figure concentration
flower child february 2017
This very early piece shows a girl sleeping on the grass, with tall, grouped flowers surrounding her and a moon above, all looking down upon her. This was the first finished product I made for studio and I wanted to continue developing my style of people as my concentration, and this piece was a good practice shot at my style, but it didn’t come out the way I had envisioned. If I could improve it in any way, as suggested by a classmate, I would add some movement to the flowers and match the detail of the moon’s face to the faces of the other subjects. Although I don’t love the lower half, I may cut the bottom off as it’s own piece and recycle the moon for another project.
paper face february 2017
This was a pretty easy piece to make. I wanted to work with paper again and create a face with it, but I wasn’t quite in the realm of being serious about these pieces nor had a grasp on my current style, so I made this very simple paper face and put it on this crappy background. The only part that I would say was at all challenging was cutting and glueing the hair, but I still could’ve put more effort into it. If I could continue, I would definitely try harder to make it look more realistic, by adding details and working more on the background so it isn’t just scribbled colored pencil and paper shapes.
bark & bone march 2017
The subject of this piece is mainly the tree and the girl standing on it, in an almost dream-like world, where this tree stands above a cliff overlooking the sunset before it. I found an image that I took of this really cool tree and used it as inspiration for this piece, adding these fun, organic shapes to make a funky bark pattern. There wasn’t much of a reason behind this, other than getting some indirect observational work under my belt. I think the part outlined with pen looks really out of place in this piece and I thought the sunset would be nice and add to the beauty of this fantasy land, but I also thinks it’s a pretty cheesy and ‘high school’ background to do, although anything else might pull away from the main focus.
worm winter 2017
This is another unusual figure subject, gripping a strange worm creature in his hand, shown in three separate frames. The unfinished setting of this piece is another dream-like world, which I wanted to show in different frames so each one could have it’s own vibe within. Every piece of this is made of paper, with painted-on details and a little addition of star sequins for the figure’s nips. Initially, this started because I wanted to make a concentration piece out of paper that took more effort than the last paper piece I did and, although unfinished, this was also meant to be a way for me to practice developing more detailed backgrounds.
moon friend april 2017
This is a sketchbook page of a girl, sitting on a hill, smiling and waving at the moon, who smiles back. Although this piece was pretty easy to make, to me it really felt like the first piece I made that accurately showed what I wanted my style to be. This is one of my favorite sketchbook pages and if I get the chance I think I would make prints of it and mess around with different colors and textures.
uncomfortable wanderer
summer goon
rainy boy
shroom nymph
This is a collection of simple yet deep characters, each with a different setting to match whatever I thought their personality and expressions were as I created them. Each subject starts with the eyes, which hold a lot of character and emotion in themselves, and determine how the rest of character will come together. Creating characters in this simple way is really fun and a good way to encourage myself to give every subject I depict in my art a personality, in addition to showing emotion in subtle ways.
suss
candy
young
king
lounger april 2017
This piece was my first large piece that I did this year, in the hopes of creating a larger and closer image of my characters, in a pose and amount of detail I hadn’t done before. As usual, I tried mostly to emphasize their expression and the details of their person, to lead the viewer to their own conclusion on the subject’s personality and other aspects of who they might be. One clear aspect I wanted to leave mysterious is the sex of the subject, so I tried to make all features as gender neutral as possible.
double may 2017
This piece shows a mirror-effect of two almost identical females, each displaying an emotion opposite of the other. This was the first time I had used acrylic paint in a long time, and didn’t practice before starting this project, so it was kind of like re-learning by doing. It was also the first time in a while that I had done more realistic work, though before entering this class, was mainly what I drew. This piece was kinda frustrating because every part of it took a long time. Of course, the subject is meant to show the high and low side of the same person, with some deliberate details to subtly emphasize the underlying message.
wizard may 2017
This was yet another sketchbook page turned work of art by cutting out the initial drawing and trying to make a matching background I can glue it on. I really liked this sketch and its almost endless style lines, which is why I didn’t go over it in pen. The background was very simple and probably took three minutes, but I really like how it looks and matches the magical, wizard vibe. If I had the time, I would’ve liked to add some more features to the wizard like an arm holding a wand or something but in the meantime, I plan to turn him into a sticker.
punkster december 2016 & may 2017
This piece began as a sketchbook page I made in December 2016, which was always one of my favorites because it has a lot more details and patterns than most of the other pieces I make. At first, my idea for the background was to put him at a punk rock concert, with all these audience hands stretched in the air behind him, but by the time i had finished the hands, that idea wasn’t really speaking to me. My brother helped me out by coming up with the new placement of the hands, each placed carefully to display the guy’s piercings.
moody may 2017
This was another sketchbook page that I transformed into a piece of art just by cutting lines into the page and gluing it onto a yellow background. The initial drawing was a fun way to use color to shade and highlight the facial features and to step out of my usual black and white style.
blended june 2017
This piece was sort of meant to be my style of people if they were placed in a blender. It was a pretty simple thing to make, without a need for too much effort. I wanted to focus the most on the little details of each character, like their piercings, wrinkles, facial expressions, and interactions between one another. Although another fun piece to make that I think looks very cool, this was not at all a challenge, though it could’ve been if I had tried a little harder on the shading, which I think looks pretty sloppy.