Large Watercolor (20 x 30)
I really enjoyed doing this painting on the large format of 20 x 30 inches instead of the half sheets of paper that we had been doing. I think that I was more confident with my marks because I knew that I only reallly had one shot so I couldn't mess it up, and I just found it easier to paint with my whole arm instead of just with my fingers! I was also able to try some new techniques on this. I used the coffee grinds to make the sand, and I did the water as a wash so the sand could still be seen under it. For the birds I kept them the white of the paper and added some gray and a light blue tint to the shadows of the feathers. I am very happy with the way the feathers turned out. I used a photo that I had taken form spring break last year in Flordia as the reference for the painting, but decided to change the postioning of the birds on the painting to make the compostion more interesting.

3 image redo
This is my second attempt at the 3 image montage. The second time this went much better. The wheat was so much easier for me to do and it was the first time. I think I got out all of my bad wheat painting in the first one so this second one the field actually looke like wheat. I was more relaxed doing this a second time because I knew what I had to do and that I could do it, and I also knew what to do better this time. I enjoyed having to redo it in the fact that I could make it better but was a little annoyed that I had to use more materials and time to do it a second time. (Thanks Rusty) Since this one was done a second time I think that it has better subject matter development and stylistic sensitivity. Well and the visual problem solving was also better (hint: the wheat field).

World Record
This one made me a little nervous at first because I was doing large faces, but as I went along and stepped back and could see that they were reading as faces and not just blobs with eyeballs and nostrils I was becoming more comfortable and confident with what I was doing. I really enjoyed doing the eyes because I have always liked drawing and painting eyes. I like the composition because you look at one of them and then look to see what they are looking at and it is the other person and then you look back to the first person and you just keep looking back at each of them. The visual problem solving came for this painting after I choose to do the eyeball popping when I had to find an interesting way to show off the eyeballs popping out. I had tried many different things and decided to go with them looking at each other.

Missouri Postcard
Oh my missouri postcard...well when I was originally coming up with ideas for what I think of when I think of Missouri I asked my boyfriend what he thought. One of the things he said was tobacco because everyone from where I live in Iowa goes to Missouri to by their tobacco because first its not too far of a drive and second because the Missouri tax on tobacco is so much cheaper than Iowa. So when I was showing Rusty my thumbnails he saw the tobacco idea and said that a lot of people in Missouri do somke, so do that idea. So I did a cigarette butt with a Missouri label and smoke on black illustration board. I really like the black illustration board and I think it was one of the best suggestions Rusty made all semester, except that it did give me a massive paper cut. I ended up painting with gouache one the board and then used the airbrush to make the smoke, which was lots of fun! The smoke was done very confidently because I only had one chance to get it to work since I had already painted the cigarette.

Cheesy Color Comp
After deciding to do Chester the Cheetah for Cheetos Chips for my Cheesy Color Comp (say that five times fast!) I did a marker and colored pencil comp. I decided to put this into my final portfolio because Rusty said that if he were a client that he would like to see a marker comp and then a final illustration side by side. So mine aren't side by side but this is the closest I could get. I decided to take the original colors of Chester, and wanted to make him as realistic as I could. I probably spent the most amount of time on this colored comp because I was trying to think of it as if I were doing it with airbrush. I did the darkest parts first and worked my way to the lightest. I was also trying to decide how I would do my final airbrush of this while I was coloring the comp. I think spending so much time on this helped me with my final illustration.

Cheesy airbrush
Here is my pride and glory of airbrush. It turned out so much better than either of my fruits, and I was very happy that it matched my marker comp closely. I started off with the darkest areas, the spots, nose, and glasses and worked my way through the tounge skin and finally shes and teeth. I used frisket for most of the piece to keep things with nice clean hard edges. I did do the wisker and this shadow by hand. I thought that the composition was interesting because he is showing movement like he is running to grab a cheeto. I think that this is fairly confident considering the fact that I basically had stencils that I just had to paint in. Overall I am happy with the way he turned out and have decided that I like airbrush and think we should have done more of it.

Sound illustration
I really feel that I shouldn't write anything about this because it is the sound of silence and speaks for itself, or not. But since it is part of my final grade I suppose I will write about it. I once again used black illustration board to paint on with gouache. I first started the process with many thumbnails and then went to multiple marker comps and decided on doing the different skin tones. The painting wasn't going very well at first and wasnt looking much like the comp so I decided to just block color in and then use colored pencil to blend and add the little details like the nails. I like the way this looks now with the colored pencil on top, and it was a lot of fun to be able to shade again like that since I haven't since highschool. I ended up using multiple colors for the shading in all the hands and have decided that I really enjoy that technique of lots of colors. I think the composition is interesting because the big black background adds to the silence of the hands not making noise. Lastly I am just glad that I decided I could count correctly and that none of these hands have six fingers like my marker comp did!

