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.

8 1/2 DVD Cover.

For my Illustration Concepts class we were asked to create a DVD cover for a film- not only did it have to have been created before we were born, but it also could not be animated or Mary Poppins. I ended up deciding on Federico Fellini's 8 1/2, which eventually spawned the musical Nine, which in turn was then put on film in 2009's Nine. In essence, 8 1/2 is a film about the creative process, the business and artistic clash of movie making, and the main character's struggle to balance and manage his relationships with the women in his life. This is currently unfinished, as I need to figure out the hand lettering for the title, but I figured I should throw it up here anyway before I alter it. There are two versions up- the first is an untouched scan of the original painting, the other is one edited so the hair's contrast is toned down. I'm not really 100% sure which one I prefer.  I ended up deciding on the edited version.

Planet Produce.

This was an assignment to make a graphic iconic shape for the local produce stand "Planet Produce" based around a fruit/vegetable alphabet we had to create. I ended up going with the motif of a bean and adjusted my lettering to fit. The words surrounding the "Planet Produce" are key words that we were told to include in our work. This will be checked out by the stand owner in the coming weeks, where he may choose one of our interpretations to be used for his shop. Clothing mock up model images came from the wonderful site Design By Humans.

Handletters Blog Header.

Another semester has begun! I started it off with a bang by getting my gallbladder removed the week before winter break ended (I had gallstones that affected me throughout last semester). It was a pretty crazy experience but luckily I'm healing well and things have overall been going well.

So this piece is a header that we were asked to design for the class blog in my hand lettering class with Whitney Sherman. I have a ton of preliminary sketches for this assignment I might eventually scan, but for now here is the final. Unfortunately, mine did not get chosen, but I did make it to the top 8 in the class which was exciting.

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!

Art Market.

So after slaving away (and pulling two all nighters) to get everything done for it, Art Market is finally here at last. The stickers that are for sale of my dog drawings I did over the summer (seen here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). Hopefully I will sell a a majority/all of them- my final total was 588 individual stickers, all cut out by hand by yours truly.

Life Map.

An update?! I know, shocking. I've been quite overwhelmed this semester- health issues on top of an extremely heavy workload make it hard to keep this blog up to date.

Anyway, this is a piece I just finished up yesterday for Illustration Concepts. We needed to make a map of some sort, so I made a map representation of my childhood/growing up, mainly featuring the people who influenced me the most during specific time periods of my life represented by animals who share personality traits with the aforementioned people.

It was a lot more fun then I thought it would be, and I'm pretty happy with the results.