the same jungle background in every single image, boring!) Here's a color script showing the background starting out blue, turning more yellow & green and finally orange with an explosion of color in the last frame of the story.

If you're interested you can take a look at the entire book here.

Postcard Promos

2011-12-14T17:14:00.003-07:00

My latest round of postcards featuring monkeys from a book I illustrated. It's hard to know how successful sending postcards to publishers/art directors is, I've had mixed results, but I'm still new at it.

Random Sketches

2011-12-14T16:43:00.003-07:00

Here are some random sketches for your enjoyment.

Do you remember Jim Henson's "The Dark Crystal"?? Puppets and prophecies, what more could a kid in the 80's want? It has to be one of my favorite movies (and the reason I love Jim Henson and Brian/Wendy Froud) so here's a couple of sketches of the gelflings.

Redux

2011-01-05T23:24:00.004-07:00

I was looking through some of my sketches trying to see if there was anything worth revisiting and I decided to do something with an old art nouveau, mucha-esque thing I did a few years ago (shocking I know).

Yeah, yeah- I know...

2010-12-29T20:19:00.002-07:00

So, I really suck at updating my blog! But you guys know that already, right!

Sketches

2010-07-17T20:03:00.003-06:00

Just a couple of sketches...

Medusa Sketches

2010-07-17T19:53:00.002-06:00

Octogirl

2010-03-24T17:01:00.004-06:00

I've been working like crazy to get things ready for my senior show. And guess what - I actually took progress pictures! I started in acrylic, finished in oil and tried to channel Klimt. :)

Ex Libris Illustration Show

2010-03-21T18:58:00.003-06:00

I'm having an art show and you are all invited! It will have new, never before seen work in it AND if you come to the opening reception you could be one of the lucky people who get to buy pins and prints of my work! I'll be posting more work in the following weeks, including the ones on the pins, so keep an eye out!

Sketches

2010-02-17T22:03:00.003-07:00

Future paintings??

New Tablet!!

2010-01-14T21:40:00.003-07:00

Just bought an Intuous4 and I LOVE it! It actually draws what I want it to and I'm psyched :)
Does anyone know why blogger desaturates the colors when you upload images??

Big City

2009-12-02T20:17:00.004-07:00

Definitely very influenced by the trip to New York on this one.

NY Sketches

2009-12-02T18:18:00.007-07:00

I was lucky enough to go to New York with the art department at UVU earlier this year - here are a few of my favorite drawings from the sketchbook I brought along.

Gretel

2009-11-27T21:18:00.002-07:00

Gretel in traditional Czechoslovakian (now Czech Republic) clothing. Well, sort of...
Watercolor!

Late.

2009-11-17T21:21:00.003-07:00

I'll be sharing what I've been working on for my BFA show very soon, but in the meantime enjoy this scary drawing!

Digital Rain

2009-10-06T15:06:00.001-06:00

Sketches

2009-09-28T21:27:00.006-06:00

Okay, maybe this should just be called procrastinating...

Collage

2009-09-17T19:39:00.003-06:00

This is from the beginning of the year. It's layers of paint that have been sanded and has a gesso-transfer map across it.

Post-It Art

2009-08-30T19:48:00.003-06:00

Well, I'm back to school after a hectic summer. This semester my work will (hopefully) focus more on finished art & not just classroom studies!! (Yay!) I'm going to be concentrating on my BFA show for the upcoming year so that should be fun.

Ariel & Tinkerbell copyright Disney - of course!

Red & Green

2009-06-17T19:20:00.001-06:00

A couple more oil studies, the top one had a red toned canvas & the bottom one was green. I've been looking at a lot of Sargent's work lately, so hopefully it will have a positive influence :)

Another Painting Study

2009-06-09T14:18:00.000-06:00

Brown Paintings

2009-06-05T00:46:00.000-06:00

More oil paintings - I kind of like the scratched up background. (I cut up a still life study from last semester and sanded over the pieces.)

Still Here.

2009-05-20T21:28:00.000-06:00

Thalo blue, Cad. Yellow Light, Permanent Rose & White in oil paint! (I can hardly believe it myself.) I had 7 of these little paintings to do this week & this is the only one I really like. It has it's problems, but overall I think it was a success. (Sorry for the bad photo!) I tried to put some warmth in the reflected light/shadow side of the face. I really struggle with shadow color, & color in general... but I'm working on it! :)

Pudgy?

2009-04-20T21:03:00.000-06:00

This little bulldog is getting in shape with style! This was done for a class to accompany an article about doggy fitness & obesity. I'm not going to complain about what I wish I'd done differently, so I'll just say that I love her little face - especially her crooked teeth! And I love her little fat rolls :)

Me

2009-04-16T21:21:00.000-06:00

Digital self portrait for a class. My hair is quite light right now :) Photoshop.

