Curves and Cocoa

Daily character #5

2012-02-11T12:15:00.001-08:00

She's a smoke illusionist!

Far too long

2012-02-11T11:15:00.000-08:00

Moving to ATL and working full-time at Floyd County is wonderful, but it took a lot out of me! I have been far less productive than I usually am; I haven't finished any illustrations in such a long time! However, I have been making an effort to try to keep drawing, even though the four-month art block that landed on me after I got to ATL. It has finally lifted, and I'm still trying my best to finish a decent piece of work now that I have something to work with! Shame on me. Here's some of what I have been drawing though since being here:

I forgot about these drawings in the beginning of the Fall:

This is my friend, Lione l!

I went to CTN in November! It was AMAZING! Here's a drawing from Sean Galloway (Cheeks), a portrait of me done for a demo! (the screen shut off, so he drew it traditionally)
Here's some newer arts:

I had to do an illustration back in May for a LucasFilm competition (I was one of the winners and the illustration doesn't exist anymore, YAY!) But I developed some of the characters I used for the illo during the process:

I drew these a few days ago (you see how I can't draw as well anymore because I have been OUT OF PRACTICE):

Hopefully, more will come to follow!

Daily Character #4

2011-09-21T18:57:00.000-07:00

Heheh...not quite as daily, but I got a job and am moving out to Atl, so give me a break! I was fond of how she came out, the dreamcatcher witch! I'll be coloring her later~

Daily character #3

2011-09-14T22:47:00.001-07:00

Gypsy woman! She was my favorite one to draw from the blitz, and a ton of fun to color! :D

Daily Character #2

2011-09-13T22:22:00.000-07:00

This was meant for yesterday, but I seemed to have missed it by about an hour. Oh well. This guy is an illusionist; he throws a special stone into the hoop that he's holding to cast his illusions; the ropes carry the illusion and animates them. The illusions usually consist of many-headed beasts, but the images vary depending on the kind of stone he uses. It would be fun to play around with him more. I'll post the first picture of him to show where he came from- that one I DID draw last night.

Carnelian pt. 2

2011-09-12T19:02:00.001-07:00

Hello all! I needed to finish posting the rest of the book; it's all here except for one spread (the reveal of the castle) that needs to be redone. Enjoy!

Oh wordless narratives. So much fun, but yet so difficult. Hopefully, the reader can get the overall gist of it; if anyone feels like putting the effort into it, perhaps they can extract something deeper.

Daily character!

2011-09-12T08:52:00.003-07:00

I'm going to attempt to do a daily thing where I color a character sketch (or three) a day. Here is the first one!

Summer Sketches!!

2011-09-11T08:45:00.000-07:00

Have an art, or 13.

WORLD'S BEST DAD. A character design challenge where we had to incorporate an unusual animal/human mix.
Kurai, my old character from like, 10 years ago that I decided to redraw.

This is a character from a video game I really wish I could make; the game is basically you, alone, versus a world that desperately wants you dead.

Character design blitz! I need to color some of these:

I was drawing objects around my room as characters: my lamp is the drummer, the speakers are that ninja lady, and I'm not sure what the fat monster is...

What an unfortunate creature.

I need to finish this one:
And a character for my Drew!

When I get my hard drive hooked up to my computer, I will post the second of the Lucas book! For now, I hope you enjoy these!

Lucas and Adele

2011-08-15T16:29:00.000-07:00

Hi all!

I should have updated ages ago! I'll do a new sketch post soon, but at least for now, I can upload some pages from the wordless narrative I completed for my thesis! It is a book about a boy who needs to rescue his sister from her 'pet'/guardian tiger who is stealing her vitality and her light. It's mostly a surreal trip, and was a ton of fun to work on! This is the first half of the book:

Not Dead

2011-05-30T09:34:00.000-07:00

I promise I'm not dead! I've been working on a wordless book, I will post concept/finished pieces when it's all done! Don't go anywhere!! In the meantime, have this.

Updates!

2011-03-22T12:00:00.000-07:00

I HAVE A WEBSITE: www.labillustration.com

Hello all! I haven't updated in a while; oops. However, as a result, there is a ton of stuff I have to show from my two classes from last quarter!

First up! From my Professional Practices class, I did 4 illustrations that I combined into a set of 4 postcards. They merge into a single image when aligned together.

These were two book cover illos for Japanese folktales: Urashima Taro and The Crane Wife:

And The Pitch is the class that consumed most of my time this quarter; we had to spend 10 weeks developing a Pitch for Nancy Spears, marketing executive at Warner Bros. My Pitch was Norovirus, a story of a computer virus who gains sentience and escapes from the company who created her to the human world. Here are some keyframe illustrations from that show!

