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.

Fanboy & Fangirl Time Galore.

Over the past two days, my friends and I went up to Atlanta to participate in the SCAD Illustration & Comic Arts Forum. It was amazing, definitely worth the 4+ hour ride.

On Thursday night there was a lecture by 2 comic artists (Eric Canete & Andrew Robinson) and 2 illustrators (Yuko Shimizu & James Jean). I was especially psyched about seeing the latter two because they're some of the most influential and successful contemporary illustrators that I know of. It was thrilling to see them talk about their work in person.

On Friday I attended a workshop by James, in which he colored a simple pencil line drawing using Photoshop. I was amazed to see that for someone who has such great color sensitivity and intricacy in little details, he didn't use any more than like 5 layers. (Granted, it was a quick exercise piece for a demo--but still.) He also used some Photoshop effects that someone could easily call "tacky" (i.e. gradient overlay), but he used them well-- I would never have guessed just by looking at his finished. It further emphasizes that "it's not about what tools the artist uses, but HOW he uses them."

Anyway, I was a little fangirl and I got my sketchbook signed by Yuko & James:


They were nice enough to top them off with a little doodle!