Mad Rush

2009-04-14T22:51:00.000-06:00

These were really quick studies, like the fastest things I've ever painted. The one on top is going to be my final for Adv. Illustration so we'll see how it turns out! It has some photoshop-ing (is that a word...) to help it look like she's surrounded by notes.

Do Something About It

2009-04-11T20:37:00.000-06:00

March is over?!?

2009-03-31T15:28:00.000-06:00

Okay - so where did March go? I drew about a zillion pictures, some of which I will try posting next month... trust me there's only a couple worth sharing - you're not missing out on anything. This was a really fun painting - It has gesso applied unevenly on watercolor paper so when you paint on it a cool texture appears. Oh ya, I didn't bother stretching the paper before-hand, so if you were to see the original it has a lovely ripple-effect... I should really know better!

More Faces

2009-03-07T22:12:00.000-07:00

These were fun! - they're acrylic with gesso texture on watercolor paper. Here's the assignment: On the top, a brown under-painting with color dry brushed over it. Next, vivid colors. Then a high-key painting with neutral colors mixed from complements & white. And finally a low-key painting which has many colors, but all very neutral with grays and no value lighter than a 3... (okay I sort of cheated with the eyes.) They're all stylized, which I love doing :) I think I'm getting the hang of acrylics, but I still feel a little out of control when I'm painting, like I just don't know how things are going to turn out (or even if they'll turn out sometimes.) So I've got a lot more practicing to do.

But I'm happy with these :)

You guessed it.

2009-02-21T20:38:00.000-07:00

The colors went a little weird & dull...

More School Paintings

2009-02-17T23:24:00.001-07:00

No Time!

2009-01-26T20:52:00.000-07:00

Well, I shouldn't have spent any time doing this... But there you have it!

Brown Sketches

2009-01-24T08:34:00.001-07:00

These were so much fun to draw - even though they all kind of look the same... I was going for that classical renaissance face. (That baby seriously had this Mac & Me quality - but in a cute way!!)

Nothing Special

2009-01-11T15:06:00.000-07:00

Just some pink sketches - I have to apologize for some of my scans recently. One of the scanners I use is very nice at accurately scanning & the other one is just awful & wants to auto-correct everything for you. (It's like a little kid that cuts their own hair thinking they're doing mommy a favor...)

Anyway, I got the new James Christensen book & I love it! I actually met him over the summer at the Twiggs & Moore Gallery & he's such a nice person. He drew a picture while he was there & gave previews of some of the paintings that appear in this book. (I don't quite know about his whole "well-dressed man/hunchback" characters, but I love his figurative work, details & textures.) I think he also figures that you can never paint too many profile views! (or fish...) I wonder if he does teaching workshops...

Nicole & Matt :)

2008-12-30T20:36:00.000-07:00

One of my very good friends from work, Nicole, is getting married this January & asked me to draw a picture of her & her fiance. They were so much fun to draw & I'm so happy that she loves how it turned out! They are the cutest couple ever :) I even had that song "So Happy Together" running through my mind while I was drawing it (& I'm sure they will be)!

One more for the road.

2008-12-11T18:33:00.000-07:00

I think we all feel like this sometimes. I'll probably do a finished version of this someday.

MONSTERS!

2008-12-11T17:27:00.000-07:00

Well, this is definitely not the best thing I've ever done, but it's also not the worst. I wish I could carry the energy from the sketch stage through to the finished piece. (Wow, check out that rustic-looking chalkboard - looks like it was pulled out of a lake!) I was a little concerned about the chalk boxes looking like they were cigarette boxes for some reason... apparently Goobley's a two-pack-a-day monster! (But he's trying to quit.)

Anyway, enjoy these monster sketches:

Yep, more sketches...

2008-12-01T22:10:00.000-07:00

The Birds

2008-11-30T22:51:00.000-07:00

Start with an abstract shape - then make a bird out of it.

Comin' at ya in 3-D!

2008-11-23T21:41:00.000-07:00

That's right folks - break out the old 3-D glasses & take a gander at them snowflakes! -
Thanks to Jake for the idea! :)

Poindexter

2008-11-23T13:24:00.000-07:00

I think this chair is an optical illusion.

Blair Style

2008-11-22T23:40:00.000-07:00

I have been pretending to be Mary Blair today. Heard of her? She was an incredible concept artist for Disney during the 1950's & worked on films like Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan & she designed the characters from It's a Small World! She has the cutest way of drawing children - So I drew up a little girl in footy-pajamas. It reminds me of Christmas when I was little, although I never actually had footy-pajamas, but I did get a brand new pair of pajamas that my mom sewed for me. They were so special, I just loved them!

This is just something out of my head one night when I was really tired & couldn't get to sleep. :)

B&W!

2008-11-07T22:28:00.001-07:00

I just love working in black & white! It's so much easier than color!! :)

These are from when I was young & naive... okay they're actually from a couple of years ago. I was digging through my old things and can remember how much I loved working on these two pictures.

