Teenage Survival

Here’s that new project I was telling you about. I’ve only included my favourite pieces to my portfolio, and I’ll add the rest to my sketches area. It’s for the Teenage Survival Guide, a publication that’s handed out to schools. I remember getting them when I was in school, so nostalgia played a part in why I wanted to do this project.

I’m refining this style the more I work with it, and I finally getting pleased with how it’s looking. I think part of the idea is to be less… finnicky. Blocky, whimsical shapes add to the effect, I think. What about you?

The Cat Came Back

Hm, haven’t documented anything new (am currently working feverishly on something at the moment, which I hope to finish by today/tomorrow — so I’ll post it soon) but I did find some stuff from my last year of college that I forgot to add to the website.

It’s from a project we had to do for Children’s Book/Story Character Design. I chose to do a story based on the poem/song The Cat Came Back, which used to be my favourite poem/song when I was a kid (it had cats and people died = instant childhood favourite?).

The characters I designed were The Old Man who tried to get rid of the cat, and the cat himself. Then I had to do a page spread, where I chose the bit where the cat drowns a boy.

Man, even when I do stuff with my cutesy style, it is morbid. The stuff I’ll show you next will be happier. I promise. Also, wish me luck!

Olympic Exhibition

Figured it was about time I made a post. I am so bad for that, disappearing constantly from the internet. It’s not that I’m not making art, I am just not documenting it. And that was supposed to be one of my New Year’s Resolutions! But life always has other plans…

Anyway, some news of interest: I entered an Olympic themed exhibition that was set up to generate artwork that could be displayed locally at the celebration for when the Olympic Torch rolls through town, which had two prizes of $1000. Hi giant run on sentence! But how could I pass that up? So I entered a few pieces, an experiment and an old piece from second year.

Well, I ended up winning one of those $1000 prizes. Ooh, aah, pat on the back. That was nice, to be certain.

The piece that won is below — it was actually a 2-hour experiment, more in the style of my abstract and old web/graphic design work than my usual illustration. I just find that funny, in some way. It’s completely made out of circles, and only circles.

But that’s some artwork I’ve done. I didn’t put it in my portfolio section because I don’t think its really representational of my illustration style. I am doing some other stuff that I should hope to show you soon — we’ll see how that goes.

Pick-a-Painting Final

Welp, I’m done. So much for process, I guess. But when I do something, I kinda just do it… in one fell swoop. You saw my sketch, at least, yes? Anyway, here’s the final painting for the Pick-a-Painting. Its in sketches right now, because I, once again, took this photo with my iPhone. And it looks terrible again, ha! Perhaps because I just noticed how filthy the lense is.

Anyway, its in sketches til I get a better picture. However, the gallery intends to photograph each piece in a more professional manner, so I’ll just use their photo once they’re done and put it in my portfolio. Or pull out my SLR to do it myself. MEH.

I also designed the invites for the event, so I’ll have to photograph those too. Soon, soon my friends!

Pick-a-Painting WIP

I’m currently working on a little painting for a charity event called Pick-a-Painting, hosted at the Gallery where I work. The concept of the event is simple. Local artists are given free canvases in a range of smaller sizes (12×12 to 6×8) to paint and decorate and return to the Gallery. Then the Gallery host a party where they put all the donated works on display and people purchase $100 tickets to the event. All the ticket stubs are put into a hat and each are drawn. Then the corresponding ticket-holder is able to pick their choice of painting off the wall.

Here’s my contribution — so far. I apologize for the poor quality photo! I took it with my iPhone in the poor lighting conditions of my room. I couldn’t find my casual camera and didn’t want to drag out my SLR just to throw this online. If you have any input or suggestions, now is the time to tell me, while I’m still in the pencil stage. It’s based off of a previous sketch in my sketchbook (which you can see a few posts down), and is also called Infinity. I’ll post more process as I go!

Selected Summer Sketches 2

Ahhhh, Internet, so nice of you to FINALLY WORK. Now to pick up where I left off.

Here’s something I do while I work at the front desk on weekends with nothing to do; drawing memes! I used the Deity Generator to generate (duh) random descriptions of a deity (duh). Then I would draw them. It was a fun experiment, trying to cram all the details into one character, but sometimes you get things that don’t really work. Whatever, its better than staring at Facebook for 4 hours. The first one scanned really poorly, but I’m not choked as it is just a sketch.

I also spent the last 40 minutes doing a speed paint of a sketch from my previous post; Blacknose Boy. It was fun, I guess? I do so love to draw horrible things right before I go to bed. I also added a semi-process for it, which I’ve added below. Actually, after putting it together, I prefer the 3rd step to the final 4th, but the final 4th looks more “dead”. What do you think?

That’s all for now, kids!

Selected Summer Sketches

As promised, here are selected sketches from my summer sketchbooks. If there are typos or broken links–forgive me. I am actually posting this from my iPhone. Yes, there’s an app for that.

I meant to post these on Friday because one was a submission for Illustration Friday but Telus decided that i didn’t reeeeally need to use the Internet, so I didn’t get to blog it until today.

