Dog House

So. I am back at Maddock Douglas, and for the past few weeks I have been working on designing and producing a dog house. Yes. A very large - and in charge - dog house.

Here are some quick views of it pre-assembly:

I used mosaic to detail the paw prints I had painted on the sides of the roof. In total, there are seven paw prints including the big one on the "butt" of the house.

On the body of the house, I chose to continue my gridded pattern in a more subtle color scheme. The grid is larger, and I only used three colors: light blue, ultramarine blue, and black (oh! and silver!).


It took a total of 2 weeks, including hours and hours and HOURS spent at home after work nursing the grout and cleaning the stones. It was back-breaking work, but I must say, it was worth it. I've never attempted a project this big, let alone by myself. Though, my dad helped me a lot with varnishing and maintaining care of the glitter. That glitter is everywhere now!!!! It's scattered all over my backyard so when my pooches run through it, it resembles falling snow. I even caught my puppy, Derby, eating a pile I swept up; she had glitter up her nose for a few days...

Now, the house is waiting to be sealed and assembled by ECAF. (Don't ask me what it stands for.....I only know E stands for Elmhurst). It will be pretty shiny once under the sun, and I hope it catches a lot of attention.

Some Old Drawings I Found

I was looking for some old artwork and came across these figures. I thought they were quite nice, so I thought I'd add them! Both are done in charcoal on newsprint. Unfortunately, they are both folded awkwardly so nothing will come of them, but i salvaged as much of the image as i could and added it to my website.

Holly



Toned Figure

Art Prints: Tree Towns

For as long as I could remember, I have been going to Tree Towns Reprographics in Elmhurst, IL for my art prints. They are by far the best print shop around here for artists using inks, watercolors, colored pencils, well....really any medium.

This is long overdue, but I thought i'd give a little shout out!

www.treetowns.com

So if you are an artist looking for a place to make inexpensive prints (under $3 a print), I highly recommend contacting Tree Towns at (630) 832 - 0209. They have consistently phenomenal service, and they are very prompt in reproducing your work.

New Art: Micron and Sharpie

Monster Rebooted (9 x 12 in)




Angler (11 x 17)




Eyes In Water (9 x 12)

Summer Projects

So.

The year is almost out. Two and a half more hours tomorrow and summer begins. What to do? Well, I begin working at Maddock Douglas on the 24th of May....so that leaves exactly a month of constant free time. Thus, I must create projects for myself so that I remain on top of my game.

Things I might like to do:

1. Ink Drawings: more hybrids, perhaps photorealism, editorials
2. Watercolors: figure painting, master copy, editorial (full color)
3. Photography: hum....no idea, but perhaps a thought will come to me in an "a-ha" moment

I think this could cover it for a month. Id prolly only do one a week......maybe one and a half.

oh! I NEED business cards. asap. So i'll work on that, too.

Nuns and Such

Well....I suppose this is new. It's an illustration for an editorial about Ken Jennings. Don't ask.... But the assignment called for combining a short list of words together to produce a general overview of the article. Mine combined "nuns," "worms," and "barrels." Interesting, no?

This might be my second favorite piece I painted this semester. Chloe and the Octopus is down to third, and my fruit is number 1!

What? You didn't see my fruit?

Yeah....this was a lot of fun to paint.

Oh, Bother......

Ugh!!!! I lost my sunglasses at the train station. I think I have bad Karma.

Also, my dog ate my brand new Tom's Shoes that I hadn't even WORN YET! I am so pissed.

Why me? I ask. What did I do to deserve this? Did I act too cocky with my art? Give a bad critique? Not give my all to the last projects of the year and now I'm paying the price?

I believe everything happens for a reason so I must convince myself I did not deserve those things because they could have resulted in my death or something tragic. Maybe someone more needy than I am needed a nice pair of sunglasses because they cannot afford them. I want to think that happened, but I really wish I still had them.

New art work? Not yet.....I have to scan it at school tomorrow so I'll be working on this during the afternoon.

Stellaluna

For an Illustration assignment, Mr. Goro, aka Misha, had us all individually pick a children's book to re-illustrate the front cover and inside spread. I chose Stellaluna.

Since I could not find my copy, Patrick-my boyfriend of 4 years- loaned me his copy to study. This is what I came up with:



What do you think?

Misha loved it. My dad, not so much. I, personally, am very surprised with the results. I had such low expectations for this project from the get-go. (This is the inside cover spread, by the way. I refuse to post my cover i did because it is just hideous.)

My cover spread turned out terribly. It was originally supposed to be inked with light wash of paint. But because i used illustration board, i found the paint just soaked right into the paper, leaving little pigment behind. AND what was left of the paint was dingy and washed out. I became very frustrated with it so i just pilled paint after paint coat to try and saturate the paper....but nothing worked.

Aside from this problem, my color scheme sucked. it was every color of the rainbow. it looked like a clown smeared his make-up across my drawing-which also sucked. ugh. what a nightmare.

Thankfully, the torture is over, and we begin a new class project: illustrate a movie poster, but this time, everyone must illustrate the same movie!!!!! this should be very interesting....

This is a still life of, obviously, skates that are hanging against a wooden door. It's for my watercolor class at the Academy, which now Tom Herzberg teaches. I used to have Mat Barber-Kennedy, and I had hoped to have him again for 202 painting, but ended up with Tom instead.

Tom is incredible. His paintings are just so imaginative and clever. He had been an illustrator during his time before the Academy, and continues to do a few side jobs for the air force. But really. I'm very lucky to have him as a teacher.

B-K and Tom are so opposite from each other. One focuses on "what you see" when you paint, where the other stresses "what you know." I have found that you need both to produce a believable piece of art work.

In the painting above, i drew from a photo reference. HOWEVER, Tom thinks the taller skate's blade is out of perspective; that the viewer sees too much of the end. But how can this be? It's from a photograph! But he explains that an artist must tweak and correct photos, to apply our knowledge of how things look and rules of perspective when sitting down to draw.

well. to a less-trained eye, perhaps the blade does not look so wrong, but to him, it's a bit of a distraction. oh well, i tried.

my dirty little secret

secretly.....

i want to be a photographer. sometimes more that i want to draw. i think, however, it can sometimes take more luck than skill with photos, unless you have some incredible tricks up your sleeve. recently, i created a flickr so i can keep track of some cheep friends at school who won't purchase a website, and i stumbled upon some really stunning things.

a good friend of mine, nick eby has been photographing for quite some time, but i was really looking at his stuff; im impressed. then he introduced me to another photographer that he models some of his work after, and that just blew me away! even for an organized mess (im referring to flickr's set up), that site attracts some phenomenal artists.