I Forgot...

I forgot to say that they are all watercolor illustrations. The only times that they were changed on the computer were when I changed the brightness and contrast and saturation of them.

Final Portfolio

For my first choice, I decided to pick the number five project/illustration. I really like my cupcake illustration. I had a good photo reference for it, because I went out and got everything, created the scene, then took a photo of it. So I got every detail of it from that one picture and did not have to imagine what goes where or what to draw, which was nice. I wish the sprinkles were more well defined, but they were a real pain in the butt to paint. I think my favorite part of this is the paper cupcake holder, they sort of do look like the folds. I love the colors in this.

For my second choice, I picked the book covers assignment. I really like the concept of Gatsby's backyard to emphasize how wealthy he was and how beautiful his house was, but there's nobody in it, because even though he threw lavish parties for people, he was a very lonely man. My favorite part is the table, I really like that shade of red and the shadows of the white table cloth that the creases made. The window and that wall of the house could have been improved, but I tried putting in some line art of bricks on the wall,  and it did not turn out well, so I just left it as a smooth outdoor wall.  

For my third choice, I picked our classical CD covers. This one was for Vivaldi, the cool colors make it look more wintery, so I decided this was gonna be for his Winter album. I was surprised by the fact that I got the gold adornments on the face done, even though they took forever. I had a problem with the background by creating texture and definition. I did not want it to look flat. I wanted it to look like silky sheets or curtains. I like how the purple fades into blue on the face. I could have enhanced the background more, but I did not want to mess with the paper anymore, because it was starting to shred and get really thin.

For my fourth choice, I chose our Life and Death assignment. I really did not have anything better to choose from. The only part I like about this is the ketchup bottle. I did not have a photo reference for the tomatoes, so it was hard creating highlights and stuff. I just followed Rusty's comments. The life part looks more like a cartoon illustration while the death/ketchup bottle is a product illustration, so they do not really coincide well together. I wish that this piece only contained the ketchup bottle. I've realized from this class that I really like to illustrate food items more than anything else. 

Book Cover

I chose The Great Gatsby for our book cover assignment. I actually googled Great Gatsby and a screenshot of The Great Gatsby game popped up in the images, it looks like it might be Gatsby's backyard. I really liked it, so I decided to base my illustration on it. I really like the scenery aspect of it. It was difficult getting the perspective on the railing and the stairs. I desaturated the layout a bit to make it look less intense, color wise. My favorite part is the table, I think I spent the most time getting the shadows on the creases almost right.

World Record

The world's smallest living dog, in terms of height, is a long-haired, female Chihuahua named Boo Boo, who measured 10.16 cm (4 in) tall on 12 May 2007 and is owned by Lana Elswick of Raceland, Kentucky, United States. It was either this or the woman with the smallest waist. I wish I would have made this more defined, it still looks flat. I had to go into photoshop and collage pictures to create photo references. I wish I would have done more with the guys pant leg and shoe. The sky could have been improved also. I do like the roof though, and some parts of the grass.

Classical CD Design

Here are my final layout and closeup of the mask for the Vivaldi CD Cover.

NAHM Final

This is the NAHM poster printed out with text. I should have made the text smaller. Whoops.

CD

This is my illustration for the classical music CD design. I've decided to do mine on Vivaldi. I found out that he is from Venice which got me thinking Venetian and got me to Venetian Mask and Masquerade stuff. I tried really had on making the blue and purple fade into each other.

NAHM

This is my watercolor illustration of the Native American History Month poster. I wanted to recreate drawings made on a buffalo or animal hide.

Society of Illustrators

This is my Society of Illustrators Illustration. The idea came from my friend, Greg. I asked him what I should sketch and he replied with an egg in a frying pan, so that is what started it all. It was hard painting without a correct photo reference. I found a picture of an egg in a frying pan but not one with them being on a hot plate so I sort of had to mess around with it. I found a picture of a hot plate and just tried to combine it with the egg and frying pan picture. This is the result.

