"Being Human"

So Cheltenham Illustration Awards is having another competition, and its so incredibly open-ended I had to give it a go.

Unfortunately that meant accidentally creating a work based on what I'm not fond of, regarding the whole "Being Human" issue. It started off innocently enough:

Don't Know Why Sideways, Just Go With It.

 Just a casual broody woman I was planning to cover in tattoos, piercings, general body modifications to illustrate how being human isn't that simple anymore. We have identities now, and hipsters. Anyway, a bit of art-rage and logo research later I ended up with this:

An  orange, glasses- wearing, dyed, tattooed and stitched- up lady lounging on a pile of likes.

The irony is I really like her look. But anyways, this is my entry. Enjoy.

More Commission Magic

Some of my friends have seen my work throughout my degree and some have been asking for commissions for various things, birthdays and such. In this post I thought I'd show my process for the usual commission (= This particular piece was made for my flatmate Nadine to celebrate her completing her Masters Degree (=

The Original Sketch

First of all I sat down with my friend to sketch some ideas, check that she was happy with the expression and the general theme of the image. She also helped by being there so I could make sure I got the little details of her character right, like her silver necklace and leather jacket.

A Wild Photoshop Appeared!

After this I got to work editing on Photoshop making the lines darker, whiting the eyes and correcting any mistakes in the lines.

It's a bit of a jump I know..

After that it was simply a case of adding colours, little aspects of her character to make it more personal and adding the small details into the background to make it more my style. I also added highlights and shading to the hair. Finally I added shadows and a coloured gradient filter to give the image more depth.

Finished!

There's obviously more to designing the image and deciding elemts to add, colours and things, but this is the general process I go through (=

Commission Bits

After seeing my work on my Facebook page, some people asked me to draw a few things for them, mainly using the intricate details I used in my final gallery pieces (the noir comic work) so here is one of the pieces:

Black and White Koi Carp with detail

I drew the piece on paper rather than in Photoshop, and it took just over a day (=

Subscribe to ALL the links!

I only just realized I havn't provided all my other various pages with my work on.
Trying to get noticed in today's society, online is the best way to manage it, so here is a few of my various places scattered around the internet where you can see other things I've done (=

Facebook

Devianart

My First Blog

About.me

I'll add more if I begin to work on different sites but for the time being I hope these help (= I use this blog to explain more about my processes and to keep me on track with my own working speed, but these other sites provide an easier, possibly even faster way to browse through my various things.

The Snowflake Animation

The Snowflake Animation is a project that started back at the start of the year after the Christmas Holiday. It has always been on the back burner as other deadlines have been more prominent but it is finally finished and done! (=

I decided to keep it black and white, and a sketchy style, to emphasize the childishness of the video. The tutorial itself is based on me teaching people to make snowflake decorations from paper for the Christmas holiday. I think being able to see all the working lines and the lack of colour and a polished finish really keeps it more carefree and sketchy, which matches the theme of the animation.

Owl City: Also Finished!

 

Owl City- "Swimming in Miami"

I hadn't mentioned in this blog, but I have also been working on a lyric page from a song called "Swimming in Miami" by Owl City. It is partly to create a colourful piece to contrast to the noir images which will be going up into the gallery on the 16th May (2014) but also this piece allowed me to play around more, with a more cartoony character and more fun in the images.

I did deliberate adding more detail to the hair and skin, but in the end, I thought it looked better without it, more cartoony and childish which suited the theme of the piece and the little girl's character (=

Noir Comics... FINISHED!

 

 

 

The noir comics finally got finished after sketching them in A4 and then inking them in A2 before using Photoshop to condense them into A3 pieces and alter them to make the white whiter and the black darker and such.

 

I'm pretty happy with the result, and my class seemed to like the tiny details involved in some of the illustrations. There are still elements that I would have liked to change but, overall I'm happy with the work and I think the long process of enlarging and condensing the work was worth it in the end.

TED Talks

One Source that I have been looking at a lot lately is the "TED" website, which is full of all sorts of talks, interviews and interesting advice about hundreds of topics. One of those topics is, of course, art. Though Illustration isn't a specific category, there are plenty of speeches on there that are both helpful and inspiration for the aspiring artist.

Lately I've watched talks on how art is seen, and how to spread art further, for example in the interview with Tasha Lewis and her work "Swarm of the World" which can be  read Here.