Nashi card

2011-02-19T07:57:00.000-08:00

I forgot to upload this when I finished it! Oops! This is going to be a series of 4 different postcards, each centering on a fruit character: in the middle of all 4 cards will be my logo inside of a flower.

Comic!

2011-01-25T20:14:00.000-08:00

Hello all!

After my wonderful trip from Japan (of which the massive update from the trip is still in my drafts), we had a not-so-wonderful project looming over all of our heads! After a couple of all-nighters and a lot of willpower, I finished my first ever original mini-comic! I hope you all like it, I worked really hard! I'm going to tone it and submit it to the SEQA travel anthology; I hope it gets in!

The comic is about two children in the Tokyo Museum: Aoki and Aiden. Aoki finds a hard time relating to her fellow students; she doesn't speak much, so she has trouble making friends. Aiden is an American boy that traveled with his mom for one of her business trips. He doesn't know anyone, but he is very outgoing and adventurous. However, because he can't actually speak any Japanese, he can't make any friends either. The two eventually run into each other and together, with the help from their toys, Mr. Claw and Saba-kun, they communicate and play with one another...without needing to say a word.

Overlook

2010-11-16T16:46:00.000-08:00

This was a ton of fun! I did a watercolor overlay on top of my digital painting to give it some extra tone and texture. I hope you enjoy.

Hide and Seek

2010-11-15T11:04:00.000-08:00

Yeah, another one! This tree was painted in acrylic. Also, it took FOREVER to finish....but here it is!

The Garden

2010-11-15T07:24:00.000-08:00

Hello all-

Finished this over the weekend. I used cut paper for the leaves in the foreground; they took foreverrrr and you can hardly tell, but they're there! They looked so cool on my scanner though :3

Anyone wanna join my team for this animation (refer to two posts previous to see what I'm talking about)?

Creature Infestation

2010-11-13T09:28:00.001-08:00

This was one of the difficult pictures I've colored...ever. It's still prolly not done.

Sidenote: Okay, so the .jpg compression apprently reduces watercolor texture to formless mush...I apologize for this..

The Garden

2010-11-12T08:41:00.001-08:00

Hey all,

Upon seeing the lecture by children's book illustrator, Peter Brown, I became inspired by the visuals that he showed of Sleeping Beauty, and his own book, The Curious Garden, to create my own animation about a girl in a garden with plants that keep a strange, metronome-like rhythm. She is trying to mix them together to create the correct kind of tune, but keeps messing the potion up. In a bout of frustration, she tosses a bunch of plants together that create a cacophony, and evolves this black-scaled, monitor-like creature that destroys her garden and her hard work. Not sure about the ending yet, but I want to make it something surprising or ironic. Here's the first concept illustration for it:

Hope you enjoy! Feedback on the idea (or the drawing) would be much appreciated!!

What's that you got there?

2010-11-08T13:52:00.000-08:00

Photoshop + Acrylic

Postpost

2010-11-03T15:30:00.000-07:00

Hello! Got some more stuff to show.

First, the second 'portrait' from the same project as the previous post:
This was an organization called Women on Waves. They sail around to different countries and educate women on proper healthcare, and provide them with proper medicine and treatment for themselves. They also provide them with abortion pills to prevent unsafe abortion practices that are commonly utilized illegally.

I drew this today! I almost abandoned my monster story, but this image popped into my head and I just had to draw it:

And I'm almost done coloring this one!

More to come soon!

Gaza

2010-10-25T20:40:00.001-07:00

For Illustration for Publications:

Her name is Madeleine Koulab. She is 16 years old and was in school when her dad suddenly got sick with palsy and could no longer fish. She took over his job for the family and although she wants to go to school and college, she must handle her responsibility and do the right thing.

Hope you like it!

Kitty!

2010-10-15T08:21:00.001-07:00

I finished this for the Urban Legends show at the Savannah Mall. Hopefully I get in! The legend is that cats sneak into a baby's crib and steals their breath to suffocate them.

Creature Infestation!

2010-09-26T22:45:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

For my independent study this quarter, I wanted to a 'children's book' about a girl who discovers a huge group of mythical creatures. I say 'children's' because it's a bit dark; there are a group of children who believe a folklore that if you wear one of the creature's heads, you gain special abilities/immortality, so the children run around trying to hunt these creatures down. Totally not a children's book, but I want it to have the feel of one. I'm not sure how I'm going to execute the story in terms of finishing, but I do know that it is a ton of fun to draw, and I'm going to enjoy at least that much. :D

The creatures are based off the ones I designed for the paper monster project , I enjoyed drawing them so much I wanted to do this story featuring the crazy cast. Here's some concept sketches for you!~

Under Your Skin

2010-09-24T09:35:00.000-07:00

Under Your Skin (2010)

Moleskine Dump!

