Heh heh . . .

ood grief, I'm terrible. I suppose it's hard to get back into doing something when you haven't done it for awhile and your brain feels like mush a good deal of the time. At any rate, the least I can do is update with some images from my illustration class last semester as well as some new images from my most recent project, a reworking of the book I made a year or so ago, The Sheep Child, based on a poem by James Dickey. Given formatting issues I have when I try to put strange spaces in things in blogger, I won't even try to type it up, but you can read the full text here. I will more than likely go more into the challenges of illustrating such a thematically rich piece when I've finished, and the book will be available for purchase on Lulu, though I don't think I'm allowed to make any profit off it because I don't have rights to the poem.

Anyway, here is an illustration assignment from last semester. I was supposed to do a pencil drawing of a hand holding an object:



This piece was basically the first serious pencil drawing I'd done in a LONG time. It was nice to remember how to handle the medium, and that I can get some pretty rich results from it, though I think general use in future will be in mixed media pieces. I also got some water soluble pencils, so I'm a bit excited to experiment with those.

Next is a ink drawing of some mushrooms. the assignment was to do a full value drawing in ink of vegetables. Now, I discovered last semester that intricate full value pen and ink drawings are not my cup of tea, but I am glad that I know how to use them, I suppose. Again, such a technique will also probably only be used in a mixed media piece, but I quite like this piece because it only took a couple of hours and though it is full value pen and ink, it is a full value pen and ink that is true to my way of working, which is messy and fairly expressive but also given to moments of specificity and intricacy and detail. Or, at least, that is what I hope I achieve.



I have a few more, of course, but the size of the assignments is just outside the range of my scanner, and I have to piece them together, which is fecking annoying. I've been coveting a larger scanner for not a terrible price on Amazon, but I'll wait until I move to purchase most likely.

Here are the new pages for the book, though I'm posting the at the moment as is and without text because I'm still messing about with that stuff. I think they're both terrifying, but generally people I show them too disagree. Perhaps I've been spending to much time with the text as well as staring at them in the early hours of the morning. They are both a mixture of watercolor and gouache.





I'm only reworking 6 of the pages, and some are collages with old photos, and some are simply abstract paintings, so for the ones I was reworking I wanted to find a place in between the concrete imagery of the photos and the abstract backgrounds. That place is in these slightly stylized lambs and sheep in atmospheric settings.

If anyone randomly would like a high quality giclee print of any of these or any of my other images, please email me (spittingair@gmail.com) so we can chat!

Now I've got to finish one more page, and then its off to the publishers.

Hokay, here we go again

pparently some people actually look at this, (and by "some people" I mean close friends and family, but whatever) and they keep telling me to update it, so here we go again. Hopefully at some point I will figure out how to make a website and this will just be a link on a larger website where there will also be my full portfolio and a store and such.

I took a couple of classes at NIU this past semester (Illustration I and Watercolor I) which were a good, though in some ways a somewhat painful, learning experience. They were painful mostly because I had to start at 8 am, which, unless you are a morning person, is pretty much horrible, especially since in studio classes you generally have to actually DO things as opposed to sitting mindlessly in a lecture. I also learned how to do full value ink drawings, which, while I'm glad I know how to do it and will probably use parts of the technique in other work, am looking forward to (hopefully) never having to do again. The intense tight line work is not at all my style, which seems to be leaning more and more to water media at the moment. I learned a good deal about watercolor and the things it is capable of doing this semester. It was a little strange because I was in a class with a bunch of students who, while only two years younger than me, made me feel quite old, simply because there is a pretty big difference between a sophomore in college and a senior. It also seemed that I was pretty much alone in really wanting to learn how to use watercolor and in loving the medium. It felt like a lot of people were taking the class because they had to, which, while understandable, was a bit strange after having only taken upper level classes with people who were taking what they wanted to take for the past couple of years.

Though I did about 10 paintings this last semester, there were really only two that I felt brought me forward, only two that really did anything differently from what I'd done before. In the first one, which was done earlier, I was doing a reworking of of a painting from when I was doing My God. This is the orignal from around a year earlier:



Here is the new version, done around two months ago:



In the second one, I used a lot more color and there is more of an awareness of texture. I don't think this is the final version of this work, but one thing I appreciate about watercolor is the fact that all I have to do is staple a wet piece of paper to a board and I'm good to go. If I want to do multiple versions of an idea I can much more easily because, unlike oil, I don't have to worry about making a canvas stretcher, stretching canvas, and gessoing before finally getting started. It's much more pliable in this way.

The second piece was much more personal. Both of my grandparents on my mother's side passed this last year, so I wanted to paint a portrait of them for posterity and for my mother. It had also been awhile since I'd done a portrait, so I guess I also wanted to see if I was still capable, as once I mostly did figure study. I looked through some old photo albums and found a picture that my mother took maybe ten years ago when we were all on Martha's Vineyard together staying at my Aunt's house. While somewhat unconventional, I chose this photograph because it was a time I remembered distinctly, it was a time we were all together, and it feels joyful. It also has figures interacting, but not in an obvious sort of fashion. It doesn't feel pose-y, like many of the other photographs I looked at:



I then tried to mesh tight painting (which I am much better at then tight line drawing) with an abstract color background. I think this painting is a big step forward for me, and I am going to be very interested in working with figures more in the future. I had forgotten how much I enjoy portraiture.