Life and Death Final

My Life and Death I got back mounted on black foamboard.

Life and Death Final Illustrations

These are my Life and Death Final Illustrations, before being printed out. I wish the tomato plant was more realistic, but I was messing with it a lot, I did not want to screw it up anymore. I do like how the ketchup bottle turned out. I think the print out looks better.

Life and Death Comps

These are my life and death comps.

Life- Zebra, Death- Coat
People in class like this one, but thought I could do more with it. I really did not want to draw another zebra. I only drew a zebra, because a cheetah was too hard to draw.

Life- Tomato Plant, Death- Ketchup

I did not want to do a live tomato plant, then a dead tomato plant, so I aimed toward humor and went with a ketchup bottle. Rusty approved this one. I'm glad, because I really did not want to draw that zebra.

Life- Tree, Death- Paper Towel

I was stuck on the third comp idea. So I just drew my roll of paper towel on the dispenser at my apartment and drew a tree with it. 

Number 5 Final

Got my number 5 assignment done a while ago, but I'm posting it now, so it doesn't get mixed up with the midterm portfolio. I think this is one of my strongest pieces. I worked a lot on the fine details of the icing and the highlights on the candle. The sprinkles were hard to create and improve, because they were so small. The paper cup part was also difficult in creating the folds.

Midterm Portfolio

3 TRADITIONAL LINE ART ILLUSTRATIONS:

These were the line art illustrations that Rusty told me to redo and we had to redo three on illustration board, so I feel like they are the most decent ones to pick out of the batch. I like the simpleness of my profile in the first one. I like the lines on the tree in the second one. I like how I added in the bricks (not all of them, just several) for the apartment building. I feel like line art is so boring without color. It was so hard to create shadows with just a black sharpie.

2 WATERCOLOR ILLUSTRATIONS:

Even though it was a 20 x 30 illustration, I did not think painting went that horribly. It did take like five hours, but it was great working on it on a Sunday morning not feeling rushed. I really wanted to capture all the pretty colors of the sunset, but I added my own mix of colors. I knew that I wanted to use a lot of different colors. For the pretzel, it took forever on this small thing! It took forever to mix the correct shade of brown/orange shade for the pretzel. I actually freehanded sketched out the outline of this one, instead of tracing it, which took so long, because it always ended up looking wrong or fat. And then I had to add all the highlights and then I had to add the salt. But in the end, I think it turned out alright, I mean it looks like a pretzel and makes me want to eat one really bad.

3 TRADITIONAL LINE AND COLOR ILLUSTRATIONS:

So this self-portrait, I think is the best one out of the five I had to do. I like the composition and the angle, and I think it looks most like me. I love my hummingbird! I love the colors of the feathers. I think it turned out pretty well, but it could be a little less flat and more three-dimensional. I also like my elephant, but I had trouble with filling in the grass. I really like his ears!

1 GOUACHE ILLUSTRATION:

Three of my favorite things: Audrey Hepburn, a rose and a golden retriever puppy. I wish it was less flat, but I didn't want to mess with it anymore. I added more definition to her her arms, neck, and face. I added highlights to her lips. The rose was hard to work out, with all the different shades and layers, it got very frustrating. The puppy still looks flat. but I added some brush strokes to make it look more like fur.

1 DIGITAL LINE ART ILLUSTRATION:

I just really like this tree illustration. I like the texture and style of the fence and dirt. It looks like something that can be in a Winnie the Pooh book. It seems very peaceful and is a simple line drawing.

1 DIGITAL AND COLOR ILLUSTRATION:

I really like this thumbtack illustration. I like how it looks like its stuck through the paper it was on when it was printed out. It could be better, but it was one of my first attempts at digital line art.

1 MY CHOICE:

I decided to choose my peacock watercolor illustration. I really like the colors of it. The feathers are very interesting to look at and I really like the composition. I wish that it was more three-dimentional and had more definition to the peacock. I really like the bright green feathers in the back. I think this was a good first attempt at a very large watercolor illustration.

