Life Drawing

assignments from a Life Drawing class

vine, regular, and white charcoal on coffee stained paper

done from a caste statue with vine and regular charcoal

done from models

both in vine and regular charcoal

done in pencil with an attempt at censorship

Pigs and Lizards

Illustrations from class

At the Huff n' Puff Grill

graphite

Cold Blooded Gamblers

pen and ink

The FiFi Chronicles Continued

The rest of the FiFi freelance illustrations, each of the images is designed to go with a screenplay synopsis (sort of like a summary) for the The FiFi Chronicles.
    "The stories feature Fifi Parker, a woman in her late-thirties who has "almost" superhuman physical abilities and a wicked dry sense of humor. She makes no apologies for engaging in risky behavior and astutely questions "the status quo." The trilogy has a low-brow sensibility with a nod to lesbian pulp fiction from the mid to late 50's (although visually we're going in a more mod direction versus rockabilly)." author Kristi Frazier.


An awesome opportunity to visually design a character and the chance to paint multiple scenes with that character.  Definitely a lot of work but well worth the fun and experience I got out of it!

Cover

 Synapsis 1

 Synapsis 2

 Synapsis 3

Ina in a Circus

The mural is done!!!! 4ft square It took over 160 hours to complete and 6 very intense weekends but it was worth the experience of finishing my first mural.....and it will probably be the only mural I do for a while, I appreciate small paintings on a whole new level now.  Done for the Children's Hospital Colorado mural competition, it was such a great opportunity and I can't wait to see what all the other artists painted!

The FiFi Chronicles and Logos

A couple of freelance jobs I did recently

The first was an awesome project doing a screenplay synapsis image for The FiFi Chronicles

Here's the finished version! I did the painting, the text was done by someone else

Some of my planning process

character development to help figure out t the right age and attitude, done in pencil

color, body position, and compositional planning, done digitally

The finished painting, done in acrylics

The next job was a logo for a realtor

The final choice

Some of the others

The Wish

and here's the final completed still life

done in acrylics on 16"x20" canvas board

Mural Update

Here's a color sketch of Ina and her magical sidekicks for the mural contest.  Got some more practice in with Photoshop :)

Step Right Up

Recently I did a design for a zine called Illustrious Voyeur and the theme this month was circus, and I came up with these two characters Max and Mirrabelle an acrobatic high wire act.

the zine is only printed in black and white, but I wanted a colored version so I painted it in watercolors then turned it into black and white in photoshop

after these though I got a bit obsessed with who these characters are and the world they come from and began forming a story around them which oddly these two are now only side characters.  This circus world revolves around a young girl called Ina whose magical illusions are very real and who goes to live with her grandfather (an illustionist performing in this circus) in order to learn how to control her gift. Not exactly sure what this will develop into whether childrens book or graphic novel I don't know what the age range would be but its a lot of fun coming up with this world.

character development of Ina

sketches for mural panel

I am also trying to incorporate the story of Ina into a mural contest at a childrens hospital that is going on, so I'll keep the blog up to date on my progress because working on a 4ft by 4ft panel is going to be completely new for me.

About a Girl Eating Fish Eyes

One of my final projects for the summer semester this one was using a new technique to create a faux woodcut look.  I took wet media acetate and painted white qouache over my drawing that I planned out in photoshop, and then using a photocopy machine could make mulitple copies and manipulate them from there.  The process is a little convoluted but the effect is pretty cool.  I based my image off of a poem called On Wanting to Tell [ ] about a Girl Eating Fish Eyes by Mary Szybist.

and to this one I added acrylic washes

Monkeys and Glowy Lights

Both on there way to being finished

In the process of finishing my last still life for class, this one featuring toys.  My first thought in taking a still life painting class was..wow this is gonna be dull, but it went pretty well and I learned a lot from my fellow inanimate objects :)

Did this today, took around 4 hours and I still need to work a lot more on it AHH.  Done in Watercolors.

Pirates and Clocks

Finished projects!

A play on Howard Pyle's "Captain Kidd Buries His Treasure" with a political cartoon spin, and this surprisingly lined up with Fourth of July really well :) done in gouache.

and I finally finished my Time Still Life, done in acrylics on 16x20 inch canvas board

The Yattering and Jack!

He's finally done :), my project for school that is my super sculpey adaptation of my favorite Clive Barker demon

                             also functions as a night light hehe

                    Whah Ha Ha....this was really fun to make!

Beverage/Animal series

One of my favorite things to paint when I have free time are beverages with an accompanying animal.  It sounds a little weird but it started out because I love coffee and little small animals so I thought why not combine the two.  Now I've moved on to tea, and I'm trying to use animals that make sense to be combined with the drink.  For example this new one I did is for the South African Rooibos tea and the animal to go with it is a South African Tree Frog.  I also love including a border and background pattern with these, and again I tried to keep with the theme of the tea so the border is jungle-like and the pattern is supposed to be African inspired.

Tree Frog Rooibos (all are 11x14 using watercolors)

and my previous coffee ones

 Black Spider Espresso 

                                                                    Blue Bird Coffee

Goldfish Ice Coffee

I recently had these three hanging in a cafe' who's owner bought the Goldfish and Bird ones!  I think Coffee shop would be my favorite gallery space for hanging the paintings in this series :)

Lotsa Projects!

What I'm working on in classes now

This took 3 hours I think, done in watercolors for my life drawing class.  And I was so excited because it was my first time working with clothed models, big difference.

for my still life class we had to use fruit...very annoying painting something that withers and dies quickly  which is why I love the camera so so much.  Anyways mines supposed to be a bout time because of my hatred for small life expectancy of fruit and because there's a pocket watch and a mango shaped like a heart being strangled by the chain...in my head they made sense with time.

and my Yattering.  One of my all time favorite short stories is Clive Barker's The Yattering and Jack, its very good go find and read it.  But the Yattering is basically a demon whos purpose is to annoy you to death...the stories actually pretty funny and not as dark as Clive usually gets, plus there's a happy ending.  This was a 3D project that actually went well for once...I never do 3D unless for a grade.  Done in sculpey that I now love and maybe want to make more dolls with.  Still need to work on his firey environment.

all for now most definitely more to come :)