Perfume, a Pink Powder Puff...and a Lesson on Painting Glass

For this still life assignment, I had a hard time finding stuff around the house that was pretty enough to paint with watercolors. I wanted a still life that was high-key and colorful, and I eventually found just the right items in my makeup bag!

Lesson Learned: Clear glass reflects all colors around it! Do not paint clear class as a monochromatic object! At first glance, I thought I would just need to use a gray color in different values to paint the glass perfume bottle, but when I looked closer, I saw so many different colors in the glass. The glass picks up bits of all of the colors around it, as well as colors it creates when the light shines through it. Going into this painting, I had no idea that the clear glass would end up being the most colorful part of this painting!

Adorable Baby Wearing a Chullo... and a Lesson on Edge Control

I started the summer semester on Monday, and I am loving my classes so far! I am taking a Creative Writing class, which is a lot of fun already (we are doing poetry)! I am also taking a Watercolor for Illustrators class. I was first introduced to watercolor in Illustration 2 by the fabulous Camille LaPointe Lyons and I completely fell in love with watercolor painting. When I heard that she had written the Watercolor for Illustrators course, I signed up immediately. I am so excited to learn more about watercolor painting from such a talented woman. My instructor, Sue Rother, is a very talented painter as well.

Here is my first painting for the semester- a little 6x7" spot illustration of my pretty niece, Emma:

A special thanks to my talented mother, Margarita Bromley, the excellent photographer who took the photo that I used as reference for this painting. Her lovely photographs have been the reference material for so many of my illustrations over the years!

Lesson Learned: Paint outside the lines! 

The first module of this course taught me to throw out the painstakingly precise application of paint that has ruled my artistic approach ever since my childhood. As a kid, I always carefully colored inside the black lines of my Barbie coloring books and painted perfectly within the designated areas of my paint-by-numbers. According to the experts, however, it is better to take a loose approach to watercolors, and it is okay to paint outside the lines! 

For this approach, paint the middle value first, then paint through adjacent shapes of the same or similar values so that the colors start to bleed together. Of course, test it on a scrap of paper first to make sure that running the colors together won't result in a muddy color. I still had to be precise in the areas of detail (I used masking fluid for the eyes, teeth, and highlights and patterns on the clothing), but it was fun to let the colors bleed together around the edges, and the soft edges helped to draw more attention to the sharp detail on the face (the focal point of my illustration). Those soft edges I was able to achieve with this technique created sort of an atmospheric blur like you can achieve in photography by using a large aperture.

My Best Friend's Wedding... and a Lesson on Using Masking Fluid

On June 4, my cousin Jacob married my best friend Kelly. They are a perfect match and will be so happy together! I painted a watercolor portrait of them to commemorate this joyous occasion:

Lesson Learned: Frisket is your friend! 

I used masking fluid (frisket) liberally when painting this portrait. I masked everything in the foreground before I painted the sky. This helped me to keep the value of the sky even, since I could paint all of my wash strokes horizontally (right over the masked area) instead of worrying about painting around the foreground objects. When I removed all of the masking fluid, I was left with clean edges and pure white paper where the figures, temple, and trees would be. 

Then, I carefully painted masking fluid over the areas where the lightest details and the hardest edges would be. This helped me to keep the edges crisp and the lights light so that no details got fuzzy or lost as I applied thin glazes of color to keep the colors luminous and bright. Then I let the painting dry, lifted the masking fluid, and added the dark values to the details with a mostly dry brush and I did not have to worry about my edges blurring or my highlights getting lost. Masking takes time, but it is so worth it in the end!

Product Prototypes... and Why You Need to Read Your Printer Manual

Part of my final for Decorative Illustration was to create prototypes for all of the products I have designed throughout the semester. It was a lot of work cutting all of the greeting cards by hand, and it made me grateful that if I ever do this as a job, the companies will have proper printing and laser cutting equipment to deal with all that so I can stick to the designing and let a machine do the manufacturing.

T-Shirt Design:

  

Birthday Card Prototypes:

Baby Birth Card:

 

 

Holiday Card (just a fun extra to go along with the paper placemat and napkin coordinates):

Paper Gift Box:

Lesson Learned: Know your printer! I rarely used my inkjet printer in the past because I thought it was broken. There was horizontal banding in all of my prints, and realigning and cleaning the print heads and nozzles wasn't fixing the problem. It wasn't until I reviewed all of the printer settings that I realized my printer defaults to "speed" instead of "quality" for all prints. Once I switched it to "quality," all of my prints turned out beautifully with no gaps! 

St. Basil's Cathedral... and a Tip for Traveling Artists

For the final project for my Decorative Illustration class, I created a paper box. It is a little gift box that someone might get in a souvenir shop.

My design was inspired by a trip I took to Russia last year- I used photos I took at Red Square in Moscow for reference. For the bottom of the box, I made a collage from scanned images of tickets that I had saved from places I visited in Moscow and around the Kremlin and Red Square.

Here is the box design template:

And here is the printed box prototype:

 

Lesson Learned: When taking photos of your travels, don't leave out the details! I took a couple of standard tourist shots of the outside of St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, but I also took dozens of pictures of the details in the paintings and patterns inside. The tourist shots are great for my photo album, but those photos of the little details that caught my attention have served as a great source of inspiration for me when it comes to color and pattern design in my illustrations.

Saris, Patterns, The Princess and The Pea... and Tips for Setting Your Story in a Foreign Land

For the final project for my Children's Book Illustration class, we had to choose any story and plan a 32-page picture book illustrating the full text. I chose the classic fairytale The Princess and the Pea.

 I decided to set the story in India, since I love the look of the palaces there and the thought of illustrating an Indian princess just seemed so beautiful to me. I really love the colors of Indian textiles and jewelry and wanted to be able to work with that in my illustrations too.

Now, I have a full book dummy of rough sketches and text layout for a 32-page book, and two completed interior illustrations plus a cover illustration! This was such a fun project and an incredible class- I can't wait to take Advanced Children's Book Illustration in the fall!!

Here is the cover:

One double-page spread:

One single page illustration:

Lesson Learned: When you decide to set your story in a foreign country- RESEARCH is absolutely necessary! I pored over dozens of books at the library- books on Indian architecture, art, and fashion... I even found an entire book about saris that had diagrams about how to wear them for different occasions, which was very helpful in dressing the princess. There were some incredible books about arab patterns- I photocopied just about every page because all of the patterns were so gorgeous and inspiring when it came time to design my own patterns for the borders of my illustrations. Of course, internet searches were helpful too, but the best internet research I found wasn't from Google Images, but from YouTube. I watched clips of Bollywood movies and found some great inspiration for costumes and colors!

I spent more time researching than I spent painting- once I had it all planned out the rest was easy!