Hogwash & Nonsense: summer

Showing posts with label summer. Show all posts

Hot

It's hot in NY.

Fox and I are both rather warm.

Fox, however, is lucky enough to be at the beach.

I, alas, am not at the beach. I'm keeping cool by standing in an aluminum pan filled with ice water while painting in my studio. It helps, I swear.

Hey folks,

I hope all of you have had your fill of watermelon, beach visits, outdoor movies, ice-pops, picnics and chasing fireflies across the lawn. It's the 1st of September, and fall is on it's way.

Enjoy your long weekend and soak up these last days of summer!

Hot.

Hey there everyone,

I arrived back from vacation yesterday to NY at 96º... which, of course, made me think of penguins. Obviously. Penguins.

I don't know... vacation brain, maybe? That's a thing, right? Let's go with that.

Summertime

Hey there blog readers,

It was a busy June filled with loads of projects. I ended up with a big job requiring pages and pages of sketches. Incredibly fun, but I can't say much more than that. Non disclosure agreements and all. I also recently started work on two new projects with a couple of different publications, more about those in coming weeks as things get underway. Alas, jobs and massive amounts of sketching left little time for blog-ifying. But I'm back... albeit briefly. On Thursday, I'm heading off for vacation, on a Pacific Northwest adventure extravaganza, visiting Seattle and Portland for the first time with the boyfriend.

I may try to post once or twice while away (I do have to bring my computer along as the aforementioned new projects will require some work), but more likely than not, it'll be a quiet few weeks. Sooo, I'm going to leave you with a whole bunch of sketches and some summertime fun.

While in the process of getting ready for the big SCBWI conference out in LA (early August), I decided I needed a new Coco and Oscar painting. Clearly it was time for some brainstorming.

My first sketches are usually pretty rough, but these few are exceptionally sketchy. I actually did these first couple of pages on the back of two photocopied crossword puzzles while on the subway.

When I got home, I began to firm up a few of my favorites.

With a quick revision...

I actually really loved this last sketch. It might just be my favorite. Alas, I decided it would be a hard read for someone unfamiliar with the characters, so I went in a different direction. I will probably still go back and paint a bunch of these when I have some time. They're too much fun not to.

And finally, the full color painting.

Happy Summer everyone!

Panthers and Flamingos

I know it's been forever. The summer has been zipping by with a speed and ferocity only matched by my cat (who thinks he's a panther, but in fact much more closely resembles the Cowardly Lion).

Yes, this cat...

It has been eons since my last update. Eons. Yes, you heard me, eons. Since graduation, I've been interning at Penguin in an imprint of their Young Readers division. It has been an incredible learning experience; my projects have ranged from design based (book based merchandise for Christmas, end-paper design, picture book layouts, scanning and placing artwork) to daily support of the art department (archiving old work, mucking my way through the slush pile, packing up artwork (this is MUCH cooler than it sounds... the other day I got to - very carefully - handle original artwork by Dave Catrow, Sophie Blackall, Patricia Polacco, Tomie dePaola... I mean, Tomie dePaola!!!!)). Not to mention, the people I work with are fantastic - the art director is brilliant, the two designers are incredible at what they do, and the assistant to the department is always super helpful and is an artist/designer in her own right.

That being said, with the full-time gig and summer rolling in full tilt, there has been little time for much else... like updating the blog. That being said, I haven't stopped working on artsy things. So here's a little something for all of you fab blog readers out there.

I made a "Get Well Soon" card for a dear friend/mentor who just had knee surgery.

Super Secret Project Follow-Up

Just wanted to post a quick follow-up to my previous post because the surprise was a seriously-super-spectacular success! Grin!

Not to mention, there is one birdy that didn't make it onto the last post... the one I kept:

Secret Projects! Shhhh!

Halloo all!

Happy sweaty-warm weather! I hope you're all enjoying the weather warming... admittedly, not my favorite thing in the world. Don't get me wrong - I do enjoy the summer months. However, I am not overly fond of being hot or sweaty or as is often the case for me, vaguely sun-burnt despite buckets and vats of SPF 70+. Regardless, summer means parks and picnics and ice-cream, so go play outside!

I've spent only a bit of time enjoying the weather. There has been a bit of apartment flux chez moi (a petit move and two lovely new roommates), and then family whatnot and a secret project of sorts have taken over these past few weeks, severely limiting both outdoor free time and time in the studio. As such, the book project is inching along, snail-style. (Though I am nearing completion on a new spread... it was too wet to finish tonight, so a couple of finishing touches tomorrow should do it.)

But back to the secret project! A certain singer in a band just moved to Greenpoint from Jersey (about time!), and I thought it appropriate to welcome him back to the five boroughs with a little bit of ridiculousness.