Book Illustration
My last piece for my portfolio, are you getting tired of having to read my blog yet? Anyways I did this with watercolor which was a nice change from all the gouache I had been doing. I did many many many washes on top of washes on top of washes to get the shadows for the inside of the room. After I painted and scaned the illustration into the computer I used Photoshop to straighten some of the lines that were wavy from the paper being wrinkled. However, before I got to that point I spent a lot of time working on the perspective of the illustration. First I had you looking into the door from the hallway, and it was at the rat's perspective, so from down low, then Rusty wanted to see what it would look like from the inside of the door with the room being light. Thats what I chose to do and then had to work on the perspective of the door and tiled floor. I also got to try out some new techinques on this with the floor and making it look a like a tile with a random pattern of speckels on it. I like this book cover because I think it is interesting how the only light is from the hallway and that the rat is then in the spot light. Overall I had a lot of fun doing a wash and then letting the paint do its thing and just letting it dry.

These are my original pencil thumbnails for the book cover. I had lots of different ideas and went with the rat in the door 101 for the book 1984. I originally had the rat at the door and you were looking at the room from the rat's perspective. Then Rusty suggested having the perspective be from inside the room and seeing the back of the rat. I ended up doing a dark room that you can see the rat in the light of the hallway.

My thumb nails. I had a few different ideas for sound illustrations. The class really liked the humming of the refrigerator, but I really liked the idea of the sound of silence.

This is my original tight pencil comp for the cheesy airbrush. When I first heard we had to do something cheesy I thought of the joke what do you call cheese thats not yours? NACHO (not your) cheese. So I was kind of thinking of actual edible cheese. So I decided to do Chester the Cheetah for Cheetos Chips.

If you can see this it is my original pencil comp after doing my thumbnails to decide on a concept. I choose to do the cigarette butt because I live in Iowa and everyone from where I live crosses the border to get their tobacco in Missouri because the taxes are so much cheaper.

This is my first airbrush fruit, its a blood orange. I didn't have many problems with this one, some of the masks didn't line up perfectly, but overall it worked well. I did have a problem with the background on the left side where the mask stuck to the board and ripped off the top layer of paper. It also ripped some of the paper off on the peel of the orange in the lower right hand corner. I wish that the highlights weren't so pure white, and that I would have tried to may the juice on the side a little more like juice, not so flat.

Original pencil comps

Original painting

Pencil comp

Colored comp

Here are my choices for midterm. I have been working on these pieces throughout the semester and they are my five favorites.

Here is my cartoon, but in color this time. I had to scan the cartoon and use photoshop to color it in. I had fun with this part, I think some of the characters really come to life. I did lots of layers of color, a layer just for the hair, just the skin, etc. I wanted to have a very simple flat color for the cartoon because I don't think the drawings of the characters are realistic and I didn't want to make the color look realistic but still have the cartooned figures. I also choose to use bright colors for things like the sign explaining the joke and also for the main character. It was fun to color everything in, sort of like a coloring book only on the computer. It also went fairly quickly once I decided what colors to use.

This is my memory portrait. I did my cousin Colin. I had a lot of fun with this because we were able to have free range with what we did. I decided to use watercolors. I chose to use flesh tones and then add some purple and red, and just a touch of green for the shadows in the face. I used a touch of purple and blue in the hair along with brown. I chose to do a bright color for the background so the picture still looked cartoonish. When we hung them up people said that he looked more like claymation, but whether cartoonish or claymation I like him. I also think the reason why people thought he looked like claymation is because I decided not to use any marker or lines with the painting. I have found that Im not the best at line drawings or adding lines to drawings and since we had free range I didnt want to destroy the picture with bad black lines.

These are my DMV comics. I did a 'behind closed doors', 'not too many tickets', 'glamour shots', 'student driver parallel parking' and 'waiting lounge improvements'. Rusty choose the glamour shots cartoon for me to take into final production after doing it three different ways. I'm going to have to take away the words telling the clerk which photo the lady would like, but ill have her pointing to the picture she wants. I had a lot of fun coming up with what to do and making my own jokes. I think it really helped that I made a list of jokes that I could do. After choosing which jokes I thought would be the funniest all I had to do was illustrate them. I looked at different cartoons on the internet to try and find some ideas for facial expressions and how to draw some of the objects.

This is the half scan of my gouache soda can. I choose to do a small Jones halloween soda can. I decided to use a white can because we had a short deadline and I thought that having the can be white would help with the deadline timeline. I started painting the black lines for the mummy wrap and then went to the yellow and orange. I went over the edges with a gray wash to add dimension to the can. I used grays to create the top of the can. I also did some of the take away technique. After taking away all the paint I could I added white on top. I also added a darker shade to the shadows to make the highlight really pop. For the background I choose to do a blue to accent the orange and yellow. I tried not to do a halo behind the can but dark on the right and then faded to the left. I also tried to make the upper left had corner darker to add some balance.

This is a picture of the bird on the branch that I did in gouache for illustration. I had a difficult time at first working with the gouache. My first problem was that I painted the whole board. So then when I tried to remove the paint where the bird and branch were I had a hard time getting it to come clean. Then I decided to put on way to much paint. I probably had about 7 layers of paint, so when I tried to remove some it took a while. I was trying to make the bird look feathery and not show so much of the illustration board. When Rusty helped me he removed most of the paint and pushed the remaining paint around to make the bird look like it was soft. That technique worked better so I used it on the head of the bird for the feathers. For the branch I mixed up some browns and laid them down and then removed parts of them to look like the branch had texture. The other problem that I had was water droplets. I would have water drop onto my painting and then it would leave a little mark. I didnt worry to much about fixing them though. If I had some more time I would try to do something more with the background then is done now.