the four feathers

The assignment was to do a spot illustration for The Four Feathers. I incorporated four white feathers into an Islamic design.

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.

The little match girl

It has been a long while since I last posted. I am terrible about updating. Here is my final for my VAILL 310 class. I don't even know what my grade is yet... well I like it. I wanted to do something with snow in it, I thought of Hans Christian Andersen because I knew he had some fairytales with snow in them. I chose The Little Match Girl, it is a very tragic story. Here is the story if you aren't familiar with it: http://www.online-literature.com/hans_christian_andersen/981/

IF "Instinct"

It started out as a regular hunting trip and ended up a race for their lives. Instinct told him he would survive if he could just stay ahead of his friend...

I made this pretty quickly in Photoshop for Illustration Friday, topic: instinct.

IF "time"- bomb (womb)

I have finally done an illustration for Illustration Friday! The topic is "time." I am currently expecting a baby in April. As much as I want to have my sweet little baby, I have some anxiety about going through the birthing process again (I had a unmedicated birth with my first son). So this piece hopefully shows my feelings about the inevitability of child birth. I feel like the time is coming too quickly. (made in Illustrator)

Fortune

So here is one I finished in Illustrator last week. The colors are more brilliant in the original, I'll have to figure out why they changed. We were given a fortune cookie for the assignment. the instructor asked us to illustrate our fortune. Mine read: "You will do well to expand your horizons." My husband helped me come up with the initial idea and I took off with it. The baby is trying to expand his space and of course the woman is expanding both physically and she is expanding to a new stage in her life. The style is supposed to be loosely based on the painting style used on Russian black lacquer boxes (palekh) and byzantine iconic paintings.