Pantone.

In my Illustration Concepts II class we had to listen to three NPR articles- one about Pantone and the fashion industry, one about the study of fleas and how they jump, and one about turtles and their internal navigation system. We were then asked to do an illustration based on whichever story we preferred- I took the opportunity to do a fun fashion illustration.

Mr. Linden's Library.

For Jaime Zollars' Book Illustration class we were assigned a "mystery" piece where we needed to do a black and white illustration based on a quote that we got at random. Mine was "He had warned her about the book. Now it was too late." I have always really liked doing fairly detailed interiors but never seem to apply that to my work, so this was a good chance to. I ended up basically making my dream room (A bed that is nestled in a wall? Sign me up!) that had elements inspired by my fabulous roommate Colleen Roxas (namely the zebras). The protagonist of the story is sleeping after a long night of studying, while a ghostly hand reaches down to grab her.

I need to revamp my "colored" version, as the black and white did not have enough contrast, but I figured I'd throw the sketches up here because, well, why not? The first one is the drawing sans the hand, so that if I decide to re-draw it I don't disturb the environment. The second is my sketch with my ghostly hand included. At some point I hope to do a full color version of this, but that of course is time permitting.

Words on Wheels.

So I was lucky enough that my hand lettering class was selected as one of the ones that would compete for Words on Wheels (which is "contest" based on a partnership with MICA and select Baltimore grade schools) for the chance to have your work with the child's poem featured in the Baltimore City public buses. I ended up getting "My Dreams and Beliefs" and decided to illustrate the narrator (long with a future version of himself) "thinking" the text. Unlike the Concepts classes that got this assignment, I was allowed to hand letter my poem as long as the title was the only thing done "fancy"- the poem itself needed to be pretty simple so it was easily read. We needed to follow specific size and orientation guidelines, which is tough when you are working with something so long and thin, but I think I did alright with it.

I am pretty happy with how the illustration turned out, but I edited the thought cloud to be larger upon my teacher's suggestion, causing the text to feel too rigid in the center. If I get selected I will be reworking the way the poem is spaced out and it's size- I didn't have enough time before I had to go print and submit it to the Illustration department.

On a fun side note, this assignment forced me to break my habit of perpetually drawing women and get some dudes in. On a not so fun note, I had to spend 5 hours in our school's print lab waiting to be able to get a print with the correct colors due to their large scale printer having issues with it's ink distribution.