Tips on Creativity

Stumbled over this post on writetodone.com called 201 ways to arouse creativity. Its a great list to look at when you feel stuck (which I often do) and can be applied to all creative endeavours.

http://writetodone.com/2010/06/28/201-ways-to-arouse-your-creativity/

p.s. if you don't know about stumbleupon you are severely missing out on some awesome, interesting, and sometimes useless (yet entertaining) websites.

TrainTime II

Train Time!!

Got some sketching done on the train ride to school. Got to love people who don't move a lot :)

Drawing on Location: World Trade Center

Aloha!! For those of you who I didn't tell, I'm in my first year at the School of Visual Arts Illustration as Visual Essay program (which I am absolutely loving!). Friday's I have Drawing on Location. Every other week we go to a different location to draw. The weeks we don't go out we draw the figure in the studio.

This past Friday we were able to go to a building opposite the World Trade Center site to draw the view. We were on the 49th floor and had a 360 degree view of the buildings below (the walls were nothing but glass windows). Here are some pictures of the view, as well as two drawings I created that day.

^the cars looked like toys^


^where the World Trade Centers stood...they are going to be reflecting pools now^
^crane on top of the new building they are constructing^

^I could see the Brooklyn Bridge :)^

All Inked Up

Here is one of two monoprints done last week. It started as a random pencil sketch of a door in my uncle's house and evolved to a door in my uncle's house with octopus like tentacles coming out from behind the door.

As usual, my scanner was not in a happy mood, so only one print is scanned for now.

I'm Back!

It's been a while since I've posted something, I have an internship at Scholastic again and it's been keeping me very very busy...but not to fret...I have been making work:) Here is a monoprint I did yesterday with some water soluble oil paint. I think I'm going to play around with some color on it as well.


I was also invited to join Watercolor Wednesdays at the beginning of the summer and i just made my first post...check it out!

Life After Graduation

Graduation seems forever ago, but it has only been two weeks since graduation. Very interesting. Anywho, since I moved back to upstate NY last week I've been in a tad bit of an art funk. I have so many ideas swirling around in my head that I end up not acting on any of them because I can't decide where to start. Today i decided to end this by painting...i had to paint something..anything before i drove myself crazy. It is absolutely beautiful outside, so I went onto the porch with my travel paints in hand (smaller size made it easier to balance on the railing) and began painting a dead tree on the side of our house. Here's the happy result:


I'm very proud of myself for not dropping anything off of the second floor porch:)

Sationary show/ Portfolio day

Last week was a pretty big week. On Monday a bunch of senior illustration students (including myself) got to attend the Stationary/Surtex show at the Javits center in Manhattan. It's a licensing show for artists and other companies. It was an ubber long day, but we saw a lot of really awesome stuff there and it was a good introduction to how licensing works. The public wasn't allowed to take photos inside the show, so I took a few pictures of the lobby area of the Javits Center.

Tuesday was our Portfolio Day. It's where the Illustration seniors invite art directors to come check out our portfolios. There's food and everything :) The only bad thing is that it was rainy and gross the whole day.

Thanks to everyone who made it out to see us!

Here's a few pictures from Portfolio Day:

Traci helping with set up

Traci's station

Mandee flipping through Erin's portfolio

My station

Thursday was our graduation...congrats to all the 2010 graduates!!!

pattern part 2

Here's another pattern I created...gotta love pattern:) I want to look into getting some of my patterns printed on fabric. That would be sooooooo AWESOME!

pattern

I completely forgot to post a pattern I created a few weeks ago. I heart it with my life. It's inspired by my honey jar self-portrait (my profile picture). I LOVE HONEY...not so much bees, just honey.

Ranidaphobia

This is the last piece I did for Jon Krause. It's a poster against the fear of frogs (aka Ranidaphobia) . This is the version of the painting without the type. It's a new cereal called Frogo's...a wholesome breakfast your family will LEAP for!

