Charnelle Pinkney Illustration

Figure painting

2012-02-05T07:55:00.001-08:00

Here's a work in progress. It's from session 1 of a three session painting. I'm really diggin this piece so far. It reminds me of sherbert (in a good way). Is that weird?

im back

2012-01-17T10:18:00.001-08:00

I've been MIA for a bit bc I've been super swamped with work and lately haven't been very good at multitasking. Not to worry, I will soon remedy that. I have a lot to post, so I will start from the most recent. This past semester I began my thesis project. I'm doing a children's book about a rather unique alligator named Larry. Here's some progress photos of one of the spreads.

Slow & Steady

2011-10-03T09:35:00.001-07:00

Finished the drawings for a new pattern. Working on the color as we speak.

2011 SVA Book Show

2011-09-27T11:20:00.000-07:00

The opening reception for our book show is tonight...very exciting. We hung it last week. It was quite an event :

Say hi Marshall!.. Carl and Becca in the back working on layout. Cecilia's piece is on the wall

figuring things out (Dasha's art work to the left and Li Pei's to the right)

Rafa helping Tony D. hang an awesomely gihugic print

Checking out some of the finished books


Cecilia helping Nina position her prints.

Mini Notebooks

2011-09-26T07:42:00.001-07:00

Here are a couple of photos of some mini sketchbooks a few weeks ago.

From The Depths

2011-08-11T18:30:00.000-07:00

As of late I have been making a lot of different things, but of course I get so excited that I start a new project before posting about the one I just finished. I guess I shall begin at the most recent project and work my way back. I just finished this new (and rather tedious) pattern. My hand will be cramped up for the next few days, but it's completely worth it.

Happy Birthday to Me :)

2011-07-05T18:47:00.000-07:00

Today's my birthday and i spent it making a cool drawstring back pack. I used a bit of the two yards that I ordered of the Open UP pattern I created. I got really into it, so there aren't any process photos. I will be making more bags though. Very excited.

You Can Dream

2011-06-30T15:08:00.001-07:00

I was craving those orange Popsicles with the vanilla ice cream in the middle (i know them as Dreamsicles...but i could have just made that up), which then turned into a new pattern..I never did satisfy my craving. Oh well...maybe next time.

(^random scribbles..trying to figure things out. Couldn't get this picture to stay rotated for anything. Ugh.^)

(^finished drawing on the right^)

Book Show

2011-06-09T07:01:00.000-07:00

We just got word of the dates of the book show for the books we started in Marshall and Carl's class this past semester. Instead of revealing all, I'll just wait to post the e-vite when we get that sent to us. Anywho... my book is about a little girl who is terrified of three porcelain dolls she was given and how she overcomes that fear. Here's a sneak peak:

Fabric Fun

2011-06-07T15:51:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I ordered fat quarter fabric samples of my two most recent pattern designs (which i uploaded to Spoonflower.com). They came in this past week and I'm soooo happy with how they printed. The colors look great!

^Open Up! fabric sample^

^Gone Fishing sample^

^Gone Fishing close up^

Open Up! (vote for this pattern in the Imaginary Animals spoonflower contest)

2011-05-25T07:52:00.001-07:00

Just finished a new pattern it started off as a random doodle on a long drive to Rochester, Ny.

^first few drawings in my sketchbook^

^beginnings of the final drawing^

After i drew the main piece, i scanned it in, split it up in photoshop, printed it out, and then drew some more to fill in the middle.

^Here is a small square of the finished pattern :)^

I posted this pattern in this week's spoonflower contest for imaginary animals...vote for me!
The pattern is called Open Up by call_me_chartreuse.
(they should be posted today or tomorrow).

Gone Fishing

2011-04-25T20:21:00.000-07:00

I've been obsessed with drawing fish lately...which spilled over into a new pattern.

^close up before color^

^color version^

^white on black version with a few slight color changes^

Oziana Magazine

2011-04-24T12:51:00.000-07:00

The Wizard of Oz cover I created last year was used as the 2009 cover of the Oziana Magazine, a magazine dedicated to all things Wizard of Oz. I just received a copy of the double issue (2009/2010) and it looks great. You can view the cover at John Bell's (edior of OZIANA from 2004 - 2010) here: Oz and Ends: Oziana 2009 Touches Down at Last

kykuit

2011-04-20T06:14:00.000-07:00

This past friday for drawing on location we went to Kykuit. It's in Tarrytown and is a part of the Rockefeller Estate. They didn't allow us to go inside the house and it was pretty chilly for most of the day, but even so, it was absolutely beautiful. I had a great time roaming about.

Hello

2011-04-07T19:09:00.000-07:00

Just finished another pattern. It started as a doodle and I liked it so much that I turned it into a bigger drawing.

^Here it is in progress^

^close up^

^The finished main square^

After I finished the main square I split it up in photoshop, printed it out, and filled in the remaining parts to make it repeat seamlessly. Then I scanned it in again and lined up that part to the main square.

It wasn't looking right with full blown color so I decided just to color the lines.

Shrinky Dinks rock!

2011-04-04T07:34:00.000-07:00

The first years had a pizza party for the second years this past thursday(as a thank you for the one they threw us in the beginning of the year and a great excuse to relax and stuff ourselves). As a little gift to each person, we each made a Shrinky Dink.

^Here's my sketch on the left and the start of my Shrinky Dink on the right.^

^finished Shrinky Dink^

After I finished drawing it, Nina collected all of our finished drawings and baked them in her toaster oven.

^final baked Shrinky Dink (sandwhiched between Joana's comics piece and

John Malta's cactus)

New Pattern

2011-03-23T16:27:00.000-07:00

Doughnuts!!

2011-02-23T18:48:00.000-08:00

Here's a new promotional piece i'm working on. even if doughnuts aren't good for you in large quantities, they sure are a lot of fun to paint!

Drawing on Location

2011-02-03T13:20:00.001-08:00

Last Friday we went to the Rubin Museum of Art to draw. This is a huge mask they had hanging in the museum.

Tips on Creativity

2010-11-16T11:52:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-10T06:50:00.001-08:00

Train Time!!

2010-10-30T11:03:00.001-07:00

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

2010-10-19T18:16:00.001-07:00

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

2010-08-30T16:19:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-08-01T11:56:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-02T13:44:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-23T06:00:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-12T16:37:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-12T08:11:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-10T19:28:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-03T05:42:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-19T20:32:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-13T06:49:00.001-07:00

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

2010-04-07T06:05:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-07T08:33:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-26T19:48:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-13T10:19:00.001-08:00

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

2010-02-12T12:07:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-01T19:03:00.001-08:00

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.

New sketchbook

2009-12-23T10:45:00.001-08:00

I finally got time to take another bookbinding class this past semester. It's very relaxing once you have all your pages and boards cut, and holes punched. Here's a Coptic bound sketchbook I made in the class.It's one of my favorite structures. I'm going to be making one for my roommate/friend/classmate Traci. It's gonna be similar to this one, unless I find different paper for the cover that I think she'll like more...dark colors of course :)

Edge of Winter book cover

2009-12-22T18:12:00.000-08:00

Here's a bookcover i designed for my portfolio class.

Lemons

2009-11-23T07:38:00.000-08:00

Here's an editorial piece I did bout 2 weeks ago in my senior portfolio class. It was for an article called "Terrified to Testify" which is about how witnesses are scared to testify because their lives are being threatened.

Butterflies!

2009-11-03T20:24:00.000-08:00

Here is a poster I created about two weeks ago based on the Butterflies exhibit at the Academy of Natural Sciences. I included some shots of the painting while it was in-progress.

Book Cover

2009-10-26T09:21:00.000-07:00

Senior year is in full flux and we just started the Ely (illustration senior thesis) which is very exciting.

Here is a book cover I did earlier in the semester. I'll post others as the week goes on.

Play time

2009-08-30T10:10:00.000-07:00

Here is a little bit of randomness for your viewing pleasure...

I started this piece last week before I went on a very short (and very fun) vacation. I sat down ready to do a self-portrait, but ended up drawing an ostrich instead...ha ha ha talk about weird huh? (The first picture is kind of dark...but the second came out a lot better)

It's coming along. Just having fun with it. Can't wait to see where it ends up!

randomness

2009-08-17T06:11:00.001-07:00

Here is a random sketch I did while waiting in Penn station. I never really liked drawing in ball point pen until now. I started because I forgot my pencils at home once and it was the only thing to draw with.
As i mentioned before, this summer I had an internship (a very cool one at that). I interned in the media division at Scholastic. It was the the best experience ever. I was able to work on actual projects the entire time, such as packaging for audio cds. I will also be getting samples of the projects I worked on...YAY!!! I love samples. The team I worked with was so wonderful. They were very helpful and everyone I encountered was extremely nice (we also had cupcakes on a few occasions..and if there's anything i love more than blueberry muffins it's cupcakes).

If you ever have a chance to do an internship go for it....there is no such thing as a bad internship.

YAY!

2009-08-01T11:20:00.000-07:00

WOOHOOO! I just figured out how to change my header...i created it in photoshop first, saved for web, then uploaded it. Now that I did it it wasn't that hard but technology doesn't really like me.

I love watercolor

2009-08-01T07:21:00.000-07:00

Here are some more sketches.. the first one is the little guy i posted previously. Finished him off with some more watercolor and a snippet of collage. I named him Bryce.

This second sketch (the page on the right) is also watercolor and collage. It was raining that day and my shoes were soaked (they had holes in the heels. i really liked them still, but had to admit that they needed to be put to rest. ha ha)...maybe that's why she looks sad. The page on the left is a host of amusing faces. they make me laugh.

It's the small things...

2009-07-29T06:11:00.000-07:00

The small things in life tend to make me extremely happy. For example... Sunday night I was on the bus on my way back to Brooklyn to get ready for another week of my internship (i'll explain later). Across from me sat a girl around the age of 6 and her mom. When the bus got closer to the station I took off my headphones annoyed and tired from sitting in traffic for an hour. Just then, the girl turns to her mom and says: "You know what?... when I grow up i'm gonna make art! and I'm gonna write books too! I can write and color....and you know what else? I'm gonna open an art museum!"

That made my day. Little kids can be so fearless. It's wonderful.

2009-07-26T13:01:00.000-07:00

I won't have time to post much today, but here's a few sketches that i've done in my new green sketchbook (which i absolutely love). It's square...didn't think I would like the square format, but i adore it.

The first two were done in ball point pen and the bottom sketch is red pencil and watercolor.

This little guy isn't completely painted in yet, so i'll post him again when he's finished.

Finally

2009-07-26T07:20:00.000-07:00

So I finally started a blog. Long over due I would say. I will be using this blog as a way to share my process, random sketches, and creative adventures with the public. Hopefully I can get some pictures up today or later this week.

Enjoy:)