First Paper Sculpt inspired by Brittney Lee

I've been talking about doing a paper sculpt for a looong time now, and finally I had both time and a reason to do one! This is about 8x8 inches square and took about 15 hours--5 planning and 10 cutting and pasting.

A good friend just returned from a trip to India, and I made this piece to commemorate her experiences there. The sari in the piece is based on one she wore in India.

You all know about Brittney Lee, of course...right? Well if not, please go check out her amazing art!

She is one of my favorite artists--possibly THE favorite artist, and her fresh, fun, and beautiful art never ceases to amaze me. Her paper sculpting pieces are the sole reason I'm interested in this medium! I feel so blessed to have gotten to meet her and see her do a live paper-sculpting demo at CTN, and I definitely intend to do more pieces, and soon! A whole new world...

Here are two different lighting situations, so you can see the dimensionality of it: (OR mostly because I couldn't decide which lighting I liked best...hahaha!)

Some detail shots:

 

And finally, the Photoshop sketch I made in order to test out different combinations of color, saturation, and value before launching into the final. I had the most trouble choosing the border and background colors--I wanted a border for depth, but I didn't want it to draw attention away from the figure. I ended up using all similar greens (more so than I intended--the selection of green cardstock at the craft store was not up to par!) to allow the eye to go right to the figure.

A Merry Christmas Comic

For a dear friend :)

A Truck in the Mirror

This one takes some explaining.

I keep a whiteboard marker near my mirror so I can write down to do list items. Every now and then, I'll draw on the mirror. Usually it's some kind of Chris Sanders-esque character.

But today I was sitting in the living room and I had this RANDOM image of a truck driving over a cliff pop into my head...

...so I got up, went over to the mirror, and drew it.

20 Minute Well Doodle

So I'm writing a paper right now...but this was my 20 minute break. I just needed to get it out of my system. Plus I've been wanting to play around with brushes a bit more. Meh. Back to work!

Zoo Sketches

Went to the LA Zoo with my good friend Haley, sketched some (fidgety) animals:

The Architect's Sketchbook

This semester I'm taking an architectural sketching class...and haven't gotten around to uploading any of the sketches until tonight. So here we have just a few of the multitude...

Christmas designs already!

I know, I know. Actually, no I DON'T know why it's too early to start with Christmas...so I'm starting! Haha anyways, in my egregious amounts of spare time, I'm working on a Christmas card design. Here's one small part... :D

A Quick Character

Soooo I'm supposed to be writing a paper right now. So WHY do all these new ideas keep flooding my brain and begging to be sketched? It's just not fair. (Maybe I should stop perusing Francisco Herrera and Chris Sanders art during my breaks? Nah...)

Anyways, here's a new character. Just for fun:

Finally, art again!

I haven't posted anything in a while, but it's definitely NOT because I haven't been working...
I recently got two illustration jobs for two books. One is a children's book, one is a young adult book. They're super fun and I'm really excited to be working on them, but of course I can't post most of what I do here, since it belongs to my employers.

The other consequence of doing art for hire is that I haven't had any time lately to do any art for myself. School has just started up for the year this last week, and so has the activity with my campus fellowship. All this together means I've almost forgotten what it's like just to DO art.
I've been coming up with all kinds of ideas for projects, paintings, drawings, layouts, etc, but all the thumbnails and sketches just get shoved into the "to do later" pile.

I was thinking about that the other day, and it made me really, really sad. Today is my sabbath, so I set aside a big chunk of time to just do art...for the sake of doing it.

Today I fished an old sketch out of that pile and developed it. It felt GREAT!

Business Card

My first business cards are finally here! I just needed something to hand out to people who were asking until I get a final version printed. I'm hoping to color the cavern layout and make that into a nice card, but I chose the chef in the meantime!

Wedding Dress

A friend of mine wanted me to do a sketch of her sister in a wedding dress (yes, she's getting married!). I did 2 sketches--one princess style and one more modern. She chose the modern look and then I drew it in Photoshop. Fun fun fun!

...I was looking a lot at Brittney Lee and Elsa Chang for inspiration.

Sketchbook: Church and fashion!

This morning during church I got inspired. I've actually been sewing a caftan similar to the ones below out of old bedsheets I got for free a year or two ago. Free clothes, Woo!
Anyways, these are just some of the ideas bouncing around in my head. Enjoy!

Brother Bear and Man v. Nature!

Will likes to use layouts and paintings from Brother Bear often, since they're just darned good. I was looking through his packet of art and was thoroughly inspired by the epic looking man v. nature themes.