2010-09-22T10:22:00.001-07:00

Hello all! Just showing all the sketches from my huge watercolor Moleskine!!

On left: Janelle, Me, Katie, and Felicity. On the right: My characters Nashi, Ringo, Aaron, Fresa, and Prince Rana, the main cast of one of my favorite stories of all time:

Cat slug!

This girl is from the Demon Story as well:

Illustration for Publication

2010-09-22T06:46:00.000-07:00

Hahaha I love this class, everytime we have a project, the sketches are always due the same day! Pretty much, how it works, is that a real client comes to us and asks the students to send sketches for a certain project they need (a spot for a magazine, a banner for a website...) and we each send a sketch of our idea and the client picks one of us. When they do, they must take it to final and then will subsequently be published! It's a very competitive class, and it makes it very hard not to go overboard on illustrating. They usually want more simple, straightforward ideas. Here are two of the three sketches I've done for the class so far:

This one is for Main Street Family, a website banner. Please ignore my bad hand-written type.

This one was for a magazine article about 'real' country music.

Maybe I shouldn't post these until I know whether or not I got the project... oh well. I'll take em down if need be.

All things quite wonderful

2010-09-18T08:11:00.000-07:00

The Illustration grad students just had a gallery opening yesterday (called the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) and it was just the most fantastic day. The work was beautiful, everyone was there, and I got to meet some very awesome new friends. I was pleased with the way my own piece came out, especially because I used to be terrified of watercolor, and somehow with a little patience I was able to make it bend to my will...

I was partly inspired by the softness of the works of Joy Ang and James Jean. One day I aspire to that kind of greatness. One day...

This isn't the finished version of the piece. I was going to mix it with digital, but thankfully decided against it.

"Under Your Skin" (2010)

Read the image any way you want (I personally read it from top to bottom). Soon I'm going to post the evolution of this piece, it went through so many stages, it's ridiculous. I should do my thesis on process in Illustration and how not to FAIL at it.

Even though this wasn't fail in my book. For which I am glad.

In other news, I got all my sketches back from my Drawing for SEQA class in Spring finally, so those will also be posted very soon once I bring them to the large format scanner! So keep a lookout for those!

Summer Sketching part 3

2010-08-21T22:04:00.000-07:00

I just found my huge watercolor moleskine, and while I didn't actually paint anything yet (I know, shame on me) I did sketch some stuff. Here we go!

I was surprised to find this sketch already in here.

It was pretty hard trying not to get caught by these people.

I was listening to the Decemberists, and I really love their storytelling in their music. I fell in love with the song about the Shankill Butchers, and also When the War Came, both off the album 'The Crane Wife'. I may do a piece about the Crane Wife itself, really interesting folk tale. I did a little Mariner's Revenge sketch too, great song by them.

This guy is from an upcoming story about a demon youth who gets trapped on earth due to his older brother (pictured above) stripping him of his ability to travel back and forth between dimensions. I've been trying to figure out a look to him that's almost ethereal. I'm not quite there yet....

That's all for now!!

Summmmmmer sketching part 2

2010-08-19T07:13:00.000-07:00

While cleaning my room this morning, I came across my concept book from Concept Design in Sequential Art. The thing is absolutely filled with tons of world, character, and creature sketches, and it's just waay too much to post here. I'm thinking about making a whole separate blog strictly for concept design for my 8 stories that I have swirling around in my head. I think it would be a good place to keep track of everything and get some feedback on my design and development.

Anywho, here's part two of the summer sketch dump:

Summer Sketching

2010-08-18T17:30:00.000-07:00

Hello all! One night I went to bed at 11, woke up at 2AM and decided to stay up and draw myself insane until 5:30 AM. Here are some of the results of that night.

My little pear fairy character, Nashi Pear is always tons of fun to draw. A little girl tried to convince me that she needs a nose and didn't like my explanation that I created her without a nose. She tried to ask her mom if fairies have noses (of course she said yes), and then I proceeded to ask her if Patrick (from Spongebob) had a nose. That pretty much ended it there. Yay for winning arguments against five-year-olds!

The two previous sketches are because of Drew Soman and we'll leave it at that.

Jelly Girl

2010-08-13T19:26:00.000-07:00

I also forgot to post the completed jelly girl.

