Circus & Caricature of Me!

I thought it would be fun to make a little gif animation of how my final piece progresses--and figured I might as well post it up here:

(please give it a sec for the gif to load)
Here is the final product:

The following were used: concentrated dyes, bleach, color pencils, lighter fluid, & acrylic paint pens.

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Today in the Art of Caricature class, we had two caricaturists come in to do demos: Jeremy Townsend and Justin Galloway. It was phenomenal to see them bust out great line drawings one after another without any sketch lines.
Jeremy drew me!

(the actual paper's not yellow, it's just a bad quality photo)
I definitely learned a lot from just watching them draw-- They're living proof that, like with anything else, the only way to get better is to draw, draw, and draw some more.

Zoo Color Comps & Genevieve Kote

Here are the color comps that I had whipped up in Photoshop for the zoo mural art.

I ended up picking the bottom left colors for the final piece, which was done in concentrated dyes, gouache & color pencils. I think color comps are a great way to lay out any value/hue issues before getting to the final. In this particular piece I only varied the background color because I decided to keep the animals colors naturalistic (so there were no confusion as to what was what).

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The illustrator link of the day is Genevieve Kote, who is from Quebec City. She does a lot of freelance stuff, mainly for publications. I just love the whimsical characters, well-planned composition, and bright color schemes that she executes in her illustrations. She also has a great ability to depict any situation in a light-hearted, yet not overly-comical way.

She also has a flickr which has more up-to-date sketches &pieces.

Zoo Mural Art Concept

A value comp I did for a zoo mural. It's kind of hard to see in a sketch so small, but it shows a bunch of animals partying, dressed as another animal. I'll probably keep the colors naturalistic so there's no confusion as to what animal's what (it's already so busy!).

By the way, here's another illustrator link: Matt Phelan. He's a children's book illustrator, and I'm actually doing a report on him. He works mainly in watercolors + ink to produce simple yet unique imagery. I mean, how adorable is this??

I love his sketchy look! I tend to overwork in my final pieces, so I admire how he's able to keep the loose quality of his sketches whilst defining a certain environment/atmosphere.

Upload Overload.

Alright, I've got a lot to post today:

First off, here are initial sketches (from life) of my fellow classmates in my caricature class:


And here are the final finished pieces:

One had to be graphic/geometrical (top, dyes) and the other one more naturalistic (bottom, graphite).

We also did a fun little in-class exercise today, where we had to draw the Statue of Liberty in various facial expressions:

They were definitely fun to do! Why can't Lady Liberty actually look like one of those in real life? :D

Up next are a few random doodles in my sketchbook:

My personal (=not for class) sketchbook is a small 6"x6" square format, so I tend to just put it on my lap and draw things from all sorts of angles... hence the sideways bears... Sorry, I guess you'll just have to tilt your head sideways!

Another one, drawn during a long winded critique...*yawn*:


Finally, my friend Shiho Hoshino put up pictures of her worktable on her blog the other day, so I thought I'd be a little copycat and put my own up:

You can sort of see the finished version of the piece I had been working on...the sketch is in the previous post. I'll be sure to post a good res scan of that soon!

Springin' Into Action!

Here is a comp sketch of theme park mural art concept I've been working on for Portfolio class:



Just started the final piece. It's going to have a very bright spring-y feel, and I'm using mostly concentrated dyes to get that kind of vibrance!

As for the concept, I just wanted to draw something fun and appealing to children (and not tying myself down to THEME PARK subjects). So what's more fun than a girl and her dog (in a space suit..) skipping through a plain on a rainbow-y path?? And random mushroom-y creatures sprouting?