So that's all for now. I will be uploading my adventures in illustration I at some point fairly shortly as well.

A Spot of Tea

So. One of the projects I'm working on this summer is a book about chinese tea with Nick and Lali. This is the first draft of a cover:


S'il te plait, click on it to see a larger image. It is a watercolor painting and I put the text on it in Photoshop. I wanted to block out the text with masking fluid and then erase it away so it was all white afterward, but that didn't allow me much room for error or messing around with the type, so this was a much better choice I think. Also I kind of enjoy the hard graphic edges of the type in contrast to the organic nature of the painting. The type is, of course, now subject to minute changes that the normal person will probably not notice, but will be a big deal to graphics people. Specifically typographers. I've never taken a typography class, so I'll probably run this by some people I know who have.

Also, today I bought this amazing stereo that has bluetooth, has a dock for an iPod, has a dock for a usb, can play regular and mp3 cds, can play FM and AM radio and has an alarm clock. I was super excited because it was everything I ever wanted in a pretty cheap package, and I thought I would be able to connect my computer to it wirelessly (the bluetooth) only to discover upon trying to connect my computer to it that there are different kinds of bluetooth, and the stereo was a2dp or something, which mac osx 4.11 does not support for some idiotic reason. So I was thinking I would have to return it, because most of the reason I got it was so that I could play music and watch movies wirelessly on loud, quality speakers when I discovered that apparently you can buy a usb device that adapts your computer to a2dp bluetooth. Or something. I'm not even really sure why there are different kinds of bluetooth. Anyway, I don't really know what I'm doing, so I'm going to call Best Buy tomorrow and have them tell me what to buy so I know for sure that it will work with a mac. Ridiculousness. It seems every time I buy a new technological product, I have to invest in something else to make whatever I just bought work the way I want it to. C'est la vie.

New Harry Potter Book Covers

Maybe? I hope so. I don't know about everyone else, but I've always felt the illustrations/covers of Harry Potter (the American Edition, don't know about the others) were just all right. Not really my style, I suppose. Examples:







They certainly look like children's books, which I suppose to an extent they are, at least the first couple. But really they have become a lot more than that, and each one grew in maturity and I wouldn't really recommend the last book to an eight year old. These new designs (which, as far as I can tell, were done for fun and are not going to be published) are classic, mature, and really just well done aesthetically.









I am iffy on the fifth one (Order of the Phoenix) because the image of the world in someone's hands is a cliche and this hasn't really added any twists to that. However, the seventh one (Deathly Hallows) is especially brilliant because it subtly introduces the concept the the idea that the seventh book hinged on, which was that everything at that point was polluted and controlled by the evil doers (Voldemort). I also enjoy the sixth one (Half-Blood Prince) because can totally see that scene in the book. Overall, I would say these would be a nice change of pace to the children's illustrations that seem to be de facto for Harry Potter covers. You can see them in their home environment here.

Hmm

It has been a while, I see. I guess I went through a bit of a . . . creative death for a few months. This last semester at UIUC has not been good. Frankly, I'm ready to close this chapter of my life and move on . . . by going back to my hometown to study for a semester at NIU! Hahahaha! Oh wow. Can anyone tell how awesome I am?

Anyway, I did get into RISD, but I am going to defer for a year. And because they don't let transfer students defer, I mean I am going to reapply next year with a really amazing portfolio. They gave my a $15,000 scholarship, which pretty sizable and makes the whole thing doable, but I'm hoping that if I step up my game next year I'll get even more. Also I really feel like I'm not in a place right now where I can handle the stress of taking a lot of hardcore studio classes, having to worry about living in a new place far away from anyone I know, and getting a good part time job. I need a year off. I've been in school for 17 years for goodness sake!

So this summer I'm living at home, but so are Maddi and Vanessa. It'll but just like high school, only now we can all drink! Whoo! My goals to get back in the creative groove consist of the following:

• Start sketching. I had to do three drawings for my RISD application, and while I was doing them I realized that I hadn't actually really drawn since the end of my sophomore year of college, or something like two years earlier. Doing rough sketch outs of what goes where for the first part of a painting is not drawing. It is part of the painting process, which is completely different. So I will do at least one fully developed sketch a day of whatever I feel like sketching. I want to become really adept and fast at drawing. This skill set has always slowed me down because I'm perfectly capable of it, it just takes me a little longer than it should. Annoying.
• Make at least two master painting copies to work on my technical skills. These will probably be Turners, a John Singer Sargent, and maybe an Odd Nerdrum.
• Rework The Sheep Child so I've actually finished a freaking project.
  