Creature Stampede

2010-08-13T19:16:00.000-07:00

I just scanned a ton of sketches I've done over the summer, but I'm not gonna overwhelm this post with everything. Instead, I'm posting sketches from Spring quarter, sketches that eventually lead up to this creature. I had a TON of fun with these little monsters and their little personalities, and I realized creature design was something I was all about. I always have been drawing animals and dinosaurs when I was little; I guess it just makes sense.

I'm wondering if I can make something out of this. I might do a little book series of these guys getting stuck with a bunch of children somewhere.

Creepo sketch

2010-08-12T22:41:00.000-07:00

My mom got super-freaked out about this, so I posted it here for your viewing pleasure.

It was really just an image that popped into my head of a woman trapped in a door as the door knocker. She was being punished in the same manner of many Greek gods, most likely for going into some forbidden/sacred land or castle.

My mom thought I was conjuring spirits and told me not to open those kinds of doors.

It is, however, ironic that today just so happened to be Friday the 13th (even though on here the time is 3 hours behind...)

Oops again

2010-06-04T19:24:00.000-07:00

Just got home back to JER Z and kinda miserable. Anyway, here is some art for you because I kind of lost my will to live and pretty much everything else

Final proj from Seqa Art....IT TOOK FOREVER

We had to make a 4 page long comic from a professional script instead of doing our last sketchbook assignments, and I proceeded to freak out, as I have never done any pages before EVER (Original script here...first 6 actual pages here [Lienel Yu owned me so hard])

Opening city panel, my word, did it take long. This was my first time ever doing actual Sequential pages, let alone a massive future Tokyo cityscape, so yeah. There are tons of errors in these panels, many of which I didn't have time to fix, but now I know for next time (especially after seeing the actual comic pages). Also, I had the choice whether to do a city scape or a MASSIVE 30-FT TALL SAMURAI WAR DROID ERUPTING OUT OF THE FLOOR needless to say I was very sad because they figured the city would be more of a challenge for me :[

Big character reveal- which happens to be my fav page, this also took forever, and he's not quite standing on that floor, but boy was drawing all those bodies both daunting and fun. My prof liked this page as well (one of my classmates actually noticed the slumped [albeit small] body in the b/g over the couch). Good times. Yay for blood covering up perspective lines I don't wish to draw/figure out! :D

"Oh noes stereotypically named Japanese man, please don't kill me!" Hahaha I hate this page, that levitation sequence was painful to do. The class didn't really like Leinel's interpretation of it either, although that could have been only to make me feel a bit better about the SUCK

Prof like the emotion in panel 4 which made me happy. Up and down extreme perspective=not easy

Onward to stuff I actually care about (lol not really [actually I don't mean that at all])

Final from Illo Markets, Hotels.com and the Norovirus book cover (homage to Kenneth unintentionally here)

And Cut paper illo Final from Techniques II:
Comp andddd final which was a TON of fun

That is all! Please feel free to crit anything to your heart's content :>

Oops

2010-05-16T12:29:00.000-07:00

...I haven't updated for a while. Shame on me! Well because of my lack of updating I have a great wealth of art done over the past 3 weeks, so it's a fun time for everyone.

On an awesome note, I had an interview with the amazingly talented and famous illustrator Jon Foster!! Go check out his amazing work! It was an honor and a privilege to be able to speak with such an insightful and down-to-earth person, and he gave a lot of useful advice about entering the field of illustration and make sure doing what you love is truly what you love to do. I would post it, but I don't know if I am allowed to.

In other news, here are like the half-million (yeah right) projects I finished over these weeks:

1. The In Character Magazine cover

This didn't turn out as well as could be with all the hype that was attached to it. My professor seemed to like it a lot, which is good, but as with everything, I could have done better. Playing with the colors was fun. It was better as a stand-alone without the text added, but you know:

And also, the spot illos:

2. Backlit Watercolor

This one should have turned out so much better than it did. That is all.

3. Gouache Secrets

We had to illustrate either secrets or Noah's Ark in gouache, and of course me being me, I choose the secrets. Here's the comp:

And the final:

I liked this one much better than the watercolor, but I still got the same kinds of marks on it as with the previous, and no one said anything about it, like at all, during critique, which was really frustrating because I would, you know, like to improve. I was happy I was able to use the color yellow in a much more desirable way than I imagine the color yellow would be used by me. It was a lot of fun to paint, especially the fabric!

4. Character Design for Sequential Art

This was enjoyable, that is all. She is a female inventor in the Victorian Era, who works as a seamstress by day and sneaks off to try to uphold her father's legacy by inventing things people couldn't even imagine back in those times. She has to fight hard to hide this from her mother and successfully create something without blowing it up (which explains her partial bustle). She sewed those pants herself.