I've been watching these videos for years and loads of them are very helpful for inspiration and help, so here is the website for the TED page: TED WEBSITE

Photoshop Life Lessons

Not really relevant to my coursework, but a life lesson from Photoshop:

"Don't Burn And Dodge"

No matter the magical tools Photoshop has, you cant "dodge" through doing work.


Though the dodge tool is incredibly helpful.
Humor helps my thought process okay?

Noir Comic: Continuation

This blog is incredibly overdue, but here is the work for the noir comic I have been working on, repeatedly... over and over... redrawing and redesigning... many hours, much work. Anyway.

Try to bear in mind, this file is saved as "Messy Edit" on my pc (=

So, in this page you can see that I have used an awful lot of mark making in the roses in particular. This is something I used to do in all my work, and I haven't really used it much in the past two years, what with one thing or another (trying my best to better my skills drawing people) and while sending my sketchbook around for the usual group criticism, a friend noticed the mark making and thought it looked good.

This lead to me doodling a lot, and I was discussing ideas to the thought bubble [seen above] with roses, since this is a theme in the story, rather than the empty space, which developed to mark making the roses, and it just developed from there. Since adding all the detailing I've had much more positive feedback, which encouraged me to add as much mark making as I can to this series of work without distracting from the noir style. I'll post the finished pieces when I'm done making them tidier. (=

Close ups

Noir Comic Update

Right now I'm in the process of working on my noir comic, using lots of interesting inks and pens and a providing a great excuse for me to sift through amazon's collections of fine line pens for my own use. I ended up choosing the pens an artist I admire uses, Kerby Rosanes, who specified his pens on his facebook page, which I follow, which you can find here: https://www.facebook.com/sketchystoriesblog (=

Anyway, here's where I'm upto, its a little backed up since I'm still not used to this blogging thing:

A practice page for the comic, after inking

My work station

A practice close- up of the female character

My materials I am using for this work

After all these pages are complete, I will rework them and complete them in A2 size then scale them down to A3 using photoshop, to add as much detail as I can, and a more crisp appearance due to the size- down.

The Comic Work Begins

So for my main project for my final year, I am completing a selected few pages from a story to convert into a comic book format to add to my portfolio. The story I'm using for my comic examples is Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber" the actual story from that book that I'm using is called "The Lady of the House of Love" and centers around a female vampire, the daughter of famous vampire Nosferatu.

 

The plan is to hand draw the comic, and possibly edit it later on in Photoshop. I'm also going to try to include colour pop, similar to that seen in Frank Miller's "Sin City".

       

         This is an example of one of the first pages, in the preliminary stage, so this is brainstorming around issues of layout, content, and the post stick notes represent where I have tried to redraw the original image from a more interesting perspective, opposed to a straight-on image.

 

     

           To be more specific, the right hand pink square is designed to emphasize how the bird is caged and, as the story quotes “She likes to hear it announce how it cannot escape”. The left hand pink square is a better perspective for seeing the tarot cards she spends all day with, plus its a more interesting shot of the woman, and more complex than a simple bird’s eye view.

 

 

 

After I have finalized the layouts and perspectives, I plan to hand render some more detailed images and later decide whether or not to digitalize them.

 

Claire Hummel: Another Artist Review

Claire Hummel is an American artist, who has managed to break into the videogame art industry. She is a self proclaimed 'geek' and it shows in her brilliant array of work on her deviantart page.. Her focus is on anatomy, characters and costumes and has done lots of work for the Xbox Kinect and even helped to design some characters for the game 'Bioshock' which I personally love. All of these attributes attracted me to her work, but then hearing about her made her even better.

Here's her Deviantart page (=

Her work has a quality to it that isn't too polished to not look like a drawing (unlike the 'League of Legends artwork I like) but it's still a high quality, and her character designs have just enough detail to not be overwhelming but still be encouraging. She has also designed a series of Disney Princesses in accurate dresses from the times of their stories which as brilliant, since they have an air of pin up style to them without distracting from the total innocence of Disney.



Mulan

Aside from these she also does commission work, as well as a lot of gaming artwork for franchises like 'Fable Legends', 'Ryse' for the Xbox One and even Microsoft. She says her work at Microsoft keeps her pretty busy so freelance artwork doesn't get too much of a look in.

