Letterpress.

I've been so busy this summer, I forgot to take some time to post scans of my letterpress pieces from my class this summer! First two are post cards (on two different shades of paper). Next are 5 different versions of business cards that I have made, and last but not least is my calendar page which references the phrase "April showers bring May flowers."

Letterpress- Tests and Postcards.

So for the next few weeks there will be a disruption in my normal posting habits because I am taking a Letterpress class with Kyle van Horn! It's really really interesting and I have learned a ton in only four days. It's a three week long course, with each class starting at 9:30 am and ending at 4:30 pm. We have three assignments we have to finish before class ends- a set of postcards, a few sets of business cards, and a calendar. Because the process can be so time consuming it is recommended that we either come to class early (around 8:45) or stay late (yesterday I stayed there printing till 7). It's tough on my feet- for the last two days I have been standing almost consistently for around 15 hours total. Ouch! But I am starting to get the hang of putting my sets together/setting them up on the press and luckily Kyle is a really patient teacher and helps me along the way.

The first image is the Vandercook letterpresses we are using. They are pretty old but beautiful and do their job fantastically. Next up are the lock ups that Kyle designed/set up for our syllabus covers. After that is a collection of the first letterpresses that I pulled- some syllabus covers and some text (everyone was asked to use the fonts available to them to make a 2+ line phrase- I did "This too shall pass)!

The following image is the mixing station, where I was mid way through mixing my final ink colors. Last but not least are some examples of my first assignment, a postcard. I have two different versions- one is on off-white/warm white paper, while the other is on "white-white"/cool white paper. I have about 60 of them in total. Apologies for the low quality pictures of the final versions of my piece- I used my iPhone camera as these are going to stay in the classroom till my class ends, and the lighting is terrible in the room I took the photographs in. Once my class is over I will re-shoot everything with my Nikon with good lighting.

"Rory" the Microraptor.

Summer is here, so now I can touch up some of the pieces I've wanted to post but were not finished to my liking. This is one of the last things I will be posting from my Junior year, and coincidentally one of the last things I did for my Book Illustration class. We were asked to create a character based on three words we were given at random and give them a back story of our own invention. I ended up with "tiny", "extinct", and "blissful", which I used to create Rory the Microraptor. And yes, this type of dinosaur actually exists! She somehow survived extinction and lives in a museum, playing "dead" as a display during the day and exploring at night. We were then asked to then make an illustration with a classmate's character interacting with ours- I still am not happy with how mine currently looks so I will probably post that a bit later after I tweak it.

As I did last summer, I have come up with art-related goals I want to reach over the break:
-Solidify a drawing style
-Make a lot of patterns because heck, they are really fun to do
-Get committed to using sketchbooks!
-Keep drawing- whether you are doing quick doodles or finished pieces- do not get comfortable with not making artwork

Monogram.

For my Hand Letters class we were told to put together all of our work from the semester, adding a monogram and full name to the compilation. You can see the results regarding my name in the new blog banner, and this is the result of spending way too much time obsessing about the monogram being perfect.

In addition, the blog has gotten a fresh new look to go with the end of this semester. Much better I think.

Fabric Design.

Found out today that my hand lettered fabric pattern made it through as a finalist in Spoonflower's alphabet contest!

Click here to see my competition and vote for me!  Voting is now closed.


(The submissions rotate through pages so I cannot link directly. Look for my design, my username is Morphkid03)

Thanks!

Equestrian Fashion.

We were allowed to do anything we wanted for my Illustration Concepts II class that could possibly tie into our thesis in some way or another. I was in the mood to work with clothing more, so I ended up doing this small equestrian fashion piece. It's not perfect, but I got to try a few new things while making it, so I am (currently) pretty happy with it.

Handlettered Pattern.

For my Hand Letters class we were asked to create a pattern based on letters/the alphabet for a contest hosted by Spoonflower. I fooled around with the entire alphabet (with some letters repeated) and am pretty happy with how it came out! It was my first official jump into true tile-ready patterning and I gotta say, I really like it. The first ones were my first color choice, the second ones are the ones being submitted to Spoonflower due to highly saturated colors and dark colors potentially having trouble being printed on to fabrics.