My first project in the class called for using watercolor to produce a series of 3 illustrations relating to memory loss. I'm not too experienced with watercolor and I think that shows (simple composition and no depth), but I got some good practice with these. I thought the color scheme I made for the last one was pretty good, and the fallen leaves look all right.
"Video Game Mountain"
Here is what I made for the "gouache" paint project in the class (click here for a wikipedia page on gouache). The prompt was "Get Outside and Play", directed towards children (getting them to go outside more).
I don't know if others liked/would like this as much (it doesn't look great in terms of technical skill when viewed closely), but I personally really, really liked how this turned out. Part of this is probably because it was one of the first things I had ever made with gouache (the other first - they were made about the same time - was my "Cats Coming Out Your Ears" illustration in Children's Book), so I think I handled it well for an unfamiliar medium. I also liked the colors for the most part, the characters were fun to make, details were fun to add, and I like making anything that relates to video games.
This was for the acrylic project, based on the prompt "Love between pets and their owners". The line on the left image is from me scanning in parts, and having to manually merge it together (the photo-merge feature in Photoshop didn't work for some reason). I wasn't super excited about these, particularly the one on the right, which I did in a few hours the day before it was due. I got a little practice with glazing medium, a substance recommended by my teacher that can be used with acrylic to keep it wet longer, and this lets you do things like making gradients easier (the shadows/light in the dog's fur is a good example of where I used it quite a lot).
This was the ink project for the class, with the prompt "Swinging London". The first two images show me experimenting with ink. For the final illustration, I decided to show a scene at the Tower Bridge, with a group of pigeons in the foreground, one of which has distinguished him/herself from the rest with a fancy headpiece.
I decided to go with a brush and a brush-pen for most of this, as opposed to my usual use of a ballpoint pen. I think it resulted in a looseness (both in the physical act of drawing and the final appearance) that I enjoyed.
These were all a part of the collage project in the class. I was pleasantly surprised with the results, for the most part. The first two images were just some unfinished experiments (using materials the teacher brought to class), but thought they produced some fun images. The third image shows the final illustration, based on the theme of "Moving Out" (of your parents house, to college). I put a river to represent the Minnesota River, which runs past my hometown of St. Peter up to Minneapolis (where I go to college). The black/white figure represents the high school "me" and the color one is the college "me" (with the color difference reflecting how I felt about one versus the other). I've enjoyed projects in the past where I cut out out little pieces from newspapers/magazines, and this project was no different.
The first image is my experiment for the cut paper project, and the second image is the final illustration. I was supposed to make something that included four interior products from Target, and the Target logo itself. I had a lot of trouble thinking of an idea and drawing it out for this project, and mostly just made up the composition (and a few of the elements) as I went along.
Interesting tidbit about the experiment (the face eating a burger): I believe the two tiny marks in the bottom left corner came from a mouse, as this piece was sitting on the floor of my studio (in the main MCAD building) for a couple of days. The mouse understood the basic concept of the piece, I guess.
These images are all from my final project for Tools of the Trade, in which we could use any medium(s) to illustrate our idea of "The Simple Life". This project started with my teacher showing a technique to the class. This technique involved making a drawing (preferably on tracing paper, I think?), placing this drawing over another piece of paper, and using a ballpoint pen to press into all of the lines of the drawing. This leaves an impression in the other paper below, and this impression can then be colored over (with colored pencil, for example), and a negative "white line" image will result.
I decided to make a series showing my three cats back home, using a photo of the three of them all lying together on my parent's bed. I originally thought that the "white line"/colored pencil images would be what I would present as my final illustrations, but my teacher liked the effect of the ink drawing on tracing paper on top of the colored pencil, and I decided to present it like that (I did flip it up during critique briefly to show the image underneath, though).
After I had the first two cats (Oreo and Zelda) done, my cat Lily passed away at my parent's house (where they all resided). It was pretty sad and made this project a little more meaningful (not that it wasn't already meaningful). I thought it was an interesting coincidence that Lily was the only one (in the photo of the three of them) whose face was visible, and she was at the top of the "triangle" in the picture (she was the oldest cat).
And, before I conclude this long post, here are a few extra images of some in-class experimenting. The first and second images show some stuff I did after the demo involving color pencil/impressions. The last two images show some ink I spread over blobs of color I made with crayon, and the small scratches I made into the layer of ink with a small exacto knife. That sheet of bristol with the crayon/ink will unfortunately always remind me of the first time I got a cut bad enough to warrant stitches; when attempting to push the cap off of my (new) exacto knife, it slipped off and I got a seriously nasty cut on the tip of my index finger. Wasn't too fun... but it's mostly healed by now, so all's good.
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