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.