SO I drew a group of thumbnail ideas for snowscapes--with a lonely snowshoed traveler. Of course, when I showed them to Will he pointed out the egregious even spacing that was littered throughout most of them, but hopefully I'll be able to correct some of the proportions on these and (maybe?) bring them a couple to paint.

Something Slimy

I drew a couple tentacles yesterday.

...Will would be pleased, and vindicated.

Speed Still Life!

Last week in Nicole's class we ended early, so we only had 2 hours. Since painting faster or limiting my amount of time has seemed to produce more fresh-looking paintings for me, I decided to try to paint a large chunk of the set-up as fully as I could.
I was actually surprised at how much I got done. Then again, there's not too much detail. Ah well, I did learn a lot with this one.

I like to think that this is a courtroom scene taking place among the objects. The vase is the judge, the plate of fruit the jury, and the lone peach in the blue bowl is the witness on the stand. The yellow vase and the white jar are the lawyers, and the red apple is the defendant. They're all arguing fiercely as the three lemon up in the audience are gossiping about whether or not he's guilty.

I ended up using only a corner of the huge canvas, and I kind of like the way nothing blends into something:

Faces from Karl's Class

A couple faces fleshed out from imagination, based on the diagrams we're learning:

The model was a no-show, so we drew each other!

Pride and Prejudice Sketches

I love the new version of Pride and Prejudice...it's just a visual treat.
I did a few quick sketches of some scenes with nice composition.

Cow Sketches

I borrowed Ken Hultgren's book "The Art of Animal Drawing" from a friend, and it's been amazingly helpful! So helpful, in fact, that I went into a cow-drawing frenzy!
Anyways, here's a slightly peeved cow. Enjoy!

...Whoops! One of them's missing something :D

Kite Layout Rough Drawing

After much ado (consisting of film studies, thumbnails, prop designs, silhouettes, perspective grids, and tears of frustration), I finally landed on what I think will pass for a composition.

Here is a rough drawing of the layout. Right now the main purpose is to check that the composition works, evokes the right emotion, and leads the eye. The drawing itself was done hastily :)
When I take it to a finish I suppose I'll work out some better designs, and spend a little more time drawing!

Lastly, I painted three different potential lighting layouts, obviously very rough. Just to get some ideas...

Final Ragneau Layout!

Sooooo this layout was "in the works" for about 3 months...because I dropped it after burning out on the painting part...ugh. Took SO long! But now it's mostly done, so I'm just gonna post it :)
I still need to work on the shading for the chest in the foreground, and maybe mess with the colors to unify it some more, but forget that for now. I'm done.

I slapped on an adjustment layer to boost the blue in all the shadows, to bring the colors together. Then I did a perfunctory pass with a mask to desaturate all the areas except the focal point. Done. Cheeeaaah!

Still Life...again!

More still life from Nicole's class.
These were both done in about 2.5 hours. Nicole wanted me to practice going faster and painting more organically...because when I practice the "massing" technique, I tend to get too methodical about it and turn my paintings into big abstract jigsaw puzzles that look awful until the very last 15 minutes when everything comes together...
Let's just say these two were a lot more fun to paint.

Grandpa's Kite Dev Process

Now for some film studies from Kung Fu Panda, for composition inspiration:

...and some thumbnails, based on specific film studies chosen from those above.

More Fashion

I've been drawing a lot of inspiration from fashion magazines, Padme's costume designs, and my own wardrobe recently, and have come up with a dozen different designs I want to paint. I've started out with these silhouettes...
More to come!

Choosing Your Composition...

For Still Life Painting last Thursday, I chose to paint a scene that wasn't officially part of the setup. This onion was leftover and was laying on top of extra fabric at the base of one of the stools we use to set the plants and vases on.

As I looked at the scene, I noticed a couple of interesting compositional points (through my viewfinder made of masking tape...)

1. The shadow shapes all form triangles pointing to the onion (squint until the picture becomes simple dark and light shapes...then notice what they are doing)
2. The saturation and contrast are intense near the onion (I could have pushed this a lot more, desaturating the BG a little more...like that stool...)
3. The lines of the fabric form a sharp angle at the onion, which (according to Will) draw the eye in and stop it. In opposition, the lines formed by the vase and the shadow shapes are all curving, which move the eye past them swiftly. (Again, that stool is battling for attention due to the sharp angles of its legs, but oh well...)
4. The elements, entry and exit points, are mostly placed along the most pleasing proportions (Will says they are: 1/3-2/3. 60-40, 50-50, and 80-20)

All in all, I was thinking, "How can I compose this picture so that the viewer knows exactly where to look?"