Her work portrays an array of subjects that from Disney to Batman which appeals to me personally, for both content and style reasons, and her occasionally dark images are quirky and inspiring. She has a good range of work between polished character designs and scribbled idea maps for characters. She has work in black and white, full colour and monotone but each work has her style channeled into it. I will continue to look at her work as I develop my own characters for my motion comic.

Arty word of the day: En Plein Air. This means to paint outside, away from distractions like technology and the home.



The Little Mermaid

Aladdin

The Princess and The Frog

Kerry Darlington: A whole post about her.

Kerry Darlington is a brilliant Welsh artist who I've included in this blog because she is included in an interview in 'Artists & Illustrators' called "Mass Appeal". Her story is interesting because she came into popularity after leaving her job as an illustrator Craig Bragdey Designs to become a stay at home mother. She started selling her original works on Ebay, where she was spotted by a traditional art gallery, spiraling her career out to a much larger audience and helping her to develop her work while still earning money.

This is an incredibly lucky thing to happen to her, but her methods are still interesting to someone about to leave university (=





Kerry Darlington, 2013

Her most popular work is based around artist prints, she uses a mixture of paint and resin to give her work a really magical feel to it. In the interview she offers the advice "If you're starting out, buyers tend to want original works from you. You have to prove yourself with that before you go into print." This is encouraging to those of us (sigh) who prefer hand- rendering artwork but still like to work in the illustration field. Darlington also says that a lot of her work is bought by people who have never bought art work before, which highlights her ability to appeal to the masses with her popular themed work, focused around such childhood classics as "Alice in Wonderland" and "Peter Pan". All the added credibility her fame has given her also allows her to charge more for her works, upto £700 for a print. She also talks about how important a publisher is, to act as a liaison between her and galleries and keep promoting her, though she has now opted into self-promotion with the help of her husband.




"Wild and Free"

All in all she is someone to aspire to and follow, someone who's work I like and someone who represents the slight possibility of creating work that is non- technological but still popular to the masses.

Arty word of the day: Du Jour. This is a French term for anything new or fashionable at a certain time.

"How To Be An Illustrator"

Just a quick blog to totally accidentally advertise this book:

How To Be An Illustrator by Darrel Rees

 I think this has been the most inspiring by far for getting me to get up and begin work. It offers help on every aspect of being an illustrator I could think of, as well as some other sides of the job such as pros and cons of working from home opposed to a studio as well as how to deal with companies and finances and most importantly, how to begin your preparation for leaving university.

Helpful thinking really.
One point was to get going on a portfolio and research, and "add to the blogggg...." came to mind so here I am. I would recommend this book if you're a bit stuck and need a bit of help getting unstuck.

Arty word of the day: Objet D'Art. This literally means a 'art object' or 'work of art', however in French, the term is used for artwork that is not a painting, for example sculptures, sketches or carvings.

How to make snowflakes; The Animation Begins.

So "This, Is, Third Year" is a blog to catalogue everything I find out in the final stage of my third year at University. I started fresh because my last blog was a bit thin and my first ever blog, so hopefully this will be a new and improved version of the old (=

First off, my first project is about how to make paper snowflakes. I got the idea over the Christmas break, and it's designed to be a short animation to illustrate how to create a snowflake decoration.

 

These are two stills from the very very early on animation, portraying how she is both larger than and smaller than the paper. I thought a mix of perspectives would keep the animation more engaging, and also more fun to draw and test my skills. The second image comes after a sequence illustrating anticipation, where the character makes a few failed attempts to fold the giant paper before it falls and knocks her over, as well as staging, which clearly highlights the character in both images as the center of the viewers attention.

This is an image I drew [on a page full of sketches] of the main host of the animation. She has no name, she just acts as a cute character to help illustrate the points and act as the idea of appeal to the viewer. The symmetry and simplicity of her face is deliberate so as to not overwhelm, and keep her character appealing and easy to read.  I can't wait to get more of this animation done, so I'll stop blogging it and start working on it (=


 

Arty word of the day: Counteraction. This is where, in an animation, the movement of a body of object has a secondary action, such as hair or clothing moving as a result of the initial movement. They often move in the opposite direction of the first movement, and occur simultaneously  with the first movement, unlike 'follow through' which occurs after the first movement.