I'll upload the rest when I get to a massive scanner!

Sidewalk Arts!!

2010-04-24T14:36:00.000-07:00

Hoo boy,

If today was a turkey, it would be stuffed with all manner of excitement and the most delicious foods one would ever imagine. I got to beat out another girl in a serious match of rock-paper-scissors to spend the whole day with Ed Murrieta, senior creative director of Cartoon Network!!! It was fantastic. He's so fun and down-to-earth, and an all-around nice guy. I also got to meet his wonderful family as well (his grandson is the cutest thing ever). We walked around for judging of the works of Sidewalk Arts, many beautiful entries there, and it looked like so much fun. I'm definitely taking part in it next year if the opportunity doesn't arise for me to volunteer with another awesome guest judge (or maybe it'll be Ed again!). He told me to go with the fun people anyway, mayhaps I'll do just that.

Ooh, I also got him to draw in my sketchbook, but I should prolly make sure he's okay with me posting it before I do....I'll just upload a low-res scan of it for now.

I also drew a bit in my brand-new sketchbook yesterday.

And this painting is one in progress that I should be working on now, and that I'll be working on probably all the rest of this weekend.

Ciao!!

Hell Week

2010-04-21T14:00:00.000-07:00

My goodness, was this week stressful. But productive! Huge image dump right here...it's what I was working on this week. I would scan my SEQA stuff, but I already handed in half my sketchbook.

I changed my idea like I always do for my backlit watercolor assignment. Here's the old idea:

And the new one!!

This panel for Drawing for SEQA took forever and there's still a crapload of things wrong with it, but I worked really hard on it so I still want to share.
I'm just not cut out for comic books; it's a really good thing I didn't switch my major!

This little enjoyable piece will be for my roomate's birthday when I'm finished with it. It's also used on my business card.

And a bunch of sketches from my old Travelouge in Fall quarter:

Hehehe, the strap finished her knee shape. I found that funny.
I like drawing monsters...way too much for my own good...

This post is dedicated to Chris Gash, btw.

Illustrator's talk

2010-04-14T18:50:00.000-07:00

So, I just came back from the panel discussion with illustrators Christoph Niemann, Yuko Shimizu , Anita Kunz, and Chris Sickels, and it was AWESOME!! Ughh their work is so amazing, and it makes me feel discouraged and encouraged all at one time. They all made it clear that their ideas aren't immediately awesome and don't come out of thin air, but still...the ideas that do occur are just so amazing and so clever...Christoph Niemann is insane. All of them are incredibly inspirational and tonight made me remember why exactly I'm paying so much money to attend this school: I get to have these fantastic experiences. Well you know...and the education and all.

I got Christoph and Yuko's autograph!

I also did a bunch of sketches during the talk as well...because no illustrator can come to SCAD and talk without risk of being (badly) portrayed in some unknown sketchbook:
It was really interesting to see what their hands were doing (my favorite is Niemann in the middle):

Playing around with a more whimsical style-

And whimsy in a different sense-

...Today was a good day.

Faillustration

2010-04-13T17:07:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so my attempts at being clever are laughable at best (and not in the way I would like them to be). In Illustration Markets, we have to do an Editorial Illo for In Character magazine, and of course, I pick the generosity issue, who's cover I cannot top:

It's unfairly perfect. Like, that's EXACTLY what generosity is! What am I supposed to come up with now? So here's my fail cover (partially scanned because I don't have a large format scanner and I'm too lazy to piece together a mere comp/sketch):

I was kinda feeling okay about it.....

Okay so I thought it was a good cover that got to the point, but my senses are obviously skewed when I saw that my professor really wasn't feeling it, and I understood why: It just gives too much information. It's not at all clever (much like me), and so I need to figure out another angle. He did like the hands though, he wants me to keep them.

This one, however, he loved and wants me to keep.

It's about tithing (giving 10 percent of your income to the church) . There was a passage that regarded it as a spiritual investment that ensured money, health, or well-being.

I need to figure out how to illustrate generosity.

Cocoa START!!

2010-04-13T08:32:00.000-07:00

Hello, just feeling around the fresh new blog space, so I feel I should start by posting some new artwork and sketches! The old, finished stuff is still on my
Deviantart, so feel free to check it out!

These are some sketches for Illustration Techniques II (backlighting done in watercolor assignment) that I was working on:

Hilariously enough, I just did a watercolor in Techniques I that had backlighting:

These are for the previous assignment, it had to be a song lyric Illustration (I chose Monster by Meg & Dia because I just wanted to draw a monster):

The finished scratchboard piece: