little red

This is watercolor outlined with a fine pen. About 4 or 5 years ago I took some pictures of my little sisters in costume to use for art. So I've been wanting to use them forever and I finally used one and I was able to do it for a class! I have found more success with my watercolors by working out my reference ahead of time in photoshop so that I have a very clear idea of where I'm going, a necessity since watercolors are not very forgiving. I really like how the forest in the background turned out.

Here is the original photo I took. I didn't like the trees, they were too small so I found a better forest and created the reference I wanted in photoshop. As you can see, she also is not wearing a beautiful red cape. I looked at a lot of cloaked individuals to make up my own. And then of course I needed a wolf to stalk my little girl. My final photoshop reference is below. I don't worry about it looking perfect (she's not perfectly cut out and the cape isn't painted photo real) but it needs to show me that my final piece will be convincing.

reflection

This is an oil painting I did over Thanksgiving holiday at my parents house. I was assigned to do a painting of someone's reflection painted in an analogous color palette. I had a few different ideas all with children that I was thinking of doing. Here is one of my sketch book pages:

I chose to do a little girl scrutinizing and admiring herself in a mirror. I painted it in a yellow analogous palette (the color is not showing up perfectly in the photo but it's close). My four-year-old sister was a very willing model. The reference photo is below. There are a couple more little things I want to do, but I think it's getting there.

Bestiary

I am pretty happy with how this piece turned out. I painted it in acrylic and applied gold leaf. I wanted to capture the unique and distorted views of animals in medieval bestiaries. This is a whale. They believed that the whale would rest on the surface of the water so long that plants would grow on their backs. Sailors would then mistake them for islands and land on the whale. When they built a fire, the whale would get hot and dive back under the water much to the sailors' misfortune.

Down here is a study of a different design I did in watercolor. I donated it to the vending machine show at BYU.