Horse Portraits.

So as you can see, I've been pretty busy since my last post here- I got a handful commissions for horse portraits around the holidays, and now that I've finished the last of them I can finally show them to you! I had a good time working on them, especially since they gave me a chance to keep working with hand lettering!

Horse Portrait- Cinderella.

Decided to do a fun little drawing of a friend's pony- it gave me a good excuse to do a lot of hand lettering exercises!

Horse Portrait- Bob.

So I've finally had a nice amount of decompression/relaxation time to recover from the end of my time at MICA, and I figured I'd whip something up that I had meant to do for a long time but had been too busy to sit down and actually create- a simple little memorial portrait of a horse named Bob that belonged to a good friend of mine who sadly had to be put down a few years ago. I took the opportunity to fool around a bit with how I work when only using digital tools, and I'm pleased with the results- it was quite tough to refrain from whipping out my ink and brushes on this one though!

Horse Pattern.

Surprise, surprise- I made a horse pattern in thesis! I decided since today was the running of the 137th Preakness Stakes horse race that it was an apt time to post it! Each horse is accurately colored to an existing type of coat seen in the equine species! It was a lot of fun to do this pattern, though initially it was far more limited in it's scale- Initially I had only a few different colors, but a friend suggested doubling the pattern and pushing myself with it to really make it a unique surface design.

London 2012 Olympics Equestrian Poster.

Another poster for the London 2012 Olympics, this time representing the Equestrian disciplines featured in the Olympic Games. I incorporated a pattern referenced from this antique English chair in my hand lettering, and the horse is jumping the famous Tower Bridge! In this poster the hardest part was figuring out a way to balance what details of the architecture to include and what to ignore but I think I found a successful way to go about it! I am a competitive horseback rider so doing this poster was nothing short of an absolute pleasure- when I have the opportunity to draw horses/riders, I take it!

Trotting Horse.

Quick silhouette I did tonight to try to de-stress before classes start this week.... Maybe it will be incorporated into a pattern in the future.

Senior year is really tough.

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.

Journal Cover.

So the semester of Fall 2010 has come and gone.. This is my final from my Illustration Concepts I class with Rebecca Bradley- we had a "secret Santa" where we picked concepts for our final that our classmates had written up for us. I ended up getting my own secret Santa idea, which was to do a an illustration for a product. I ended up doing a journal (not so happy with how my page designs ended up, though).  I went for a lighthearted version of foxhunting. At first I wanted to do it digitally, but after doing a purely digital version I decided to try liquid acrylics. One thing lead to another (namely with saving time) and the finished product was liquid acrylic on matte medium covered vellum. It was interesting to say the least. Not super happy with the very heavy handed way I had to put it down, but I learned new stuff and I believe I'm going to stick with doing it on standard bristol/watercolor paper from now on. I was really into doing the little tree and bush leaf patterns- I will probably continue to use them in the future.

As a side note, I apologize for the scan quality. I realize that there are parts where it has a glare to it. That's unfortunately what gloss medium does to scanned images. I need to figure out a good way to fix that in the future or else I'm going to be having some trouble. Luckily I figured out a pretty good way to get rid of the glare- plus, now the colors are now more true to life!

American Hot.

So summer has ended, my classes at MICA have begun, and I'm completely stressed out. This is definitely going to be a tough year, but I'm sure I will learn and grow a lot throughout the experience.
This summer was interesting- I worked part time and met my goal of posting a drawing each week on this blog, so all in all I consider it a success.

Of course I have to add some artwork, so here's my first assignment from Illustration Concepts 1, a menu cover design that had to be based on a food product listed in a menu given to us. I chose the "American Hot", a pepperoni and spicy pepper medley pizza, and tried to go for a wild horse being ridden by an adventurous cowgirl as a visual representation of the "kick" that the hot peppers provide to the meal.

Bringing Home the Blue.

Summer equals horse show season! Was inspired to do another horse-related piece from the urging of some friends- just something I've been working with bit by bit this week. Been keeping up with style experimentation.

Character and T-Shirt Design.

As I am frequently asked "Is there somewhere I can see your work?", and that many of my fellow MICAns have one, I have made myself a blog. I'll keep it updated with work, sketches, and what have you.
To kick it off, we have two assignments from my Digital Illustration class with John Malloy. The premise of the two: One had to be a digital painting of a character design or background of a fantasy/sci-fi creature or place. The second was a CMYK illustration to be submitted to http://www.designbyhumans.com/


For the first piece I decided to go the sci-fi route with a robotic horse. It was quite fun to work with, though there *is* a few tweaks it needs, namely making the metal plates in the barrel have a fair bit of difference between them so the painting doesn't flatten itself out.
Second piece I was struggling to get an idea for what to do... eventually I was inspired by my cat, Nala, and went for a simple silhouette of a cat with some crosshatching. Mock up image base is thanks to Design By Humans. I'll be submitting the design to them soon.