• Work and finish this new book project that I've been discussing with Nick and Lali. They want to write a text about Chinese Tea. I like tea, and also have an idea for a cover, so I hope to do all the graphic stuff for the book and then we can publish on Lulu.
  
• Work on illustrating my mom's short story. Hopefully if I can do all of these things I will have not one but three completed books to put in my portfolio for my RISD application next year. Whoo!

Here are some of the paintings I am hoping to copy:

JMW Turner--The Burning of the Houses of Parliament

John Singer Sarget--Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose

I am tired.

More Adventures in Layout

We're going somewhere. Some more initial layout:




I'm thinking of using this for the final page:



I'm actually really getting into this. The computer allows the process to go a lot more quickly and I can work on it pretty much anywhere if I have the right files and images uploaded.

On another note, another childhood love I've been getting back into aside from Tintin is Ranma 1/2. I hadn't read the comics in a few years, so I forgot how completely ridiculous and fun it is. The basic premise is that Ranma is a teenage male martial artist whose accidentally gets knocked into a cursed spring while training in China. The spring has a tragic history of a woman drowning it in some 1000 years ago and now anyone who falls in turns into a girl when splashed by cold water. Hot water reverts them to their original form. So Ranma turns into a buxom red head every time he's hit with cold water. There are all sorts of springs, and throughout the series new characters who have fallen into springs of drowned cats, pigs, ducks, and yetis riding oxen while holding an eel in one hand and a crane in the other, pop up.


So anyway Ranma and his father go to live with his father's old friend Soun Tendo. The father's decide that Ranma will be engaged to Akane, Soun's youngest daughter. Both Ranma and Akane are vehemently against this and what follows are a bunch of action packed (mostly) silly stories. I'm one of those weird people who laughs out loud if I'm reading something funny, and I laugh a lot during Ranma. You can, if you so desire, read it all online for free here: The New Ranma 1/2 Project. It also has a lot of T&A. I'm not sure if it's normal to seem topless teenage girls running around all over the place in Japan, but this was apparently a series aimed at children. Anyway, if you're not offended by black and white line drawings of boobs, it's fun.

Dean from Gilmore Girls and Marica Gay Harden, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

This appears to combine schmaltzy Hallmark Channel Christmas movie with Thomas Kinkaide. I think a teenage crush just died. *sigh*

Layout

So I'm laying stuff out on the computer and I'm not terrifically over the top happy with anything yet. I think I need to do some more stuff by hand to scan in or something. It just feels kind of amateurish at the moment, although I do think the cover is pretty close. I've been working on that a lot and only just started on the pages, so I think it's a matter of just continuing to mess around with it. It's a process and given time constraints, the computer is really the best finalizing tool because I can undo with a click. I think I'm learning, too. The other plus is I can present several of them in crit and get feedback and then simply fix it on the computer. So perhaps in this experimental phase, this is best.

I got some more vintage photos that I ordered online from New Jersey this weekend. Some of them just give me the heebie jeebies! I'm pretty sure that some of the babies are dead in the photographs. It wouldn't be surprising as taking a photo of the recently deceased was a pretty common thing 90 or so years ago. It's pretty weird looking at all of these photos of random people from the the beginning of the 20th century knowing that they are either very old or very dead now. The photos all reek of another era. It's a strange atmosphere. Some stuff I've done with new ones:


Paul said the lower one looks like a vampire, which I am not going to argue with. I actually think it looks a little like Batboy:



Hee!

COFFEE

Hey, you know whats kind of fun? Screwing around with an antique photo by putting gouache on it and then scanning it into photo shop and screwing around with it some more there.

I'm actually enjoying myself and I'm not super stressed. About this project. At the moment. I do actually have about five more pages to write for a short story tonight plus two free verse poems, so that's nice.

I give you . . . Sheep Girl!



Her power is her phenomenal sense of fashion. She is rocking that giant velvet hair bow.

The Sheep Child

So for my final project of the semester I'm going to get a book done. So I can do this without having to worry about the writing aspect of it (I am having a lot of trouble feeling that any of my writing is in a state to be published at this point and setting it in stone is only going to stress me out) I am going to illustrate a wonderful and pretty famous poem by James Dickey called The Sheep Child. I've also decided that due to time constraints, lack of resources, and a lack of technical skill on my part, to do the illustrations, scan them into the computer, pair them with the text and mess around with them in photoshop or illustrator or whatever, and get the thing published on lulu. I am sick of not being able to mess up and learn because I don't have the resources here or the time with resources. If I mess up on the computer, it's no biggie. Just get rid of that layer. I, of course, am going to continue hand making books in order to get better and more technical, but I simply don't have time for a crummy badly bound hand made book. I want something crisp and clean this time round.

So anyway. I got a bunch of antique photos of children and babies from the early 20th century at one of the local used bookstores. I'm going into them with goauche, though I've only messed with one so far. I scanned it in and then selected the oval. Then I just added a bunch of layers and text in photoshop and came up with the first draft for the cover. I don't know. I'm going to let it mull and show it to some of my friends in graphic design to see what they say.



I can't wait for this semester to be over.