The theme was “Infinity”. It was a pretty random sketch that kind of fit. I am also adapting it as a small painting for the local gallery’s annual Pick-a-Painting fundraiser.

This actually comes from an episode of Ghost Hunters (some people watch Big Brother… I watch paranormal reality TV); they were visiting a house were the children had claimed to see a boy with “black hair, black eyes, a black mouth and a black nose.” It was the visual of the black nose and mouth that creeped me out the most, so I was compelled to draw it. I’ll paint it once I have more of a drive to paint.

This is one of my favourite observational sketches from the summer; accompaning my close friend to watch a soccer game, we mostly watched the crowd instead of the game. They were much more entertaining, as you can see.

Seeing as this is quite a tedious task from my iPhone, I may save the rest of my sketches and comments for when my Internet connection is restored. You can view them here if you are impaitent, but you’ll have to wait for my insights. Soon!

It’s Been Awhile

It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? I apologize for being a ghost; I tend to get caught up in the summer swing-of-things and fall off the face of the Internet. Especially if I’m not working freelance. Especially-especially if my job is art related. Painting for 7 hours a day, EVERY day, kinda drains the creative juices for personal work, y’know?

So here’s an update. I worked at the local art gallery all summer, which (I must reassert) is the best job ever. My mural team and I painted nearly 40 canvases that make up a total area of 11 x 36 FEET. Yes, my friends, it was a big job indeed. It’s still incomplete, and I must still do some touch ups as they were damaged in transit, and at the moment, I don’t even want to think about painting. Woe!

Beyond that, I’m still working at the gallery, and will until my planned move to Vancouver at the end of March. I’m teaching art classes in addition to retouching our pieces for the mural, so at the moment I am still quite busy (who knew there was going to be such a demand for my classes?!) but I hope — hope — that once everything evens out I’ll have a drive to work on my own projects, as well as start marketing myself to clients.

In addition to beginning a freelance career, I would like to fix up my website a bit more. And when I put my portfolio book in the Summer Show at the gallery I had several requests to purchase it and to make more. Seeing as my current portfolio was $150 (a bit pricey!), I think I may make a miniature version through Lulu.

I’ll post again soon, and this time with a few sketches that I managed to do in my down time.

Summer Show 2009

One of my promises I made to myself, regarding my plans for my “time off” (my “last” summer and working back home for a few months) was that I was going to enter some work into the Summer Show at the Art Gallery that I work at. New work, not a print off of something I had done in school or two years ago. And something that could possibly sell.

However, the challenge with creating art that would sell to the audience in my home is pretty… cliche. The things people here like are landscapes of farmer’s fields or still life of plants or fruits. And maybe a lamp made out of antlers.¹ Not a lot of variety, nor is it subject matter that particularly interests me. So to challenge myself, as satiate the goal of making something salable, I wanted to do my own take on those cliched subjects.

I decided to do something I liked to use for some web design. Abstract shapes! Throwing some abstract swooshes or light shapes in the back of a website design isn’t anything new. But I really like doing them… I can do them for hours! They’re kind of relaxing for me. But instead of just having a unintelligible mass of swooshes, I wanted to see if I could use them to resemble something. In a way.

So, to combine the swooshes (do they have a term for them?) and the still life, I tired to do abstract takes on foliage and flowers. The upper one are takes on grass and leaves. The lower one, the one below is a take on flowers.

With this one, the first one is a rose, the second is tulips and the third is a daisy. I wanted them to refer to the subject, yet still be interesting shapes. The look pretty simple, but they took quite some time to do (I’m finicky)… but I enjoyed doing them, and I like how they look! Now I’m kind of reluctant to sell them…

Footnotes:

The Month of May

To many, it seems that a small town would be a calm, relaxing (maybe even boring) place to spend their summer. Even I tend to think that way once I’ve been away from it for an extended period of time.

However, I am always proven wrong. This last month has been so busy! In addition to my full-time job at the Dawson Creek Art Gallery, I’ve also been busy with side projects (like organizing the local film festival) and family. I can’t even keep up with the Illustration Fridays. It seems like every time I turn around its Friday again!

May is particularly “bad” for being preoccupied with family, because the entire month is filled with birthdays of cousins, uncles, aunts, siblings and even my own! I turned 22 on the 29th. And fortunately, for a joint birthday-graduation gift, my family purchased me a lovely SLR camera of my own!

So, I’m in the process of learning the ropes of using such a camera, which is a total upgrade from my dinky, cheap, point-and-shoot. So you may get to see some of that work in the future, though right now my cat has been the only and unfortunate subject of my attention while trying to teach myself. But I’m not so arrogant to believe that simply owning an expensive camera would make me a “photographer” but I would appreciate having the skill to photograph my own work, as well as my surroundings. So practice it is!

The other projects on my plate are:
- Designing and assembling floats for the Tourism and Art Gallery for the annual parades
- Designing additions and touch ups for two current murals
- Designing an enormous (and daunting!) mural for the new Events Centre
- Doing work for the Summer Exhibition
…in addition to several other, smaller side projects.

I’ve been a busy, busy girl with stuff I can’t exactly… scan. But hopefully, with the aide of my new camera, I can at least photograph what I’ve been up to. Soon.