The first is sort of a mechanical "unicorn" I drew while I was watching Aliens and the second is the interior of a car, both were done as assignments in illustration classes. :)

Just for Fun

2008-10-20T22:58:00.001-06:00

Whoa - I just realized that if I had made this girl a blonde she'd look like Janice from the Muppets! (well, sorta...) weird.

Tea Party

2008-10-18T12:50:00.000-06:00

Who hasn't imagined having a tea party with a dragon? This little girl is trying to teach a dragon the proper way to hold a tea cup - with your pinkie up! Well, this was done for an assignment and it was intense! -- I had to do about a zillion sketches & crank it out as fast as I possibly could. It was fun though. :) I was thinking of making the dragon more colorful at first, but opted for a more traditional looking one. I wish it looked a little more like the one from my thumbnail sketch. I need to work on carrying the spontaneity from my sketches through to the finished piece!

Foxy!

2008-10-10T10:46:00.001-06:00

More col-erase sketches! I would love to do a children's story starring these characters! -- The bunnies were so fun I couldn't stop drawing them! (I think I have about 10 pages of just bunnies!!). :)

More charcoal dust!

2008-10-07T23:17:00.000-06:00

Another charcoal on newsprint. I really struggled on this one - it didn't look like it was going to make it until the very end. I wish I'd been able to sit on the other side of this model - she had a few of these seashells throughout her hair and all I could see from my angle was the one on top. :( Great model though, lots of fun to draw.

Figure Study

2008-09-27T20:05:00.000-06:00

I think this is my favorite figure study from last semester, although the bandanna she's wearing should have been much lighter and I wasn't able to finish the body (oh well...). I was trying to work the whole dark against light and light against dark thing, along with lost edges. Charcoal on newsprint.

Who Likes Art Nouveau?

2008-09-05T12:08:00.000-06:00

This was a practice piece I did last summer. I was trying to practice painting on the computer since I hadn't done much art for about a year. (Seriously, I had to spend a year taking only general ed. classes - long story short not all associate degrees transfer...) It was probably the worst year I've ever spent in school. Anyway, I was transferring schools and was worried that I'd forgotten how to even draw. (It could happen!) So, this was practice so I wouldn't embarrass myself at the new school. I did a few sketches and picked one that I liked:

First, I sketch the drawing with a col-erase pencil, usually magenta or cyan. Then I do a line drawing over top of that with a super soft (6B-8B) pencil.

I scan the drawing into photoshop and remove the color-sketch in the Hue/Saturation menu by adjusting the lightness of that particular color. I do a few more adjustments (like levels, erasing stray lines, etc.) and then I set the layer mode to multiply. I chose an old paper for the background to add a little texture.

I started painting the BG first because I knew I wanted to use this blue color and set the mood with it. I like the way art nouveau has color washes, so I think I was going for that look. What I did here is select everything I want to apply the color to and made a layer mask over a gradient of the blue. I use layer masks all the time. Same thing with the texture, it's on a layer with the same layer mask as the gradient.

Again with the figure - layer masks. Once I make a mask for what I want to color, I don't ever have to worry about staying in the lines and I can do fast gradient or texture effects on a specific area if I want to. My favorite brush to paint with is the very last one in the dry media library. I usually set it to a low opacity.

This is really kind of a long process and I'm not really sure if I like it that much. It's probably not that much faster than traditional methods, but it's way easier to make changes. There's so many ways of doing the same thing that I wonder if I'm not doing things the long way.

So, here's the finished piece. I'm not completely happy with it (that drawing - yikes!), but I've definitely done worse. I learned a lot about digital painting by doing this piece and it helped me dip my feet back into the digital-water.

This is what I draw in my spare time...

2008-08-26T22:01:00.000-06:00

So, this first picture probably needs a little explanation. My sister Emily was telling me that her Native American astrological animal is the owl. So we looked up mine and it's the otter. I was a little jealous that I didn't get a cool animal like the owl or the bear. We ended up looking up everyone in my family and that's where this doodle came from. Left to right: My mom - deer, Emily - owl, Me - otter, Audrey - salmon, Patrick - goose, my dad - raven. (In case you're wondering my mom is supposed to be hiding a bunch of deer toys in a closet and the deer is her partner in crime. It's not really based on actual events, but it sort of is...)

The second picture was drawn in Ikea.

Just Can't Get Enough

2008-08-24T20:09:00.000-06:00

This little girl actually gave all these books to her mother and went back for more. True story.

Amelie

2008-08-21T22:17:00.000-06:00

I just love this movie!

More of the same...

2008-08-20T21:44:00.000-06:00

Plastic Bag Kite

2008-08-07T23:39:00.000-06:00

Well, I actually did see a little girl down the block flying a plastic bag like a kite. It was absolutely adorable.

Freckles

2008-08-04T23:46:00.000-06:00

Just a little somethin'

2008-07-18T21:38:00.000-06:00

So I got a new pen, it's pretty potent. These were really fun though.