Well looky, looky, I got something done.

This is my Number 5 Illustration in Watercolor. I definitely am better at painting objects and food than painting people or at least I don't completely suck at it. So I bought a cupcake and a number 5 candle and took a picture, printed out a black and white copy, and traced it on stonehenge paper on the Lucy. I think the sprinkles are the hardest part, because there are so many of them, and I still need to make them look more three-dimensional, other than just flat circles on a cupcake. I need to fix the outline of the candle and work on the shadows of the cupcake and fix the white on the candle around the circles. I think this turned out pretty decent for a first attempt.

Abe Lincoln

So when I was doing my research, I was reading about how Abe Lincoln was kind of a prankster, which led me to thinking about painting him putting a whoppie cushion on somebody's chair. I googled who was vice president at the time, turned out to be Andrew Johnson, so I decided to use his name. I hate this assignment. The size was way to big to work with and I could not get the body position and shape right. I also hated using gouache. I feel like my painting is a cartoon and looks drawn by a fourth grader. I was definitely on the struggle bus with this project.

3-Image Gouache Montage

A golden retriever puppy, a rose, and Audrey Hepburn were the first three things that popped into my mind, so i decided to paint them. Gouache is hard to work with, I kinda hate it. I want to go back to watercolor. I hate how every time I touch the painting, gouache would get on my fingers. I think it could look better and more defined, but I didn't want to mess with it anymore and have it look even worse for being over worked.

2nd 20 by 30

For my second 20 by 30 watercolor, I decided to paint another landscape, a sunset! I've always wanted to paint a pretty sunset in watercolor/paint. This time, it was less difficult, because I knew what I was going to expect. I made the watercolor less runny and waited for it to dry, before I would paint over a section. I took my time this time around. It turned out very colorful, because I had to get every accent of color, purple, blue, magenta, yellow, etc. For the water, I painted in bits to create a neat reflection for the water. I like it, I really love all of the colors.

Product

I wanted to paint a pretzel, I thought it would be interesting. Who knew that it would be such a pain to mix so many different shades of brown? Whoops. This took about 5 hours to finish. I actually free-handed the pretzel, that's why some parts are a little odd looking. Aside from the amount of time to finish, I actually enjoyed this project, because it helped me improve my watercoloring abilities. I'm just glad that it ended up looking like a pretzel.

5 Digital with line art

I decided to do simple line art pieces with color. Since I'm not the best at using the wacom tablet, I stuck with simple images. They look like pages off of a coloring book. I really like the bunny in the hot air balloon. Once I started getting the hang of using the pen, I stopped using the mouse to click on things, which was really nice.

Landscape watercolor

This was my first landscape watercolor. I just typed in landscape in the search bar on flickr and found this cottage in the woods. I think it was like the first time using watercolor on a huge sheet of paper, so it was very difficult to handle the watercolor on such a large space. I wish I made the sunset/sunrise better, blended in more colors. I wish the trees were more defined and the foreground looked better.

Self Portraits

Here are my 5 Watercolor Self Portraits with Line Art. I took pictures and printed them out and transferred it on a 7x7 piece of watercolor paper using the Lucy. I feel like they could have looked better, because I was just rushing to finish them at 2am. I like the perspective of the one where my top is purple, it is my favorite. On the one where I'm looking forward with my glasses, I messed up on the face, black got in the cream color, so it made my chin dark, so I had to go over it over and over again with the cream color. Overall, I think it was a good attempt.

5 Wacom Sketches

We had to do 5 sketches digitally on the Wacom Tablet. I'm starting to get used to it, but it's annoying when I keep pressing the button on the pen and the little menu pops up every time. I forget to change the brush size and stroke, because I was in a hurry to just get them done, I didn't want to mess with them. I only changed the stroke and size of the brush on the tree sketch, which is the one I like the best. The koala bear was the first one I sketched, so it's not good. It looks like it has bangs which was suppose to be its darker fur or shadow. I traced all of these images.