The Medicated Child

Jon Krause is the third and final teacher for the personal viewpoints class. This piece is for an article about overly medicated children. Jon's been introducing me to some new techniques (which I am lovin' p.s.). He taught me how to use the frisket correctly and also told me about making stamps and using those for texture and pattern. i decided to try them both out in this piece. I made two pill stamps out of pink eraser to create the background pattern. I'm surprised I didn't cut my self because small pieces of erazer plus small box cutter equals danger zone .

Thesis Pieces

For anyone who couldn't make it to the UArts Illustration Senior Thesis exhibition (aka the Ely) here are three of my four pieces. I did picture puzzles for the Highlights magazine Puzzlemania (all of which I based loosely off of Snow White).


I had a lot of fun with these pieces. Congratulations to all of the winners!

p.s. if you missed the closing reception that means you missed the AWESOME desserts me and Traci made... don't fret im sure there will be another time:)

Fun stuff

The lovely Jessica Hische wrote a blog post about the work we did for her n the personal viewpoints class. You can check out my stuff as well as my classmates work at her blog and also at Drawger. Enjoy!

Process

Katherine Streeter was our next teacher for the personal viewpoints class (equally as awesome as Jessica Hische). I love the variety of projects we get to work on in that class! I got to create several editorial pieces during our sessions with Katherine and here is my process for a piece on hypochondria; the man who wrote the article was a prisoner of his mind and tied down because he always thought he was ill.

I saved a medical bracelet form a past hospital visit, so I used it for my reference shot (along with my roommates necklace).


Here's the final sketch. I enlarged the chain so it would resemble a chain and shackle.


Then I transferred the sketch to hot pressed watercolor paper and started painting.


The photo button has officially stopped working so the final piece will be posted when the button likes me again.
..... button likes me again yay!! I figured i would just add it to this post.

sketchbook pages

Here are some pages from the blue sketchbook I made last semester.





Funny story...I was at the movies with my parents and my little brother over Christmas break and as usual I brought my sketchbook. Half way through the movie I slipped the almost finished box of Jr. Mints into my purse (which was also where my sketchbook was hiding). Following Murphy's law :"anything that can go wrong will"...... A few jr. mints fell out of the box and adhered themselves to the tail end of my sketchbook. There wasn't any damage to the covers, so all is well. I was able to get most of the candy off and the pages that are stuck together are only stuck at the tail end, so they are easy to pull apart. On a better note...it now smells like minty goodness.

A present for Traci

I promised Traci I would make her a Coptic bound sketchbook and it's finally here!! Very exciting. It's identical to the one I made myself last semester except that the waxed linen thread is white instead of blue (and the end pages are a different pattern). Here are a few process shots:


...and here is the end result:

Today was a very good bookbinding day. I only poked myself with the needle four times (and that was at the very very end of the sewing process), I didn't get a single drop of glue on the covers, and I didn't run out of thread. It took me five hours straight to complete it from start to finish and I am very very happy with the outcome.

I love pattern

This past Monday during the personal viewpoints class we all got to watch Jessica work on her daily drop cap while we made our own. How awesome is that!? The letter of the day was "R." I started out doing a bunch of small sketches and came up with this one. I love drawing curly cues. I also had to do an end page pattern for the Wizard of Oz cover I created... I really love how it came out. I've always wanted to get into patterns, but i've never known how to go about it. It's surprisingly really easy. I just needed to dive int it.

Ely poster

This past week the poster for our senior thesis was due, but because of the snow we didn't have class. I was so excited to show mine, but it shall have to wait till next week. I'm really really happy with how it came out. It's a pretty big painting (16in by 24in). I was having so much fun with it that i got it done in 2 days! I must say...anteaters look really weird but they grow on you. I keep calling it an aardvark...probably because of Arthur (i used to watch that show every day).

OZ

I'm taking a class called Personal Viewpoints this semester. The class is being taught by three different illustrators, each for about five weeks at a time. Currently Jessica Hische is the teacher and it's really awesome. Here's the first part of what I have done in the class. It's a book cover for the Wizard of Oz. I think the roosters are my favorite part of the painting (well one of my favorite parts). The picture is a little washed out, but I'll post a better image of the final final cover when I'm done. I'm working on hand drawn type for the cover of it this week as well as patterned end pages. It's very exciting. I love type and I'm eager to learn more about it.