So I wracked my little school-tired brains and began doodling... what to do for a band dude? I let my pen wander across the page. The doodles started with guitars... and then all of a sudden the guitars had wings... and then they had beaks... and little legs... GUITARBIRDS! YES!

No eye-rolling. You know you love the ridiculousness.

So the sketch... please note the infinitely awkward upside-down guitarbirdy on the bottom... that definitely did not make the cut...

Once I had a sketch, I started in on my little birdies, using a brush pen (ink) to draw them and then adding color with light washes. At first my idea was to just hang the little birdies all over the room... BUT... if I were a little guitarbirdy, I would most certainly want something to land on. TREEEEEES! Yes! So I cut a bit off my enormous roll of drawing paper, taped it up on the wall, and started inking trees with the same brush pen I used for the birdies.

And then the super sneaky bit... I checked Band-Boy's cellphone for his roommate's phone numbers, wrote them down on the post-it... which I promptly lost. Groan. But I had email addresses! Success! One of his roommate's let me in before his scheduled move-in, and here's what happened.

This - blank wall, roll of paper trees, and a carefully concealed flock of guitarbirdies sandwiched in my copy of Will Eisner's "Comics & Sequential Art" (an excellent read, btw) - is what I had to work with:

Yes, I worked barefoot... it's summer. 'Nuf said.

Step one: Flattened and attached the first tree with a bit of painter's tape, wrapping it around the corner of the wall, and congratulated self on excellent match of white paper and white wall:

Step two: Attached the rest of the branches and stepped back to admire handiwork:

Step three: Chose and attached the first birdie:

And then the whole family:

And a friend:

Step four: Started populating left branches, checking every now and then to make sure birdies were fairly evenly balanced in number and color:

Step five: Danced around the room like a fool, excited by crafty handiwork... and took many photos:

Left:

Right:

Details and characters:

(The little banjos and the pink-red acoustic family are probably my favorites... I kept only one of the birdies - the third little acoustic guitarbirdling.)

Step six: Added little hints of the ridiculousness hidden behind the door:

Finishing touches:

Wait for it... wait for it...

And without further ado, I give you the final product...

Wee! AWESOMENESS!

So there you have it. I actually wrote this post up right after I did my super-stealthy-guitarbird-hanging-caper but had to save it so as to keep it a secret. Whew, secret project-tastic. And with that I shall leave you, dear readers. Hopefully this bit of absurdity will tide you over until I finish the next couple of spreads for my book. For more photos or perhaps your own custom wall paper, feel free to drop a line. ;)

PS You should absolutely check out the band - Diehard - because they're pretty fab. They have some shows coming up both in NY and elsewhere on the East coast during their summer tour. If you're interested, let me know. I'll probably head to at least one of the NY shows.

Diehard

Seasons of Carl: The Last Project

Happy Winter Break everyone! (Likewise merry holiday season and happy nearly new year!)

While I am admittedly ready for a break, now that we're on holiday, I'm more than a little sad that my first semester of art school is over. The lightening-like speed with which it whoooshed by is mind-boggling. It was a crazy amazing roller-coaster ride of a school term...

And now it is done.

But I shan't dwell any further... adventures lie ahead... but before we move on, let's look at the last project of the term.

Carl's last assignment was to create a four-panel folding screen using Vivaldi's Four Seasons as inspiration. We were assigned our base material - a black board - but were otherwise free to use any method(s) of working. We also assigned a format - to divide each panel horizontally. The bottom half was to be a figurative piece using an object to represent the season. The top half was to be a non-objective (more abstract) representation using color and texture to show the season. Some of the project ideas included different bugs to represent the season (butterfly for spring, bees for summer, etc), trees throughout the seasons, animals, action figures, food, a year of Michelle Obama... we had quite a variety.

I was at a loss for a while. For a few weeks, I just played with materials trying to decide how I wanted to work and what I wanted to work on. Finally, I decided to go with my initial idea - to render a character dancing and represent the season by her movement. Spring would be walking, summer would move into something more animated - jumping or spinning, fall would be quieting down again perhaps yawning, and in the winter panel she would be asleep. Eventually I decided not just to draw four different characters, but do a progression that would span the entire width of the screen.

First I drew out my characters on tracing paper, so I could later overlap them and line them up as I went along. Then I transferred them to the board. Part of the initial progression sketch looked like this:

This shows midsummer moving through fall into winter.

Then I started to paint my composition. I did a whole bunch of tests using different materials for about two or three weeks just trying new things. You can see one of my test panels up top.

Filling more in:

Until I had all of my girls rendered:

Then I started to think about my non-objective element. I wanted it to have a similar feel to the bottom but still have a lot of energy and compliment the quiet. I decided to render each season the same way but change the colors to show the seasonal change. After another week of tests, I hauled out my paints and borrowed a toothbrush from a friend. (Yes I said toothbrush...) And just look at what a toothbrush can do: