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.

New sketchbook

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

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

Lemons

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!

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

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

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

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.